Kid Guitars
Posts Tagged ‘childrens drums’
Teaching Young Drummers a Sense of Rhythm
While some people are fond of mentioning that their children were born with a natural sense of rhythm, it’s possible to teach even the most woefully rhythm averse kids to stay on the beat. There are three basic ways to get a young drummer on track in terms of establishing the rhythm necessary to master a percussion instrument. The first is listening to music in a passive way. Some people develop rhythm via audio osmosis.
The second technique involves active listening. Encourage kids to focus on various parts of the song, in effect drowning out everything else. Start with the kids drums track and then tell him to listen carefully to the bass guitar. Finally, you can set up a metronome for your child to play along with. Adjust the tempo to a speed in accordance with your child’s level of experience.
It should come as no surprise that a good sense of rhythm is the single most important attribute for an aspiring drummer. It doesn’t matter how many times you can twirl a drumstick in your fingers without dropping it – in the end, those moves are just stage theatrics and nothing more. The true test of a drummer’s mettle is deceptively simple: can he keep the beat?
There are several methods that youngsters can use to improve rhythm while getting used to their kids drums. Counting out loud – so that it’s under one’s breath and barely audible – can instill rhythm in the same way that a metronome does. Eventually the child will learn to transfer that steady count to a tapping toe or some other less overt method of keeping rhythm.
As a parent just looking for an adequate drum set for your kids, you might not be thinking about the importance of keeping the drums tuned. You might not have even been aware that drums COULD be tuned. But have no fear; it’s not a matter of life or death. Still, if you want to instill good maintenance habits at an early age, you should at least familiarize your child with snare-drum tuning.
The sound of a drum is determined by the tension of the skin as it lies across the drum. You can turn the lugs of the drum clockwise to increase tension and counterclockwise to decrease it. Be aware that if you tighten the drum too much, it will be easily broken with a well-placed stick strike. And we all know that kids are all too eager to bash their kids drum set as hard as possible until they learn better.