There are many different kinds of exercises that you have to practice when you first start drumming. Even for a beginner who does have a drumset at home, typically, they would still own a practice pad to work on rudimental exercises (Pad Work) as it has easier accessibility than a drumset.  Your first step to practicing at home is identifying the exercises you can practice on a practice pad and those you would need a DIY drumset set up to practice.

We wrote a previous article to discuss the kinds of exercises you can do on a practice pad, depending on the various practice stages you are in and practice pad recommendations.

-> Click here to read more on practicing on practice pads and pad recommendations

Now that we have filtered out those exercises, we will go through some other supplementary exercises that you could do to supplement your practice without even touching a drumset.

One of those exercises includes mental/ ear training. At the earlier stages of your development as a drummer, a significant problem hindering your progress would be your ability to identify and to hear the correct time. It is also one reason you would feel out of time or that you do not have enough space to complete your fills in between songs. Mental or ear training exercises include:

• Listening to the metronome and the ability to hear subdivisions
• Transcribing drum parts
• Visualisation of flow on the drumset
• Hearing phrases in different subdivisions

We will be doing a deep dive into mental/ear training, so remember to check back again for more information on this topic.

-> Click here to find out how to categorize your practice session and troubleshoot your playing.

You might have heard of air-drumming before. Air-drumming uses your sticks and hits the air while simulating different parts of the drums (like your hi-hats, toms). Some drummers have done that and have achieved results.

However, we do not recommend air drumming as a practice alternative as you will be required to adjust the movements of your stroke significantly, resulting in a change of technique when you get back on the drumset.

While air drumming, you will often be unable to follow through with your motions and will be required to artificially pull back your strokes to compensate for the lack of hitting surface. It will often result in an inability to use rebounds when you get back on the drumset properly.

However, there is a way that you could mitigate this problem (to a certain extend), and that is to increase your exposure on the drumset to balance out your reaction after you execute your strokes, which we would be discussing later.

What we recommend is to hit on surfaces at different elevations to simulate the placement of the drumset. You could use any surface to achieve this, including pillows, books, table tops, or even your clothes.

During the COVID-19 Circuit breaker, we did up an instruction video for students to arrange household items in such a manner in preparation for their online Zoom classes. Watch the video below to see some examples of setting up your DIY drumset. You can get creative and use anything at home, from sofas to tables or even your bed!

There are certain limitations and disadvantages while doing this setup, which we are going to cover them shortly and on how to overcome them.

Using this DIY setup is a great approach to kick off your drumming. However, as you progress, you would find some issues with this setup. Below are a few problems that you would encounter and ways to mitigate those issues.

Soft surfaces

Using surfaces that are too soft, although a common practice for more advanced drummers to work on their speed (We will cover this topic more in the future), might turn out to be an issue for beginners. An important of playing is to know how to work with the rebound of your sticks. Playing with a pillow does not help with that, or worst still, might create problems with your strokes, resulting in overly rigid playing.

Solution: It is paramount that you spend a bulk of your time on your practice pad to condition your strokes to be effective and work with the rebound. You could also use a pad as the "snare" of your pillow setup.

Kick drum

With this kind of setup, you realize that you would not be playing on any pedals at all. All you would be doing is to simulate a stepping motion on the floor. It might create problems for your playing over the long run, especially with the heel up technique, as you would be unable to work and understand the rebound of the pedal. It is especially true when you start advancing to play doubles on your pedals.

Solution: A few products exist on the market to resolve this issue, like the kick drum practice pad. Some pads allow you to attach a proper kick pedal on it for you to practice your techniques.

We recommend the pearl BD-10 Bass Practice Pad

In summary, there are many ways that you can practice even without being on the drumset. The critical thing to take note is what are the pros and cons of each solution (you might want to talk to your instructor about this). Even then, we still recommend you to alternate your practice in the studio with a proper drumset to balance out your playing and to improve your understanding of the drums.

It is especially essential for beginners. Hence, we partnered up with a drum room rental studio to provide our students with a platform to practice at a discounted rate.

-> Click here to find out more about practice space for our students