I got my first drum kit when I was about 10 years old. Actually, it was more of a toy drum set. It was made out of plastic for the most part, and it was pretty flimsy, but I really liked it. I did not know anything about drum kits. All I knew that was that I loved to bang on things with stick and make loud noises. That, after all, is the fundamentals of being a drummer. You have to love noise. Otherwise, you’ll never get into it.
By the time I was 13, however, I was ready for a more serious .. I had been practicing every day for well over a year, and even before that I was playing fairly regularly. I was looking at drum kits with my parents, but they were a little bit hesitant to actually buy one for me. The drum kit that I had was so loud, after all, and a real drum set would be even louder. Then we lit on the solution. If I bought some drum practice pads to go along with the drum kit, I could play a quietly whenever I had to you. A practice pad is basically a glorified sheet of rubber. You can hit it with drumsticks and It has a very similar feel to an actual drum. Unlike a drum, however, it doesn’t make a lot of noise.
The drum kit that I finally got was a pretty small one. I don’t have a lot of room in my house, so I got a simple basic setup. It had a snare, a couple tom-toms, a bass drum, a ride symbol, and one crash. It was really everything I needed, and I was really happy with it. I started a rock band not long after that. I get together with some friends from school, and we started playing after school In my garage. The drum kit was heavy, so I couldn’t lug it around town. It made a lot more sense to play at my house.
As I got older, my fascination with drums only grew. In college, I was actually part of a drum ensemble. We combined traditional hand percussion with kit drumming to make some really amazing combinations of sounds. It was a lot of fun, and it got me interested in percussion even more deeply. Since then, not a day has gone by when I have not made time to play my drums ? at least a little bit.
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