The Merits of Online Drum Lessons
This past year has forced us to rapidly adapt to a remote teaching model. While in-person drum lessons on acoustic drums are generally the norm, it simply hasn’t been a safe option during the pandemic. But taking lessons online certainly has its perks.
The Comfort of Home
One advantage of virtual meetings is that you’ll be able to take the lesson from the setup you use to practice. Your instructor will be able to make sure your practice setup is optimized to best facilitate good technique. You could even settle in with a drink in your pajamas if you’d like! Ideally, taking lessons from where you’re most comfortable playing will help you relax and have a good time. Regardless of if you have a full drum set or just a pad and drum sticks, working through new materials on a familiar setup helps things sink in more easily.
Clean Formatting
Our instructors use screen sharing and notation software to write out exercises, transcribe songs and grooves, and flesh out ideas. Doing so provides clean, consistent formatting. After each lesson, the student receives all of the materials written out via email. Instructors can then easily reference material from past lessons by simply opening that day’s document. Instructors can also share PDFs, audio files, and links to other materials through the meeting software. Students also have the ability to record lessons for future reference. It’s a clean, paperless workflow!
Location is Irrelevant
While the bonus of no commute is obvious, online lessons allow the student to call in from literally anywhere. Over the past year, our instructors have met with students located all around the country. Many established and even famous drummers offer instruction through video conferencing programs, like Zoom or Skype. It’s possible that you could take a lesson from your favorite drummer from the comfort of your own home!
A Clear Path Forward
Regardless of what your practice setup is like, your instructor can help you get the most out of the gear available to you. By positioning the webcam in a way that makes your hands clearly visible, your instructor can keep a careful watch over your technique as you play. Your instructor is also able to position their own camera in multiple angles to improve the visibility of anything they demonstrate. A surprising amount of drum set fundamentals can be adapted to various exercises that work on a practice pad, but in ways that maybe aren’t immediately obvious. Conversely, all of the skills developed by practicing on a pad directly translate to drum set. Just like with in-person lessons, your instructor will be able to customize lesson material based around your abilities to help you advance as efficiently as possible.
Technology Skills
A byproduct of taking drum lessons online is that you’ll undoubtedly become a bit more tech-savvy. Getting a drum kit or practice pad set up and dialing in the audio properly requires some trial and error. But if you have an electronic drum set, hooking up your drum module to your computer unlocks an entirely different realm of possibilities. While electronic kits are designed to cleanly integrate with computers, there are specific settings that enable them to work well within video call software. Learning to route an audio or MIDI signal from your electronic drum set enables you to record yourself and explore an enormous variety of sounds.
Ultimately, virtual drum lessons offer practically all of the same benefits as in-person lessons, and even have a few unique perks. Video call technology and accessibility of recording equipment will likely continue improving to further optimize online music instruction. Despite the difficulties of the past year, innovation met the demand to create a viable alternative to in-person lessons until the pandemic subsides.
Looking to improve your technique and build upon your skills? Schedule a half-price trial lesson with one of our instructors to see for yourself just how well online drum lessons work!