5 Easy Drum Songs For Beginner Drummers
As a beginner, learning to play the drums can feel daunting! There are so many concepts to learn, and so much material to try to digest as you get a feel for the technique of the instrument, the notation of the music, and the challenge of training your mind and your ears to better understand the things you listen to.
This short list recommends a few songs for beginner drummers to explore in the interest of bypassing that overwhelming feeling in order to start making music as quickly as possible. I’ve included links to free drum sheet music for all of these songs!
Best Drum Songs for Beginners
“Undone (The Sweater Song)” by Weezer.
A great song with an extremely accessible drum part that’s perfect for dialing in the feel of a few of the most iconic eighth note rock grooves. This is a great first song to tackle as a brand new drummer. There are some fills that call on you to play fast unisons on the snare and floor tom. If this is uncomfortable, you can take the floor tom out and use an alternating sticking on the snare instead. There’s also a pretty technical passage right at the start of the outro that you can just groove through if the coordination is out of reach!
“Have You Ever Seen The Rain?” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Another classic song that will reinforce some eighth note rock groove concepts. This one features more complex bass drum parts that follow figures played in unison by the band. Try to get the riffs in your ear and let them guide you as you work on ironing out the bass drum part.
“Island In The Sun” by Weezer.
This song has a nice little ghost note figure that repeats throughout, and the drum part is a two-measure phrase, building on an understanding of eighth note rock groove construction while introducing some new concepts. If the double stroke figure on the ghost notes is out of reach for you, you can always simplify by taking the doubles out.
“Another One Bites The Dust”by Queen.
Our first four-on-the-floor groove! This one features a repeated drum fill, which gives us a good opportunity to practice keeping steady time when filling, and to work on smoothing out the transitions from fill to groove and vice-versa.
P.S.
If you listen closely, it sounds like the fill is played on a drum machine layered over the acoustic drum part. The sheet music I’ve linked fits that fill in place of the beat that plays under it in the recording. You can try playing along two ways: 1) grooving through and ignoring the fill, and 2) covering the fill instead.“Texas Flood” by Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Perhaps not to learn the drum part note-for-note, but rather to practice keeping time in 12/8, and to work on making this kind of groove feel good. A great resource I’ve linked here from Joe The Drummer notates a wide variety of patterns from the song that you can get familiar with, then try to improvise over the track using the material you’ve learned.
How to Practice These Songs as a Beginner Drummer
Take your time! The most important thing you can do as a new drummer is figure out how to make these grooves sound good, and feel easy to play. Take note of the structure of each song. Figure out what the main drum grooves are. Loop them over and over, many, many times until you feel like you could wake up delirious at 3 a.m. and still nail them.
Don’t get too hung up on specificity! It’s OK to put your own spin on these tunes. Use your ears to guide you. Figure out the important ensemble figures (or “hits”) and catch the stuff the whole band plays together. Work out the parts you can handle, and simplify the ones you can’t. You can always break out the fine-toothed comb as you revisit old projects when you’re further along your path.
Play along to the recording! YouTube has a built-in feature that will allow you to slow videos down. You can bring these down to 60-80% speed as you are first learning them. There are even free apps that have better warping algorithms (like “Music Speed Changer”) which will allow you to slow music down with less distortion and loss of quality. Try to match the other drummer’s feel, sound, timing, and balance.
Play the part without the recording! Try to play your part with a metronome. Try to play your part a cappella, without a metronome or backing track. The stronger your internal sense of time and form, the more you can be responsible for yourself, and the easier you will be to play music with! This sort of musical core strength is a desirable trait in a collaborating drummer.
Listen, listen, listen. Listen actively. If you sit down and listen to whatever song you’re studying in a distraction-free environment that will allow you to dedicate your undivided attention to the music you will be astonished at how much you can learn and accomplish without the aid of the instrument.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Sometimes it can be really nice to have the guidance of a mentor as you’re working through a project. Find somebody local to meet up with in person, or try out online private lessons or group classes to speed up your learning journey.
A Note To The Intermediate Drummer:
While these may not be tremendously challenging songs for you, it can still be worth revisiting easier material to challenge your musicianship. A few ideas worth exploring:
Pick a tune, give it a few active listens, and try to make your own chicken-scratch cheat sheet for the song. See how much of the part you can figure out by ear, THEN use one of these resources to check your work and see how close you got.
Pick a tune from the list you’ve never heard before, grab the sheet, then take a crack at sightreading the drum part along with the track! Feel free to bring the tempo down to somewhere around 60-80% speed for your first pass. Challenge yourself to work the song up to tempo in as little time as possible while still following good practice technique and fundamentals.
Special thanks to the people at https://thedrumninja.com/ for the wealth of great resources they provide for free online, and to https://joethedrummer.com/ for the awesome worksheet on “Texas Flood”
Have fun, and happy practicing!
~JVA
