For Christmas, I received Colin Woolway’s Drumsense Vol 1 & 2 DVDs. Surprisingly, I’ve already had a chance to view them both.
I would highly recommend them to anyone starting out on the drums. Each DVD is a no-nonsense production concentrating on simple, but effective exercises, each building on the previous. In conjunction with his complementary Rhythm magazine tutorials (which provide tabs for the exercises), you can’t go wrong getting to grips with the fundamentals.
For motivation, there’s a chapter where Colin plays a drum solo consisting of only patterns learnt in the Vol 1 exercises. Now, I can play most of those exercises in isolation, but never thought I might be able to play something akin to Colin’s demonstration. Of course, I am much less experienced, but there’s no reason why I can’t do something similar, so I shall have to try and pull it altogether in a musical context
In DVD Vol 2, my only (slight) negative point is that I would of liked to have seen more time spent on introducing rudiments (for example, demonstrating technique & some daily exercises to improve doubles etc). I guess this is exaggerated for me, as I’d like to venture into this area soon.
9/10.