My First Drum Clinic (And How One Bad Lesson Turned Into An Amazing Program)
I hosted my first community drum clinic in April 2017 at Trinity Lutheran Congregation in Minneapolis. They ran an after-school program for children in the area and their program director Kasi asked if I would be willing to put on a drum workshop for the kids. It would be an informal type of event aimed at teaching them a bit about playing drums - nothing too crazy.
To be honest, it didn’t go as planned the first time around. Have you ever tried holding the attention of a room full of rowdy, energetic kids? It’s not easy, even if you’re offering them the chance to make a whole lot of uninterrupted noise.
But I wasn’t willing to give up. I offered to put on two more sessions to make up for the first workshop that went a bit off the rails. And that time, I came better prepared.
At the next two drum clinics at Trinity Lutheran Congregation, I turned the lesson into a game with call-and-response exercises and collaborative polymetric activities where each group played a different beat. And it was a big hit - the kids loved it!
Since then, I’ve put together a youth group program called Pots and Pans Percussion that uses these same activities to teach kids how to follow beats and play drums. I’ve been giving drum lessons to children as young as 3 for years, but there’s something different about the energy in a room full of enthusiastic, energetic kids eagerly awaiting to bang on a drum.
