Live Online Drum Lessons

How it works

Simply see the video's above, or read down below how to set your self up and book a free trial lesson . This way you can get a good idea of what it is like to take live online drum lessons. My goal with this first lesson is to quickly determine your drum needs, the best drum route for you and where to start. From there we get strait in to learning some cool drum grooves, look at some songs you want to learn or directly answer any questions you have regarding your drumming.  

Technical setup for acoustic or electric drums

All you basically need is a laptop, tablet or smartphone, placed in selfie mode (like any other video call your making) so that the camera can see you and your drum kit. This could be a way to start but... there is some extra things you can do, on your side of the video call, to make your experience a bit, too a lot, better. And these extra's will differ a bit from acoustic drummers to electric drummers. Below you'll find a few ways to do this, from fairly simple to a bit more advanced. 

Ways to improve your lessons

When we are doing online music lessons it is important to realise that good sound is esential to make your lessons as valuable as possible. This is the main reason that I chose Zoom, with it's many audio setting options, as my favourite video communication app to teach music.

The first option everyone can do, whether using an acoustic or electric drumset is simply connect a headphone to your comunication device so that you can hear me and my drums a lot better. This can be a Bluetooth or cabled one. Note that using a Bluetooth headset could cause some sound delay (or latency) problems but students that use this say their just fine with it. For acoustic drummers this would be it for now. The acoustic drums sound by them selfs and that will be picked up by the microphone of your device so I can hear what you are doing. For electric drummers it is a bit differed sinds the drum machine is making the sound and there for a (small) speaker is needed have your laptop/phone/pad pick up the sounds from the electronic drum set. Here is how that works. 

 
2.  For electric drummers would be very good to set up a (little) speaker so that your drum sound is audible (in the room) and the microphone of the laptop/phone/pad can pick it up so the teacher (me) can hear you play as well. About this set up I made a PDF (downloadable), explaining the set up and cable routing. 

3. The second option for electric drummers is to use a speaker for room sound and a headphone for the student to hear their electric drums and the teacher the best way. For this you will need an stereo audio splitter (male to 2x's female) and an extra stereo audio cable (male to male. And mostly mini jack 3.5 mm) . The same PDF will show this set up and cable routing as well.

Lots of extra’s with online lessons

My live online lessons come with lots of extra’s like 

• A copy of 'The Basic Groove Elements’ methode. 
• Drum score PDF's
• Play-along practise tunes and exercises 
• Many personal video recap’s on what to practise next and how to practise
• The possebillty to send in videos of your progress for me to reflect on

Why Online lessons?

Over this covid period I found that doing lessons online can be a great way to learn the drums. I saw students grow in confidence, experiencing that they can actually do it all them selfs and by them selfs.
Online you immediately experience your own sound and power on your own drumset. This way you'll quickly learn to stand firm on your own two drumming feet.

Hein-Jan van der Veen, drum teacher