My son is learning drums
Hello all,
I live in Australia. My son is eight and decided he wanted to learn drums. He is generally a bit shy, so my wife and I am keen to encourage him to learn a musical instrument. Drums should be fun for him to learn, and give him a good instrument to play in a band later on.
We are lucky enough to have found him a good teacher, quite young but seems to know his stuff and is very good with the kids (he also teaches our daughter violin).
We also bought him a set of drums. Fairly basic beginners set - the kind most music stores sell as a 'first drum kit'. It has bass, three toms (one floor), snare, Hi-hat and rider.
Tom (my son) is going very well, picked up a couple of beats very quickly. We just bumped into a problem - Tom is left-handed and got quite upset when asked to learn a new beat that had him starting with his right hand "I'm left handed". He is adamant he needs to play left-handed. Ironically he learnt a fun drum roll that starts with the right hand.
My first question - should we set his drums up left-handed? just swap hi-hat with rider, teach him 'open handed for a lefty'? Any advice would be welcome. He uses his teachers set when at his lessons - so there may be problems here if he has to rearrange the drums for all Tom's lessons.
I have joined Drum Set Connect as it seems an ideal place to find information to help Tom learn the drums whilst having fun.  |