Highly Recommended Drum Books

The drum books recommended below are a good starting point for any beginner.

Drumming technique (e.g. how to hit a drum correctly) and how to grip a drumstick correctly really needs to be shown by an experienced drum tutor working in conjunction with these drum books.

Trinity Rock and Pop with Songs, Technical Focus and Session Skills. Grades Initial and 1 to 8.

Trinity Rock and Pop grade books compare to the Rockschool drum grades books. All the music pieces are well known tunes written by famous bands and artistes like Queen, Michael Jackson, The Black Keys, Wison Pickett, Mark Ronson, to name but a few.

You choose two songs from the first section of the books then one from the ‘Technical Focus’ section. In addition to this in the ‘Session Skills’ section you have a choice between ‘Playback‘, where you are asked to play some music you have not seen or heard before or ‘Improvising‘ where you will be asked to improvise over a backing track that you haven’t heard before in a specified style ie Heavy Rock, Country, Ballad, and other styles depending on the grade level.

Here are the Grade books Intial and one to eight-

Session Skills Books

Session Skills for Drums Initial-Grade 2
Session Skills for Drums Grades 3 to 5
Session Skills for Drums Grades 6-8

Other Drum Books

The John Savage drum book is very good for the beginner. It starts by immediately building your first basic drum Rock beat and at the same time introduces and explains the reading and interpretation of drum music. The book moves through different styles and then applies drum fills within rhythms you have just learnt.

The Rudimental Library book contains 40 rudiments from the Percussive Arts Society and begins by addressing the seven essential rudiments necessary to perform all the other rudiments and continues by covering rolls, diddles, flams and drags with variations on each. Also included are practice patterns and rudimental snare drum solos.

Drum books for the intermediate and advanced player

Here are some excellent drum books in the more advanced Jazz idiom. They can help develop solo ideas and strong independence (ie; the ability to play a figure with your right hand and with your left hand/right foot/left foot playing different figures but all at the same time)

Here are a couple of great ‘Play-along’ drum books. They help improve your reading, time, song interpretation and groove. The books come with drum charts and an audio CD so that you can hear what the drummer actually plays on all the tracks and how he interprets the music. Then on the alternative tracks the drums have been removed so you can now play along with the rest of the band.

- - Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Play Along: Book and CD -Drums
  - Funkifying the Clave: Afro-Cuban Grooves for Bass and Drums, Book & CD

Drum DVDs

For education and inspiration here are some drumming DVDs from some of the world’s best players.