This teaching portfolio will cover lessons I gave to a beginner drum student. The student (Louise Muxworthy) has a background in Jazz singing, so is knowledgeable about rhythm when it comes to their own instrument but doesn’t have any experience playing the drums. Therefore, these lessons focused on creating a solid foundation on the instrument to make further learning more accessible to them so that they can apply everything they know about singing to the drums.

I chose to use pop music as their introduction to playing the drums even though they are a jazz musician as the drumming basics for that music are much simpler and much more relevant for creating a solid technical and co-ordinational foundation. The main objective for this lesson was for the student to learn how to play a basic 4/4 pop drumbeat and hopefully go away with the skills to learn the drum parts from other pop songs.

I didn’t come to the lesson with a song prepared as I wanted to make sure Louise knew the tune and would therefore have a connection to it because as Willis said:

“Students need a personal connection to the material, whether it’s through engaging them emotionally or connecting the new information with previously acquired knowledge. Without that, students may not only disengage and quickly forget, but they may also lose the motivation to try.” (Willis, 2007)

Consequently, we made sure to decide together on what tune to learn.

I made sure there was a large emphasis on Orff’s ‘sound before symbol’ approach to teaching in this lesson as it is a key role in becoming fluent in the language of music.

“Through an awareness of and an ability to process sound, children are able to develop the skills that enable them to communicate through listening and speaking. Once these skills are acquired children learn to encode and decode the sounds in graphic form. It is imperative that the former precedes the latter – sound before symbol.” (Kay, 2024)

Whilst Kay here is talking about children, I believe this can be applied to adults when introducing them to a new form of communicating, that being through the drums in this case. So I made sure that this would be a completely aural lesson, no visuals so that I didn’t intellectualise the music.

Throughout the lesson I use multiple different ways of using the ‘sound before symbol’ method such as simply hearing the drum beat played, whether that was on the track we decided on or my playing in order to give an example, then vocalising that (beatboxing), going back to Louise’s primary instrument. Later on in the lesson I taught using mnemonics for learning how subdivisions sound and how to switch between them in order to strengthen Louises overall rhythmic ability, whether on the drums or with the voice.

The lesson took place in a Leeds Conservatoire Practice Room 210. This was primarily because there was easy access to a drum kit. Other benefits included good sound-proofing, which minimized any interruptions to the flow of the lesson, there was also good control over temperature as there was an air conditioning unit as well as a radiator in the room. Some negatives included a lack of natural light, there are no windows in any of the drum practice rooms at LCon which was an unfortunate circumstance as “Natural light in school buildings has numerous benefits for the health and wellness of students and teachers.” (Doherty, 2025).

Another negative about this space was that there were no decorations, the walls were bland and nothing was placed around the room to inspire creativity, looking back this is something I would make sure was changed next time I gave a lesson.

I made sure to begin the lesson with some informal chat as to create a relaxed environment for Louise. We then got onto the warm up.

“Warming up properly helps prevent injury, improves timing, and sharpens coordination.” (Toronto Arts Academy, 2025), because of this I made sure to have a couple of activities that could get the whole body moving and loose.

Here I made sure to focus on the wrists as that is where drummers are most likely to injure themselves with even musculoskeletal specialist Don Mathew said “the wrist (is) the most commonly affected body part in drummers”(Mathew, 2021). Here you can see us go through some specific stretches.

Moving onto the sticks we did an exercise that incorporates every limb, so that Louise can get a feel for what playing the drums is like before we move onto the main part of the lesson.

We then moved on to the main bulk of the lesson, which was learning a basic pop drum beat. In order to make sure Louise is learning aurally, the first thing I did was get my speaker out and play the song we decided on. We decided on Micheal Jackson’s hit ‘Beat It’ as the drums consist of a simple pattern that when simplified are the blueprint for almost all pop music. In addition, Louise mentioned that they like the song which is great as they will be more engaged and have more fun than if the lesson subject had no relatability as mentioned earlier.

I then got Louise to try and vocalise the drum part, at first I didn’t give her any guidance on how to do so letting them come up with the syllables to encourage their own interpretation of the drum sounds in order to better cement their way of learning. I also thought it would be a good idea to play into their strengths as a singer.

After some minor corrections I explained to Louise what ‘backbeat’ meant (a groove with a strong emphasis on beats 2 and 4 often played on the snare drum) to contextualise where this drum beat fits in the fast array of drumming language. This will help Louise if they chose to pursue drumming as a career, to know what other musicians could be asking of them, as well as just being an interesting fact to keep the lesson interesting.

We then moved on to assigning these aural sounds to the drums, which Louise picked up on quickly, I let them figure out the orchestration and they almost immediately figured it out.

Yet I noticed when they went to play that there was a key technique issue. I made sure to fix this an teach them the correct way to hold the sticks and explain that in that case, improper technique could lead to injury. I also gave them a quick reminder to relax their shoulders and remember to stay loose and relaxed at the drums.

Now that Louise was able to hear what the drum beat sounded like, as well as attempt to play it on the drums, the next exercise we went through was designed to again approach the same thing (being learning this drum beat) but through a way that focuses more in depth on coordination rather than hearing it. Here I broke down the drum beat into individual building blocks, so that Louise could master each small detail needed to play the whole drum beat correctly and balanced. The drum beat only uses three of the drums on the drum kit, bass drum (often referred to in the videos as ‘right foot’), the snare drum (often referred to in the videos as ‘right hand’) and the hi hats (often referred to in the videos as ‘left hand’). This exercise draws from the fact that the drum beat broken down, is different combinations of these drums either played consecutively or at the same time. To begin I had Louise practice playing the Hi hat and snare drum at the same time, not to a rhythm, but so they understand how that feels. Then I got them to do the same but with the Hi hat and Bass drum, we didn’t do the combination of snare drum and bass drum as that doesn’t appear in the drum beat, but looking back, that could have been a good co-ordinational exercise to try yet it wasn’t relevant to the lesson objective.

Once Louise was comfortable with these tasks I got them to alternate between playing the hi hat with the kick drum and the hi hat with the snare drum to create a simplified version of the drum beat as we build up to the full thing.

Once they had that down, I introduced a single hi hat by itself in between each combination of the other limbs, this creates the original drum beat which is what they learned to play via the previous method of vocalising the drum beat, but now Louise had another way of conceptualising the outcome, and another way to figure out any future drum beats she would want to learn.

A seemingly minor yet important detail is when I reminded Louise to slow down when trying to get these things right. Often students want to rush into practice yet to truly tackle something with the purpose of playing it precisely and in a controlled manner, it is important that students slow the exercise down:

 “The idea is to utilize super slow practice so that we can pay attention to all the subtle nuances of our mechanics, increase our awareness of what is actually happening, and find ways to make things better.” (Kageyama, 2012)

This proved to be important, as when Louise tried to speed up the exercise, the drum beat began to break down and this is when a mentioned touch. Still sticking to the ‘sound over symbol’ I thought it would be a good idea to get on the drums let Louise hear how the drum beat should be played, which drums should be louder. From this Louise was able to pick up on what I was doing different and I noticed a lot of improvement from this.

As Louise wasn’t having too much difficulty with the previous tasks, we moved on to the extension. This was to look at learning how to play some trickier subdivisions. This was not only a fun deviation from the main part of the lesson, but would also ensure that Louise was hearing different subdivisions clearly and executing them on the drums with crystal clear clarity. The reason this is important is because “Coordination doesn’t just involve physical independence—it’s also about timing. If your limbs move at different tempos, you won’t achieve a cohesive rhythm.” (Oohlala Fine Arts, 2024). I chose to use mnemonics in the form of applying fruit names to different subdivisions in order to strengthen Louises time. Here we used ‘pear’ for a crochet, ‘orange’ for two quavers, ‘strawberry’ for three triplets and ‘apple slices’ for four semiquavers.

Using these I got Louise to play these rhythms on the snare drum whilst keeping a pulse with the bass drum. Once they had gotten the hang of switching between the subdivisions it was time to move on to the final activity.

To round the lesson off I got Louise to play along to the song ‘Beat It’. This would force them to implement all of the advice and teachings from the lesson as it involves hearing what to play when, having the coordination to play it and stay in time with the track. I slowed down the track slightly as we had yet to learn the drum beat full speed.

When watching this it was clear that the lesson was successful as Louise came into the lesson not being able to play any drums, and by the end they were playing along to a song with control and precision.

Finally to end the lesson I asked Louise if they enjoyed the lesson and suggested that they use these methods to figure out the drum beats to their other favoirite songs.

We approached learning one thing in 3 different ways in order to tackle 3 different aspects of what makes it hard. The initial vocalisation helped Louise hear what she was going to play, the coordination building blocks exercise helped make them more comfortable and consistent when orchestrating the drum beat and the subdivision exercise tied it together by introducing consistent time into the mix. This way of focusing a lot of time on mastering one thing rather than little time on multiple things is what separates amateur practice from professional practice.

Lesson Plan

Bibliography

 

Doherty, M. (2025) Natural Light & Learning: Designing Facilities that Enhance Wellbeing. Canada Global Academy. Available online: https://canadaglobalacademy.com/natural-light-learning-designing-facilities-that-enhance-wellbeing/ [Accessed 5 May 2026].

Kageyama, N. (2012) Is Slow Practice Really Necessary? Bulletproof Musician. Available online: https://bulletproofmusician.com/is-slow-practice-really-necessary/ [Accessed 5 May 2026].

Kay, M. (2013) Sound before symbol : developing literacy through music. Los Angeles, Calif. ; London: Sage.

M, J. (2021) The Repercussions of Percussion – Don Mathew, MD FAAPMR – 3/7/21. Modern Drummer Magazine. Available online: https://www.moderndrummer.com/2021/03/the-repercussions-of-percussion-don-mathew-md-faapmr-3-7-21/ [Accessed 5 May 2026].

Silva, L. (2024) How to Improve Your Coordination and Rhythm on Drums. Oohlala. Available online: https://oohlalafinearts.ae/how-to-improve-your-coordination-and-rhythm-on-drums/ [Accessed 5 May 2026].

Team, E. (2025) The Best Drum Warmups – Toronto Arts Academy. Toronto Arts Academy. Available online: https://torontoartsacademy.com/the-best-drum-warmups/ [Accessed 5 May 2026].

Willis, J. (2007) Teachable Moments Build Relational Memories. Kappa Delta Pi Record 43.3.