Is it ever too late to start? Our adult students share their drum lesson stories.
BDL Fun Fact: Most of our drum students are adults. Unfun Fact: A good portion of people trick themselves into believing that if you’re older than 12 years old, it’s too late to learn to play an instrument and gain any solid level of proficiency. To dispel that notion, we interviewed a few of our students to gain some insight into their experience as adult learners and remove the stigma around getting started after adolescence.
From an instructor’s perspective, working with adult students has its perks. We can use plainer language, more easily conceptualize things in different ways, more easily create a plan and stick to it, and the students generally practice more routinely since the cost of drum lessons comes out of their pocket! It’s also quite rewarding to see people overcome barriers and surprise themselves with what they accomplish on the drums. As long as you’re patient and persistent, you can become an objectively good drummer if you really commit to it! Let’s hear what some of our adult students have to say:
Abby
How long have you been studying drumming with Boston Drum Lessons?
I have been taking lessons with Josh for almost 5 years.
Did you have any background in music before taking drum lessons?
I took piano lessons when I was young but my heart wasn’t in it, I didn’t practice enough and I never progressed very far. I have always enjoyed singing in groups and have been part of school and community choruses at different times in my life.
What made you want to begin taking drum lessons?
I am trying to think of a way to keep this answer short(ish). In middle school when I started to listen to more rock music, I was often drawn to the bass and drum parts of songs. I would joke with my friends and family that it would be fun to play the drums, but for a variety of reasons I didn’t see this as a realistic possibility. I would periodically think about taking drum lessons as I got older, but just picturing myself at a drum kit gave me massive butterflies in my stomach and I told myself I couldn’t do it. In the end, I was kind of challenged by a friend to get out of my comfort zone so I finally got up the courage to take my first lesson.
What do you do for work?
I am the program administrator for a group of grant-funded projects that support student success at MassBay Community College. As part of this I work with students in our peer mentor program which I really enjoy.
What are some of the challenges you encountered so far while learning the drums?
I think many of my challenges stem from the fact that I am too tense and tight when I play the drums. I really struggle to relax and be more loose in my playing which affects my speed and control. I know I still hit the drums too hard a lot of the time. And my right foot gives me major headaches. There’s more, but I’ll stop there!
What has been the most gratifying aspect of learning to play the drums?
Playing along with a song for the first time felt so satisfying. Overcoming a lot of self-doubt and realizing, “Wait, I’m actually doing this” was a big moment for me.
Do you have any advice for someone thinking about starting to learn the drums?
Don’t overthink it (easier said than done — I am still working on this). Have fun, explore things you are less familiar with, and put in the time to practice regularly.
Describe a time you conquered a drumming obstacle and learned to do something that was previously a struggle.
I am a “slow and steady progress” kind of person and I think this is true with my drumming as well. More than a dramatic breakthrough in any particular area, I can look back to when I started or even a couple of years ago and see steady progress in a bunch of areas. But I’m still waiting for a breakthrough playing doubles on the kick. :)
Kaushik
How long have you been studying drumming with Boston Drum Lessons?
A little over 4.5 years. (Since November 2017)
Did you have any background in music before taking drum lessons? If yes, briefly describe your prior experience.
No formal experience. Used to mess around with FL Studio back in the day, in high school. (Made some really bad electronic music, like this one lol)
What made you want to begin taking drum lessons?
So when I was playing around with FL studio I realized that I would spend a lot of time perfecting just the beat. Early realization that I like a solid beat, which lead me to my other realization that whenever I listen to a new song/any song the first thing I notice is the beat. Also, growing up in South India & having been exposed to some fast-paced percussion like Dappankuthu. I really wanted to be able to play those beats. The final push was when I was looking for ways to strengthen my shoulder muscles as I had a shoulder surgery few months prior to my first class.
What do you do for work?
Software Engineer @ Roku
What are some of the challenges you encountered so far while learning the drums?
The biggest challenge has been having the right equipment for practice at home - space & noise constraints as long as I live in an apartment. Also, the ability to practice regularly as life gets in the way, haha
What has been the most gratifying aspect of learning to play the drums?
The ability to play through a song in front of an audience - BDL recitals. The ability to pickup beats and deconstruct it while listening to a new song.
Are there any similarities or parallels between what you do for work and the experience of learning the drums?
Absolutely. Learning drumming is like programming - Over 90% of the time you're not getting it quite right and it can really be frustrating & humbling. But with persistence, concentration & determination you can overcome these hurdles and experience the 10% time where everything works out quite right which is a fantastic feeling. The 10% feel makes the 90% feel worth it.
In what ways has learning to play the drums impacted other areas of your life?
My music horizon has definitely widened - I've learnt to appreciate certain genres better. It has definitely helped me with my anxiety. Whenever I feel overwhelmed & anxious I would just think about some/any beat I learnt recently. This usually calms me down.
Nichole
How long have you been studying drumming with Boston Drum Lessons?
About a year and 2 months.
Did you have any background in music before taking drum lessons? If yes, briefly describe your prior experience.
Yes! I took bass lessons from 14-18 and played in a few bands with my high school friends.
What made you want to begin taking drum lessons?
I started really connecting with the drums in the music I've been listening to, especially recently, and decided to pursue lessons to learn more about it.
What do you do for work?
I am the compliance manager of a fintech company with a main Boston office. I basically help deter fraud and money laundering attempts.
What are some of the challenges you encountered so far while learning the drums?
I've always struggled with coordination and multitasking, and I've always loved the drums but felt discouraged in initially picking it up because of struggling with the coordination component. Getting my muscle memory to catch up with my brain (and vice-versa) when I'm playing can also be a challenge, as well as keeping consistent with the tempo.
What has been the most gratifying aspect of learning to play the drums?
Probably learning that I actually can manage the coordination and multitasking pieces! Turns out it's a lot more manageable if you build those skills slowly and then add on at a suitable learning pace. It has also been gratifying to be able to apply the lessons I've gotten so far to all the music I love and building different ways of expressing that.
What's something that surprised you about learning the drums?
I can't say that I'm entirely surprised, but I've found that I've been able to gain and retain more neuroplasticity through learning drums than I had anticipated. Between learning some music theory and the various techniques, I've found that it's been a really good mental exercise along with allowing for creative expression, and it's actually helped with a lot of my problem solving skills.
What are your current drumming goals?
I'm looking to really become more comfortable with various techniques so that I can have it more integrated with my muscle memory and learn more new concepts. I also got to see a little bit about how the production side of matters works and I've become really curious about how I could potentially combine those together.
Guy
How long have you been studying drumming with Boston Drum Lessons?
Basically, since its inception. I was a student of Kyle's before he established BDL, and became a de facto student when it was established back in 2015, and I have been hanging around ever since.
Did you have any background in music before taking drum lessons? If yes, briefly describe your prior experience.
Well, I was singing along with my mother's Motown and Elvis Presley singles by the age of five, and loved listening to all kinds of music since that time as well, but the only formal musical training that I had before taking drum lessons was trumpet lessons in the 4th and 5th grade. I stopped taking those lessons because the school where I went couldn't afford a music department, and my parents didn't want to spend the money on lessons.
What made you want to begin taking drum lessons?
I've wanted to play drums since I was a teenager. Back then, I had a number of friends who played guitar, and I wanted to do something different. In the 80s, when MTV still played music videos, I used to try to play along to the drummers that I saw in those videos, and sometimes imagined myself on a kit. In high school and sometimes in college, I would get on friends' kits and try to play. Unfortunately at that time, I didn't have the money, time nor space to even attempt to take lessons. I finally did start to take lessons while overseas in 2006, when I was going through a rough patch in my life, but I had to quit as my work life led me away from home too often. When my wife and I moved back to the Boston area I wanted to start taking lessons again as a way to ground myself in the tumult of moving back to the US. I've been taking lessons ever since.
When all is said and done, for me it's about the combination of brain and body: no other musical instrument (except maybe the human voice) requires so much physical effort, and figuring out rhythms satisfies my mathematical mind. The combination of mind and body is what keeps things challenging and fun for me. It's a fun way to make some music, and maybe blow off some steam in the process.
What do you do for work?
During the course of my work career, I've worn many hats, becoming a jack of all trades, master of none, so to speak. At the moment, I'm a Technical Support Engineer employed by a software security and threat intelligence company whose US headquarters is in Cambridge. The bulk of our customer base is in the US, but we have customers from all over the world. Maybe in the near future I'll be donning a new hat, who knows?
What are some of the challenges you encountered so far while learning the drums?
There have been quite a few challenges, and there will always be challenges, I hope. You don't really grow as a player unless you continue to challenge yourself, in my opinion. When I started taking lessons, the challenges ranged from where to put the drums in relation to my body to tuning the heads and drums, to learning to read drum notation, to learning better technique. I've figured out how I like to have my kit configured and how to tune the drums to a degree (through trial and error, though I still feel the need to adjust things on occasion), and I can read drum notation, but acquiring better technique is the ongoing challenge. I'm always trying to get better at certain rudiments and getting better at moving around the kit.
Of all the rudiments, double-stroke rolls (open and closed) and diddle rudiments have been by far the most difficult rudiments for me. It's taken me years to get to the point that I am now. Like anything in life, I guess, you need to have the desire to get better, a plan on how to get better, and the discipline to do the work to get better. It's not always easy, though.
Of course, underpinning all technique is trying to get your non-dominant side (for me, my left side) more agile and strong, to be able to play adeptly. But, all drummers have this challenge, I suppose.
Something that I think about a lot is musicality, mainly because the topic is so nebulous. What does "being musical" mean? What makes a song have a "great groove?" What can I/should I play in a particular musical context to sound good? What does "sounding good" even mean? I'm not even sure that there are objectively right answers to these questions. I suppose that I have to figure out the subjectively right answers, that is, what sounds "right" to me.
What has been the most gratifying aspect of learning to play the drums?
The main goal of every musician, I think, is to have the ability to play whatever it is you hear in your head, and I don't think that I'm any different, in that regard. The most gratifying thing, for me, is the ability to play things that I couldn't a decade ago, and the ongoing gratification is increasing my abilities to get closer to what I hear in my head, whether that be playing something original or embellishing and improvising to a song. It's really fun to be able to sit down at a kit and just play something off the top of my head or to a fun song that I just heard for the first time!
Interested in learning to play the drums but don’t know where to begin? Schedule a trial lesson with one of our awesome instructors!