What Makes a Good Drum Teacher?
If you’re reading this blog post, you’re likely a current student of ours or someone looking to begin taking drum lessons. And that’s great! Drum lessons are the quickest way to develop your skills, provided you’re working with a good teacher.
Just because a drummer is a fantastic player doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be an effective teacher. Speaking from experience, teaching is a skill in and of itself that requires years of practice to develop. Throughout my years of playing and studying, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with and learn from many different teachers in various settings. I’ve had some teachers that were profoundly inspiring, and others that shouldn’t give advice to anyone about anything. So what traits specifically make someone a good drum teacher?
Ability on the Instrument
As just mentioned, a great musician doesn’t automatically make a great teacher. But a good teacher still needs to be a highly skilled player. It’s sort of like how all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. A solid drum teacher must understand music theory (especially rhythms), how to read and interpret music, have superior listening skills, and know the mechanics of many different musical styles beyond their own preferences.
Beyond technical knowledge and ability, a good drum teacher should also have extensive performance experience to be prepared to guide students through any scenario they may encounter. The performance opportunities available to you will vary depending on your age and skill level. A qualified instructor should have an especially diverse musical background. For example, I’ve performed with school bands (as far back as 4th grade), marching bands, small jazz combos, pit orchestras, symphonic orchestras, rock bands, and experimental groups. I’ve done street performances, I’ve played in mid-sized venues with a full stage crew, I’ve played in smoke-filled basements operating as DIY venues, and I’ve played in family restaurants. Performing live is an extension of one’s ability on an instrument. A good teacher not only talks the talk, but walks the walk.
Live performance and playing with a group have a much larger psychological component compared to practicing alone. A teacher with ample performance experience in an array of scenarios can offer techniques to stay relaxed and stop one’s mind from racing during high-pressure performance settings. Learning to play the drums is just as much a mental challenge as it is a physical one!
Ability to Communicate
This trait is usually what separates drummers from being a solid player as opposed to a solid teacher. Knowing how to play isn’t enough. A good teacher needs to be able to communicate and explain things clearly and concisely. All too often I’ve heard “teachers” gloss over important details of a concept because they don’t know how to put to words what they intrinsically understand. And even then, it’s often necessary to have multiple ways of interpreting any given concept. On many occasions, I’ll talk through a technique or a concept and then ask the student, “did that make sense?” If what I said didn’t come across clearly, then it’s on me as a teacher to find another way to communicate the idea in a manner that the student can relate to. I’ll often have 3 or more ways of explaining a concept at the ready in the event my initial explanation doesn’t land.
One of the biggest challenges I encountered as a teacher actually centered around explaining the fundamentals of technique. I was only 10 years old when I first started playing the drums so I kind of forgot what it’s like to first pick up the sticks. The drums feel like an extension of myself at this point, but I needed to study the way I held and used the sticks to determine how to best explain the basics to someone who has never played before. Even then, I needed to figure out how to simplify everything in a way that a child could understand since I’ve had students as young as 5 years old! Think back to your favorite school teacher. They were likely knowledgeable enough about the topic they taught to present things in plain, easy-to-understand language. The best teachers can make almost anything understandable through effective communication.
Ability to Adapt
As kind of an offshoot of communication, a teacher needs to adapt to how their students learn. No two people take in information exactly the same way. Some people learn best simply by listening, some people are more visual learners, and some learn best by taking a more “hands-on” approach. A qualified drum teacher can adapt material to best accommodate a student’s preferred learning style.
While learning the drums (or any instrument) requires a lot of hands-on learning, it’s enhanced by additional visual and audio materials. A visual learner may best improve by watching the teacher’s movement while reading along with sheet music, while an aural learner may better grasp material by simply hearing a recording. Ideally, a teacher will help students become well-rounded learners with the ability to learn visually (reading sheet music, watching videos), aurally (learning music by ear), and kinesthetically (experimenting with new ideas).
Patience
Learning to play the drums is challenging! It’s not uncommon for a student to become a little frustrated when trying something new. A good teacher needs to demonstrate patience. Nothing’s worse than when you’re in a situation where you’re struggling to get through something challenging while some form of authority looms over your shoulder and appears to get annoyed by your unsuccessful efforts. A good teacher won’t ever place that type of pressure on you since everyone learns at a different rate.
Additionally, a good teacher will help you become more patient with yourself. Most progress on the drums happens during your practice outside of lessons. Developing the ability to work through snags and obstacles as you encounter more challenging material requires lots of patience. When we see our favorite drummers give an absolutely incredible performance, we want to achieve a similar result as quickly as possible. But what we don’t see are the thousands of hours of practice, the grind of slow repetition, and the failures along the way that ultimately led to that incredible performance. There are no shortcuts to becoming a great drummer, which makes patience one of the most important aspects of learning any instrument.
Open-Mindedness
An excellent drum teacher will be open to structuring lessons around the student’s particular goals and musical interests. I’ve had a couple teachers in the past that carried a sort of “my way or the highway” attitude, and it was really off-putting and demoralizing. That’s the opposite effect a teacher should have on a student! I regularly have students ask questions about specific songs or music they’ve been listening to lately, which often exposes me to really cool bands and musicians that I maybe wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. Even if my personal tastes don’t align with a student’s, I always love when a student approaches me with something specific they want to learn. More often than not, it leads to covering new topics, or pushes us to dig deeper into something we previously covered. And the students are always much more engaged when they’re working on music that they want to play. The teachers I’ve had that left lasting impressions always made me want to learn and knew how to build upon my interests.
All of our instructors here at Boston Drum Lessons draw from years of experience studying, playing, and performing on the drums in every capacity imaginable. Interested in starting your drumming journey or taking your skills to the next level? Schedule a trial lesson to get closer to your goals!