As a drum teacher, when the topic of my work comes into conversation, I often hear this refrain -  “Oh, I could never do that!”  Really, why not?  Sure, I can play a different pattern with each of my four limbs simultaneously, but in my opinion, playing the piano with ten fingers plus a foot pedal is much more complex.  Besides, how do you know you can’t do it unless you try?  If you play sports, video games, or another instrument, then you can play drums!  Learning to play an instrument is an exercise in developing muscle-memory, and drums are no exception.  If you practice daily and pace yourself, you make progress. 

Drummers are the time-keepers of music.  They act as the glue that holds the band together.  They provide structure, style, and movement to a song.  Rhythm is what keeps the music moving forward.  It’s what inspires an audience to move their bodies, whether by dancing or just bobbing their heads to a beat.  It gives shape to time, measured not by the ticking of a clock, but by the back and forth between the kick and snare - in eighth notes instead of seconds.  Rhythm, however, is not exclusive to drums.  Woodwinds, strings, and other instruments all use rhythm in all sorts of ways to express all sorts of ideas.  The staccato pluck of pizzicato violin adds a different dynamic to a piece of music than the long, sustained notes from a bow.  Drum lessons are helpful for any musician working on their rhythm or coordination. 

Drum lessons are helpful for any musician working on their rhythm or coordination...

Even if you don’t think of yourself as a musician, drum lessons can be an intellectually stimulating hobby.  In other words, playing drums is very good brain exercise!  In drum lessons, you practice timing, pattern recognition, and memorization of complex concepts.  In school, I was more of an english and spelling brain than a math whiz.  Seems ironic, right?   You’d think math would be more helpful for a drummer considering all the counting we do, however,  I look at rhythm patterns more like syllables, and grooves more like sentences.  You can combine patterns and grooves to essentially write musical poetry.  In fact, songs are often structured in similar ways to poems, with alternating patterns functioning in the same way as a rhyme scheme.  If music is a universal language, drummers write stories in rhythm!