How to Practice Drums without a Drum Set
To the surprise of no one, full acoustic drum sets are big and loud. They just don’t work in some spaces, particularly if you live in an apartment building or townhouse. Even electronic drum sets can potentially disturb neighbors in close quarters, due mostly to the thumping through the floor and walls from the kick pedal. Also, unlike smaller instruments, such as a ukulele or a piccolo, drum sets aren’t the most mobile things in the world. It’s just not practical to move everything to an isolated space for a quick practice session. Thankfully, there are many ways to practice drumming without the use of a drum set. It’s even possible to practice without any sticks!
Practice Pads
Practically every drummer, regardless of skill level, will end up playing on a practice pad at some point. For all intents and purposes, a practice pad is a mandatory piece of drumming equipment. They’re quiet and extremely portable, especially if you get one of the smaller models (typically 6” in diameter). They often have a very bouncy surface, making it ideal for practicing a wide range of stick techniques, particularly learning to bounce the sticks.
Most drummers start off their journey by gaining fundamental control of their hands by practicing simple rhythmic patterns comprised of specific sitckings, known as rudiments. Rudiments train drummers to utilize an array of movements to achieve different articulations and sounds from the drums. They’re essentially the building blocks of expressive drumming.
Complete beginners can begin with the most basic patterns, such as single strokes, double strokes, single paradiddles, and flams. Most other rudiments are extensions and variations of these patterns so they’re incredibly important to learn early on. And all that’s required to practice them are sticks and a practice pad! As your technical abilities and understanding of music develop, you can tackle more advanced rudiments and use a practice pad to work on pieces composed specifically for snare drum.
Taps, Claps, and Laps
No pad and sticks? No problem. It’s possible to practice coordination and other movements involved with drumming by simply using your body. Even if you aren’t holding sticks, playing patterns on your lap and stomping your feet (or gently tapping your toes) in place of having pedals can still yield progress.
Complete beginners can still work on basic rudiments, like the ones mentioned above, by tapping patterns on their lap. However, doing so without holding the sticks and feeling the rebound from the pad makes it so you aren’t necessarily working on improving technique. But that’s okay! Going through the motions still helps the body develop muscle memory, where the body essentially “memorizes” what movements feel like, allowing them to occur with less effort over time. With enough practice, many of the mechanics involved with playing the drums will become automatic to a certain degree.
Another layer you could add to your completely gear-free practice is counting out loud. You could count out loud while practicing on a pad, too (strongly recommended), but it’s possible to use the counting as a way to make an exercise even more challenging while deepening your understanding of beat divisions. Even more importantly, counting out loud trains you to keep breathing while you play, which is a skill often overlooked by drummers. Your counting can consist of only the numbered beats, subdivisions, or even a separate rhythm that provides counterpoint against whatever you’re playing with your hands and/or feet. The video below demonstrates some relatively advanced exercises you can practice with just your body and voice. Also, all of the exercises mentioned so far can (and should) be supplemented with a metronome!
Focused Observation
Beyond the physical act of drumming, you should also spend time practicing your listening. As drummers, it’s incredibly important to be able to listen to other members of an ensemble to make sure that what we play (and how we play it) fits into the setting appropriately. Listening carefully to skilled drummers will help guide musical sensibilities, especially if the intent is to later learn how to play whatever it is you’re listening to.
Attempting to transcribe and learn drum parts by ear provides deeper insight into the creative process of your favorite drummers and will help expand your vocabulary immensely. By intently studying the work of drummers across different styles of music, you’ll begin to pick up on some commonalities, even between styles of music that are seemingly unrelated to each other. Since drumming doesn’t adhere to tonality, drum parts are often recycled and expanded upon to fit particular contexts. Once you pick up on some basic grooves and patterns, you’ll hear them utilized in a wide range of settings.
If your ears are struggling to make sense of what you’re hearing, looking up videos of performances and seeing exactly how a drummer plays a part can provide a lot more clarity. There are thousands upon thousands of drumming videos on YouTube shot from various angles that allow viewers a much more intimate look into the mechanics of playing the drums. YouTube even has a built-in function that enables videos to be slowed down, making it much easier to decode fast and intricate passages of music. Sometimes, seeing something played is all that’s needed to get your ears to make better sense of the sounds reaching them.
For example, the video of Matt Garstka to the right captures a masterful performance. It has multiple camera angles and is shot at a high frame rate so the video remains smooth even when it’s slowed down to 50% of its original speed. Watching him execute these parts humanizes the complexity of the performance and more clearly reveals many of the mechanics within his playing. Matt even has a note-for-note transcription of every song from the album this tune appears on if you really want to get into the details. There are countless videos very similar to this one depicting many well-known drummers across numerous styles. Try looking up videos of your favorite drummer and see for yourself!
Ultimately, there are quite a few ways to practice your drumming skills without a drum set. You can even accomplish a lot without a pair of sticks! All the skills that you practice will translate directly to the act of drumming and performing music. With these methods, there’s never an excuse to not practice!