I want to learn drums

I have both and TBH I find myself on the real thing more and more. Seems like no matter how nice the ekit is the feel and dynamic just are NOT the same.

That said having lived in a duplex, the real thing is just not viable in any apartment I have ever lived in. Real drums are loud, even when they are quiet.
 
I'm very lucky and have been able to learn new instruments to performing and recording standard, and with drums I had no issues playing them on my keyboard and building them up. It's always seemed harder than it should. A drummer friend said that electronic kits are brilliant, as long as you learn on a real drum kit, because the 'feel' and timing isn't there on anything other that top of the range electronic kits. I bought a drum kit and failed miserably. My problem is coordination. My brain can play quite well with three limbs. Add the fourth and one stops. If I really try hard I can do it but I become like an 80s drum machine - totally unusable. I had no issues like this with any other instrument. I know how to play drums, but I cannot do it. Over the years I have discovered exactly the same problem with dance. I cannot do this either, and I have now tried to learn to fly 3 times! Twice on fixed wing, once on rotary. I pass ground school with ease. I have no problems with comms and nav. I just can't do the flying bit. I can fly straight and level, but totally miss the fact that I gained 1000 ft without noticing. If I concentrate on this, I don't notice the other aircraft creeping up next to us. As for the helicopter? It had a camera pod. The pilot hovered over a drain cover on the ground. All I had to do was keep it in the video frame. You have control! Two seconds and the thing vanished, never to return.

My point is that not everyone can become a drummer. Musical ability is one thing. Manual dexterity and special awareness are essential. Drums are beyond me. So annoying as in my head, it works.
 
And there's the rub. Like I said, the practice pads are brilliant for quiet play, but you can't learn hihat and cymbal techniques (cause they don't exist). Learning hihat and cymbal techniques on plastic/rubber practice cymbals cannot work (as they make no noise). You can get the feel, but you can't learn how a choke should sound, or how tip vs stick vs cross stick, etc sounds...all the little variances of cymbals can be an instrument in themselves.

Most music stores have drum lessons on real drums...usually $10-15 for a 1/2 hour session. Just a suggestion.
 
You got the bass, then. If it can't be done on a P bass with flats, it's probably not worth doing. It took me about a year to feel in control fingerstyle. But it wasn't all drudgery. There was incremental improvement along the way, and since. Technique is critical. Early on, I saw one of Scott Levine's youtube videos that explained the technique I've been using ever since. There are various approaches to muting, but two things you absolutely must get right are alternate picking between the first and index finger, and follow

? Whats the dealio with the glove ? :)
 
@fat_feet - sadly practice won't help when you just have no natural aptitude. I could practice drumming until I die, and it wouldn't get better!
Practice works when you already have the ability, but haven't developed it. Sadly, in the drumming department - it's not for me at all. Wasted effort flogging a dead horse, I guess.

@bruiser
first and index finger,
My first finger IS my index finger? Confused!
 
I just bought a Mapex pro kit. I'm just learning. I do have a talent that many seasoned drummers lack though...I can keep a tempo. Luckily, I live out in the country and my small makeshift studio is 200 feet from the house. So, I can beat the hell out of the drum until the wee hours of the morning if I so desire. That's actually what I've been doing. I'm playing, playing, playing. I'm 55...I don't have 10 years to get good. My plan is to get good in 10 months. I'm getting better and better every day so I may just get there in 10 months.
 
Learning a new instrument is quite a bit easier than learning your first.
But, like so many things, the ratio for learning something new is 80/20 Jimi! 80% will come in the first 20% the other 20% will take 80% of your practice...Good on ya!
 
Lol. I've been playing drums for 25 years and I'm not good at all, so good luck to you mastering it in 10 months. :)
 
When I moved away from the studio, I sold my real drums and got an old vdrum kit. It's not as cool as playing real.drums, but it allows me to play in my situation.

As someone mentioned, if you aren't on the ground floor, your neighbors will hear you.
 
Lol. I've been playing drums for 25 years and I'm not good at all, so good luck to you mastering it in 10 months. :)
LOL
I was wondering when someone was going to say that. I'm not kidding myself man....I've been playing the guitar for damn near half a century and haven't mastered it yet. The drums are just as complicated as the guitar and actually take more coordination. The thing is that mine and your definition of "good" probably differs. Good to you may be mastering the drums while "good" to me means recording a single song, playing the drums as a complete set, and it not sucking that bad.
That's my goal!
By the way, you're awesome on the drums....on playing and recording them.
By my definition of good you're a drum god.

I'm almost ready to try recording myself playing a song on drums. I'm still working on fills. It bugs the shit out of me that I make the same mistakes in the same places because a I lack the fundamentals and proper technique.
 
I was thinking about something someone else said about electronic kits not being able to do all the nuanced hi hat stuff. I think for a beginner, it isn't very important. Same with the feel of real drums argument. For someone who never played acoustic drums, they wouldn't know the difference and they would incorporate the nature of the instrument they are playing into what they do.

For what he wants, at least in the short term, an electronic kit will be fine. He will certainly be able to get the coordination, feel and thought process of playing the drums with an E-kit. If drumming turns into a passion, then he can move to an acoustic kit and begin to play with the added nuances that can be accomplished with acoustic drums.
 
LOL
I was wondering when someone was going to say that. I'm not kidding myself man....I've been playing the guitar for damn near half a century and haven't mastered it yet. The drums are just as complicated as the guitar and actually take more coordination. The thing is that mine and your definition of "good" probably differs. Good to you may be mastering the drums while "good" to me means recording a single song, playing the drums as a complete set, and it not sucking that bad.
That's my goal!
By the way, you're awesome on the drums....on playing and recording them.
By my definition of good you're a drum god.

I'm almost ready to try recording myself playing a song on drums. I'm still working on fills. It bugs the shit out of me that I make the same mistakes in the same places because a I lack the fundamentals and proper technique.

It's all relative. I'm good to you, but I suck compared to people that I think are good. I play gigs all the time and watch the other guitar players and drummers. 99% of the time they're way better than I am. In the grand scheme of things, I'm merely adequate. I'm good at my kind of music, but that's where it ends. And really that's all you need to be - good at your own music. I don't believe in the idea that you should be well-rounded and fluent in different styles. Fuck that. Who really does that? I'd rather be good at one thing than shitty at several. Lol. If you can make it through one of your own songs without losing your meter or flubbing fills, then you're doing fine. You don't have to be a Buddy Rich. I'd rather be a Phil Rudd anyway.
 
I'm a truly awful drummer - I can just about manage shit that the bloke from Crazy Horse does. I've never really had a kit set up in an area where I could practice consistently. I just about know enough to be able to programme half tidy beats.
 
I'm a total clueless noob on drums but I have been heavily involved in music for decades. I have fiddled around with drum sets enough to know that acoustic drums are more fun to play than electronic. I also know that whether it be guitar, keys, or whatever...
An instrument that is fun to play gets played more and the player gets better at a rate that is directly in proportion to the
playing time. So,if possible acoustic drums would be my choice
 
I'm a little late to this party, but here are my thoughts on this. I have a cheap electronic drumset, and great sampled kits on my computer. I've never even used the sounds that come with the drumset. The cons: While my set is velocity sensitive, it's not that great at it. And it misses some triggers, mainly on the cymbals and when I use the hi hat pedal. So I usually have to edit my drum parts for velocity and missed triggers. I REALLY hate editing MIDI. The upside is that, even after editing, my drum parts sound human, because they are. As much as I hate editing MIDI, programming parts from scratch was even worse. And even though my kit isn't as sensitive as I'd like it to be, and the sticks don't bounce off the pads like real drum heads, it's still a blast to play. Especially when I can dial up a John Bonham kit, a Clyde Stubblefield kit, and many others.

If you wanted to become a serious drummer, of course a real kit would be necessary. I learned on real drums, with some great drummers to teach me rudiments. I'm not at a level that I could play in a band, because I haven't played enough to have the consistent muscle control to last for a whole show. But I can do what I need to record, or jam with people for a couple of songs. As you said, learning more instruments helps with guitar or whatever your main instrument is. When I was learning how to sing and play guitar at the same time when I was a teenager, I used a book called Independence for the Modern Drummer. It was for learning to play different rhythms simultaneously with different limbs. I would strum a chord to one of the rhythms, and sing a random sound to another rhythm. It worked, and quickly. And when I strum a guitar, I kind of think of my right hand as performing the function of a hi hat. My hand never stops the back and forth motion of eighth or sixteenth notes (whatever the groove is) whether I'm hitting the strings or not. Of course that's a basic rhythm guitar concept, but since at the time I figured that out as a kid I was also learning the basics of drumming, the two kind of fit together and helped me understand.

Sorry if I'm rambling. It's been a long night of mixing, and I'm about to pass out. Long story short, I would recommend getting a MIDI kit. It'll be fun to practice on, won't be loud, and it'll help you with recording.
 
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