“Playing a musical instrument enhances your life”
I am fortunate to have spent most of my life in the music industry. With a little guidance and determination, “you can make music a part of your life too”.

Teaching Drum Kit: Rock, Jazz, Funk, Latin, Reggae and Pop style drumming plus improvised soloing, show chart reading, independence and double bass drumming.

Teaching Snare Drum: Concert and marching music plus rudimentary and hand technique development. My students are encouraged to participate in performance recitals at Drums Etc as well as school band.

ADULTS: Men & Woman from 20’s to 70’s. “The Big Kids” …we will discuss the kind of music you like and what you wish to achieve playing drums. Perhaps you wish to perform with other musicians or play at home for your own enjoyment? Your goal may be to play drums at church or become a better player in your band. You may just want to expand your skills in some way now that you have more free time. We will begin on a drum set “enthusiastically by learning drum patterns that fit your ability. (Sometimes called…BEATS). We will play a variety of exercises and patterns to play along with popular songs at first and expand from there. Some of the patterns you will find easy to play and some will challenge you very much. As you progress, we will add other genres of music to expand your possibilities. I’ll help you memorize standard Rock, Latin and Jazz Rhythms along with popular dance beat grooves, improv soloing, 4-way independence and you will learn how to read rhythmic notation. Reading music may sound frightening but you will find it satisfying to have a basic understanding of note values and counting. It will make teaching and learning easier for us both.

TEENS: Teenage students want options. Most teens want to get on a drum kit right away. I get that, I want to rock too! If they are a younger teen I may try to divide our lesson time between fundamentals and drum kit playing. I rarely start a new drummer on drum kit if they have never played drums before. You really need to get the whole picture before you start jamming. After you are on track, we can follow a similar plan as the adult sessions. Be careful what you ask for…. above all, I want you to learn correctly and that is not banging along to records. It’s part of it though and playing with records is productive if done right. We should not skip ahead if you wish to become a very good player. We CAN skip ahead if you just want to have some fun and you may even impress your friends but if you really want to play as a professional and/or play gigs with bands, you will need to learn other skills. I highly recommend you do the work and become a great drummer because that is where the fun really is.

KIDS: 7 to 12 years. First of all, we can relax…. we have time to learn everything the right way at an easy pace. Young drummers have time to practice and that is key. I want to tell you again, practicing is key. If kids practice, they will progress very well and if they do not practice, we will progress at a very slow pace. Its much harder to ask adults to practice. That is because we are stubborn and if someone asks us to do something very challenging, we find a way out. A lot of kids are different, they embrace what teachers ask of them and their brains work like sponges, absorbing information as fast as it’s given out. We have time to learn fundamentals properly, focus on reading skills, and build skill level from the ground up properly.

I encourage young students to get involved with school band so that they can enjoy the benefits of playing with an entire band. Our local school districts have the best music programs in the nation. Imagine taking soccer lessons but never playing with a team. There is a “team” for drummers and it’s called the school marching band. My children were both in the marching band. I am a successful drummer and I was in every band that my public school offered. Take advantage of this great opportunity that is FREE.

FYI: Students are not required to be in their school band program however I do encourage it. It is extremely beneficial to their success.

SHOW CASE YOUR KIDS: I will ask your son or daughter to perform as part of a student recital one time a year (November) along with other opportunities presented throughout the year to perform. Playing in front of an audience is part of a student’s education. Performing for an audience is what musicians love and I make it a pleasant experience for everyone. Performance opportunities like this made available to my students give them an upper edge. I plan and manage performance events for students at no extra charge. Its a great time for family and friends to see the students progress and take pictures and video for memories of a life time.

Parents FYI: I relate very well with students of any age. Having raised a boy & girl of my own (they are in their 30’s now), both played instruments and raising them gave me great experience for the way kids react to instruction. I will be watching your kids closely and adapting our lesson style to your son or daughter’s attention span, learning capacity, emotions, and personalities that we know are still developing. Thanks for offering this opportunity for your children to learn a musical instrument. I will do my best to make it an experience that they will remember.

PRACTICE: Practicing is the most important element of mastering anything in life. If you practice your drumming consistently, you will progress very quickly and if you don’t practice you will progress much slower. You knew that, already right? Of course, you will be challenged. It wouldn’t be fun if you were not challenged. Some weeks you will feel like you “got this” and other weeks you might feel like hanging it up. You need to hang in there through the difficult times because they will pass. All of us probably wanted to quit our instrument at one time when it got hard, but we pushed through! Now we are living the dream baby!

Things you will need to play drums: a smile, drum sticks size 1pr 5B & 1pr Vic Firth General, music stand, snare drum kit OR complete drum set. I may suggest a book at lesson time.