Drum Lessons Bristol

I have a 12 year old student, who is highly intelligent, but struggles to concentrate. They are perfectly capable of working out and playing all the parts individually by themselves, but to be honest, they frequently struggle to count 8 bars, without getting distracted and lost.

This is a real problem as, if you cannot concentrate, you cannot play live music in a band, or even play a whole song on ones own. Concentration is more important than skill, although I would strongly suggest that concentration is very much a skill, especially in these circumstances.

I have explained to him that drumming is 10% skill and 90% concentration. As are all instruments. These are not official or even remotely scientific figures, but I believe they are representative. It doesn't matter how skilled you are at drums, if you cannot concentrate, you won't be able to get to the end of a song.

Today, I decided to try a new theory, based on the idea that, if somebody is totally into something, they won't be as easily distracted. He is totally into the drumming, but my theory was that he was not totally into the music.

When a drummer, or any musician, or dancer, or athlete, or any other highly trained professional, is performing at their best, they are said to be in "The Zone". The Zone is a beautiful place where you are so into what you are doing that the rest of the world ceases to exist. To get into this zone, you have to be totally into the music that you playing. You have to know it inside out and feel it as if it was part of you.

The tactic that I decided to employ was, firstly, of getting them to listen to the track over and over again, explaining the musicality of it: what parts you can follow, what parts are rhythmically reliable, the difference between bars and loops, what vocal, or musical signals there are to indicate a change in the music. Secondly, I decided to get them to stand up and move in time to the music. The point of this is that drumming is basically dancing sitting down.

The idea being that by learning to move their whole body in time with the music, if they do this whilst drumming, they will make it much easier to get into the zone. By moving the whole body, they are feeling the music, letting it move through them, letting it control, becoming part of it.

This has been set as their practise for the next week, to listen to the song and dance along to it. We will see what the result is next week. Fingers crossed. I will keep you up with progress.