One style of drumming I have always loved the sound of is Samba and this blog is dedicated to learning more about this truly fascinating artform. Today we’re going to learn what Samba drumming is all about and take a brief look at how to play it.

As one year closes and another is just round the corner, I feel this is the perfect opportunity to reflect on your drumming, your achievements and goals and look forward to opportunities with your drumming.

Some of you may be receiving a drum kit for Christmas and the drumheads may need tuning. There are some fantastic online videos about this subject. I thought I would add my take on this as a beginner’s guide to tuning.

This month is all about the drum workshops ‘Summer Drum Club’ taking place next month. This is a fun, informal drum workshop learning in small groups a variety of drum skills including setting up a drum kit, famous drummers, soloing, groove patterns, recording and much more.

This month features the most important aspects of choosing a drum kit including electric and acoustic drum kits. There are many brands on the market and this blog will go through the pros and cons of both and brands to look out for.

This blog is dedicated to the five most important beginner groove patterns which are essential to developing your coordination on the kit and will cover the basics across a range of musical styles and feels. Let’s look at each example in more detail.

Welcome to this Christmas edition of the SDS Blog! I get asked many questions related to setting up a drums or fixing certain parts of the kit so I thought at this time of year, this may hopefully be of some help to you.

Back to School! Not all my students are in school but maybe you have children that are back to school which affects your own personal routine. Now the Summer season is over it’s time to get organised and into a practise routine for the Winter months.

Welcome back to the SDS monthly blog. This is the first Blog since the Summer as I was busy with various projects including the Summer Drum Club 2018 which I have featured in this Blog.

This blog is on ‘Beginner Wire Brushes’. Playing with brushes is a great sound and has a lighter touch than sticks, suited for more acoustic music where sticks would just be too loud. Let’s take a look…

Welcome to this month’s blog where I keep you posted of all the latest SDS news, info, practise tips for students, photos, videos, and more. This month’s blog is based on the all important ‘Rudiments’.

This month’s edition is about how to maintain your drum kit focussing on common faults with the Hi-hat, Bass Drum pedal and knowing how to change a drum head.

This month’s feature is going to be about ‘How to warm up on the drums’ before you do your main practise or before a live performance. The idea is to increase blood-flow to the working muscles to decrease the risk of injury.

I’m going to look at how to learn a song ‘quickly’ and write out a basic drum chart. With limited practise time I have to be efficient with the time I have and learn to write ‘short-hand’ drum charts to help learn a particular song.

So 2018 is now in full swing and I thought the perfect topic to kick-start the new year and my second monthly blog is the subject of ‘practise’.

This month feature is about the new SDS studio. The studio took about five weeks to build with work starting in August and completed in September just in time for the new term starting…phew!