1st lesson free
Patrick
- Rate £43
- Response 1h
£43/hr
Contact
1st lesson free
- Drum
- Percussion
- Jazz Drumming
- Xylophone
Drum lessons where you sing the groove first, then share it between your limbs
- Drum
- Percussion
- Jazz Drumming
- Xylophone
Lesson location
About Patrick
My drum lessons have a lot of talking-in-rhythm. If you're stuck, I'll usually ask you to say the pattern before I ask you to play it, because if you can't say it, your hands are guessing. I'm good at noticing which limb is causing trouble, and it's often not the one you'd suspect. A late kick drum is often really a right hand that froze for a moment. I'll point to the cause, have you play only that piece, and then hand the groove back to you.
I don't believe in making a difficult beat sound easy. I'll tell you honestly when something is tricky, and then I'll make it smaller. Explanations change depending on what works. With some students I tap the rhythm on their shoulder. With others I write it as a grid of boxes, or play it on a practice pad next to them, or slow a recording down until we can both hear where the snare actually sits. Kids often respond to turning rhythms into words, and adults often want to see the pattern written down. I'm happy to do both.
Lessons with me are relaxed but focused. We play a lot and talk for short stretches. When something finally clicks, we put it straight into a song so it doesn't stay as a classroom exercise. If you can only practice on a pad, or at a low volume at home, we'll plan around that rather than pretend everyone has a soundproof room.
What I care about most is that you understand why a groove feels good, not only how to copy it. A seven-year-old learning their first beat, a teenager getting ready for their first band rehearsal, and an adult returning to the kit after twenty years all benefit from the same thing: hearing a part, breaking it down themselves, and making it sit right in the music.
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About the lesson
- All Levels
- English
All languages in which the lesson is available :
English
Drumming feels hard at first because four limbs are asked to do four different things at once. Most people try to solve that by forcing all four together and repeating until something sticks. I do it differently. Every beat starts with your voice. Before you touch the kit, you'll say the groove out loud, "boom, tak, ba-boom, tak", until it has a clear shape and feel. Then we hand it out one limb at a time, starting with the part that carries the feel of the song. Usually that's the kick and snare, not the hi-hat. A complete beginner can play a real rock beat in a first lesson this way, because they already know what it should sound like before their hands and feet have to agree on it.
The same approach scales up. Say you can play a groove on its own but it falls apart the second you add a fill, or a ghost note, or open the hi-hat. Instead of running the whole thing over and over, we find the exact limb that changes its job at that moment. Often the right hand speeds up or hesitates because the left hand is doing something new. We'll play just those two limbs, then put the third back in, and the problem usually becomes obvious. For intermediate and advanced players this extends to linear patterns, independence over a steady ostinato, and odd-time grooves, where saying the rhythm out loud is what keeps you from losing your place.
Fills get special attention, because the classic frustration is a fill that sounds fine in the practice room but lands late on beat one in a song. We practise the landing first: groove, then a crash and kick exactly on one, with nothing in between. Then we add the last note of the fill before the landing, then the last two, building it backward until the whole fill is there. Your sense of where "one" is never gets lost, because it was the first thing you learned. We also take one simple rhythm and move it around the kit, from snare to toms, between hands and feet, so you learn that a fill is a rhythm with a route rather than a pattern to memorise.
Dynamics and sound are part of every lesson. You'll compare playing from a high stick with playing from a low one, and a rimshot with a centre hit, so you learn to control volume and tone with movement instead of tension. Then we play along to real recordings you choose, with the metronome sometimes clicking only on beats two and four so your own time has to fill the gaps. The aim is for you to leave each lesson knowing how to break a new beat down on your own.
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Rates
Rate
- £43
Pack prices
- 5h: £215
- 10h: £430
free lessons
The first free lesson with Patrick will allow you to get to know each other and clearly specify your needs for your next lessons.
- 1hr
online
- £43/h
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