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Drum sticks on a snare drum at Drum lessons at Cochrane Drum Tutor 9
Cymbal and drum photo at Drum lessons at Cochrane Drum Tutor 8

A few helpful sites to explore. (And there's plenty more links, advice and helpful resources in the free PDF you receive when you book your first paid lesson!)

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Drumming sites

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Sheet Music / books 

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Music Education sites

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Home recording your drums and songs

There are many many great sites and YouTube channels addressing this but here are a few key pointers to get you started.

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Sundry useful links

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A few of my personal drum heroes (all well worth a listen!)

We each have our own, but here are a few that inspired me. I know they are not as “current” and your heroes might be but give them a listen; quality playing never goes out of style! You’ll find lots of videos of them online, so check them out and let me know what you think! 

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Buddy Rich

“Primarily, the drummer's supposed to sit back there and swing the band.”

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Phil Collins 

“I’m not a singer who drums a bit, I’m a drummer that sings a bit”

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 Joe Morello 

”It would be awfully boring if everyone played the same – you'd only have to own one record!” “I think 'swing' and 'feel' are individual things. There's not just one way to swing.”

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 John Bonham

“I've wanted to be a drummer since I was about five years old. I used to play on a bath salt container with wires on the bottom, and on a round coffee tin with a loose wire fixed to it to give a snare drum effect. Plus there were always my Mum's pots and pans. When I was ten, my Mum bought me a snare drum. My Dad bought me my first full drum kit when I was 15. It was almost prehistoric. Most of it was rust” 

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Stuart Copeland

“Drummers shouldn’t just think of themselves as drummers. If you’re going to be a musician, you should expand your horizons, compose things, and work with other instruments.”

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Steve Gadd

"I've found over the years that the feel overcomes everything. If you get a good groove happening, that carries it along. If it feels good, there's not a lot you have to do. You can pick and choose your spots to dynamically respond to what's going on, but you don't have to technically, constantly challenge yourself to fill in those spaces. When you play live, it's another ballgame. People can see the excitement, and that helps them put it together with the audio. When you don't have that visual thing, it's better to keep it simple. It's a lot more understandable."

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Peter Erskine

"The drums have hogged a lot of the credit. We're as much, or more "cymbal players", as we are drummers. 

“It’s a good thing to have enough confidence in yourself to play simple.”

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Tony Williams

“Playing fast around the drums is one thing. But to play music, to play with people for others to listen to, that’s something else. That’s a whole other world.” 

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Elvin Jones

"It's the honesty you apply to your playing that makes music enjoyable. The style of the music has little to do with it. It's only honesty makes it beautiful."

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Dave Weckl

"It is my goal to inspire as many young (and not so young) people as possible to want to play music, whether it be drums or another instrument. With all the negatives of the world today, I feel this is my way of contributing a positive action towards spiritual happiness, which music can be a big part of, if you let it. So parents, if your child has a talent for music, please allow them the opportunity to develop that talent!"

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Max Roach

"Jazz is a very democratic musical form. It comes out of a communal experience. We take our respective instruments and collectively create a thing of beauty."

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Brian Blade

”You need to take risks, you never know if the end results will be beautiful or strange, you need to be instantaneous, listening to every moment, without missing a scrap of the music, even if you play a rest.”

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Oh, and of course.....

Animal from the Muppets

“Eat drums! Eat cymbals!”

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Resources
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