Free · 10 lessons · about 4 hours all told
Learn the drums, in order
Ten free lessons in the order a teacher would give them: how to hold the sticks and sit, the beat behind most songs you know, the click, the hi-hat, the kick, your first fills, dynamics, a rudiment on the kit, a real song at its real tempo, and how to practise so it sticks. Every lesson has a video, the notation you can hear, a tool prefilled with the numbers, and a groove to open in the lab.
Start with lesson 1, hold the sticks and sit like a drummer. No kit needed for the first three: a practice pad, a pillow, or your knees will do.
A free account keeps your place: each lesson has a "mark it done" button and this page shows where you are up to.
- Hold the sticks and sit like a drummerMatched grip and the pivot, a seat height that saves your back, and your first strokes on a practice pad — the free beginner drum course starts here.
- The money beatThe beat behind most songs you know — eighths on the hi-hat, kick on one and three, snare on two and four — built a layer at a time, with notation you can hear.
- Playing to a clickWhy 60 BPM is harder than 120, how to lock the snare to the click until the click disappears, and why 'boring' is the signal you are looking for.
- Hi-hat variationsQuarter notes for a bigger sound, sixteenths for a busier one, the open hat on the 'and' of four, and the ride — four ways to change a beat without changing it.
- Sixteenth-note kick patternsCounting '1 e & a', and the kick on the 'a' of two and the 'e' of three that turn a straight beat into one that grooves — three patterns, counted.
- Your first fillsA fill is beat four with something in it: four sixteenths on the snare, then around the toms, then a whole bar, and the crash on one — with the notation.
- Accents, ghost notes and dynamicsLoud and quiet on purpose: the backbeat that cracks, ghost notes that whisper between it, hi-hat accents, and the stick heights that make all three possible.
- Rudiments on the kitThe single paradiddle from the pad to the drums: as a groove split between hi-hat and snare, and as a fill around the toms — one sticking, three sounds.
- Your first song: When the Levee BreaksA real song at its real tempo: When the Levee Breaks at 71 BPM, the most sampled drum beat ever recorded — the beat, the placement, and how to play along.
- How to practise so it sticksA twenty-minute routine for hands, time, something new and a song; the practice log and streak; and where to go after lesson ten: rudiments, grooves, songs.
What the course does not do
It cannot watch you play. Ten lessons get you to a real song and a way of practising, and a few real lessons with a teacher early on will catch the things a video cannot see — our guide to online drum lessons, free and paid weighs the options honestly. And when the tenth lesson is done there are forty rudiments, the classic grooves and a hundred songs with their tempos waiting.