Chapters
- 01. Teach Children Coordination by Playing the Drums
- 02. Expressing Your Emotions with the Drums
- 03. Learning the Drums to Become Calmer
- 04. Learning the Drums at a Young Age to Improve Concentration
- 05. Develop Their Creativity by Playing Drums
- 06. Improving a Child’s Reactions with the Drums
- 07. Improve Your Relations with the Drums
- 08. Playing the Drums Can Improve a Child’s Discipline
“If music be the food of love, play on.” - William Shakespeare
A good number of teenagers play a musical instrument and the guitar, keyboard, and the drums are amongst the most popular instruments.
A number of studies have shown that there are a lot of benefits to playing musical instruments such as making you smarter, improving your social life, relieving stress, giving you a sense of achievement, building confidence, improving your patience, and making you more creative!
There are even more benefits if children are playing them. A child’s brain is a sponge. Playing an instrument such as the drums is beneficial for their cognitive development. Make sure you protect their ears, though.
In this article, we’re going to have a look at 8 benefits specific to children who decide to play the drums.
Teach Children Coordination by Playing the Drums
For a child to start playing the drums, they’re going to have to learn how to independently use each of their limbs.
For a young child, acoustic drums or electronic drums can help their psychomotor education. Their right hand has to keep time on the hi-hat while their left hand will hit the snare drum. They can punctuate these beats with rolls and fills on the tom-toms and the cymbals. Don’t forget that they also need to use the bass drum pedal and open and close the hi-hat with their feet.
This can be really complicated for a lot of people. The drums can get both hemispheres of your brain working and improve your mental and physical coordination.
If you thought rubbing your tummy and patting your head at the same time was tricky, then you've clearly never tried playing the drums! A good jazz beat can have all your limbs moving independently of one another!
Expressing Your Emotions with the Drums
Music is a great way to express your emotions. Whether you’re improvising, composing, or playing a famous song, you can express both positive and negative emotions through music.
You can gain a sense of freedom and get rid of tension by physically and emotionally expressing yourself through music. We sometimes forget to focus on the power of music in music lessons and drum tutorials and render the learning process dry and boring.
Don’t hesitate to let your child express their feelings through music. By letting them let loose with the drumsticks, it’ll help them express themselves and improve their communication skills.
Learning the Drums to Become Calmer
You might be surprised to hear the effects of drumming on troublesome children. You might think “I can’t give them a drum kit, it’ll make them worse”. However, it’s quite the opposite.
Find various drumming lessons here.
Playing the drums is a great way to channel your energy. The child will concentrate during their drumming sessions which can improve their mood.
It can reduce their anger and they’ll be calmer as they’ll have an outlet to channel their energy into. The joy of playing can come from just wanting to hit something hard. However, this will soon become musicality.
Finally, playing the drums can help the child better manage their emotions, especially in public. A drum teacher can help them get over their fears and perform to the best of their abilities through sharing the joy of music!
Learning the Drums at a Young Age to Improve Concentration
Between the age of 6 and 7 is the best time to start playing the drums. The child needs to reach a certain size and mature before they’ll be able to play the drums and concentrate long enough. That said, music lessons are a bit of a catch-22. You need to concentrate to do them but you’ll also learn how to concentrate by doing them.
This will be helpful in other parts of their education, too. The child will be less impatient and they’ll learn to wait since they won’t become a professional drummer overnight. They’ll have to work at it!
Practising music will also improve their memory as they’ll need to remember different rhythms and songs in their entirety. Additionally, when you learn to play the drums, you’ll also learn more about musical accents, rhythm, and tempo. These are all skills that can be transferred to learning foreign languages, too.
Develop Their Creativity by Playing Drums
With rudiments, ternary rhythm, binary rhythm, triplets, etc., there’s a lot to work on when you play the drums.
The kids drum tutor needs to also work on improvising and composition with their students. Jazz drumming, for example, requires a lot of improvised solos. After having learnt the basics of drumming, children can let their imagination and creativity run wild.
The same is true for any artistic activity; the drums allow a child to express themselves. This can be great for their emotional development.
Find some drum lessons on here.
Improving a Child’s Reactions with the Drums
Playing the drums requires you to concentrate and coordinate your arms and legs quickly. The drums give a song its energy and the drummer sets the tempo. They need good reflexes in order to play a song in a group. They need to also lead the group in terms of rhythm, feeling, and tempo.
They’ll need to throw in a cymbal crash here, open the hi-hat there, etc. When you play the drums, you need to focus on what the band’s doing as well as what you’re playing.
You will need to choose the right kind of kids drum set.
This is where having good reflexes will help. Just like with concentration, good reflexes will come with practice.
Improve Your Relations with the Drums
If your child wants to learn to play the drums, you’ll have the choice between private lessons or group lessons. There are pros and cons to each type of lesson.
At home, your child will build a rapport with their private tutor. It’s important to, therefore, choose the right tutor. If they don’t get along, your child will quickly get bored.
Everyone remembers a teacher from school that made them hate a subject. This can be even truer when it comes to private lessons.
The problem with private tutorials is that the student is on their own. This can be a disadvantage when it comes to drums. Drums are meant to be played in a band or an orchestra. With group classes, they have the opportunity to play with other musicians like guitarists, bassists, saxophonists, pianists, etc. The other children will have the same level as them.
In any case, the group dynamic will help them to progress more quickly. They will learn together and push each other to do better. Being part of a group is part of a child’s development as they’ll develop empathy and respect for others.
Playing the Drums Can Improve a Child’s Discipline
Drumming from a young age is a good habit for a child to pick up. Playing the drums can improve your lifestyle, tone muscles in your arms and legs, and improve your cardio fitness.
You need to be great fitness in order to play the drums for a full hour during a concert or a gig. Once again, practising will help you improve your endurance, especially if you began playing young. You need to put a lot of work in, too. This isn’t an easy instrument to learn and you’ll need to practise almost every day if you want to really improve. Thus, it’s a great way to improve your discipline.
A child will quickly learn that you won’t learn everything after the first attempt and that you’ll need to keep practising in order to learn that tricky drum beat.
In any case, whether your child learns to drum professionally or just as a hobby, there are plenty of benefits.
So are you ready to get them started with the drums?
If you’re looking for private tutors, check out those on Superprof. You can search for tutors by both the subject they teach and where they are. If, for some reason, you can’t find any drum tutors near you, don’t forget that there are also tutors who can teach students over webcam with video conferencing software such as Skype.
Most tutors on the platform offer free tutoring for the first hour, allowing you to see whether they get along with your child or not and giving you the freedom to choose the right tutor for your little one. Take your time choosing the right tutor.
The platform that connects tutors and students
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