What should i expect to pay for drum lessons from an average teacher compared to a very well known teacher?
Thinking of taking some drum lessons,but not sure who to go with?
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What should i expect to pay for drum lessons from an average teacher compared to a very well known teacher?
Thinking of taking some drum lessons,but not sure who to go with?
over here lessons range from £20 - £25 an hour.
Around here it's about $30-$40 for a half hour, but it depends on where you are and who you're taking lessons from.
Quote:
Originally Posted by covanant
The quality of the teacher has to come first.
There are 2 many hacks out there that will take your money and leave you with bad habits that a good teacher will have to undo.
First, you need to find a good and well-respected teacher.
Price really differs from place to place. I had a good rock/jazz guy who studied at Berklee but I live in MS so prices are cheaper than say, Los Angeles. I took 30 minute lessons once a week, $20 per lesson. I had to pay by the month and couldn't be refunded if I had to miss a lesson.
Depends on where you are, and who your teacher is. A 1 hour lesson with a solid, working pro should run $40-$50 per lesson. Half hour lessons, $20-$30. If you're studying with a high-level instructor, like a nationally known clinician or percussion professor at a university, we're talking more like $100+ per hour.
My first instructor ever was amazing. $30 for a half hour lesson, Berklee grad, working pro drummer, and he started me off with a lot of good habits and solid fundamentals. I owe a lot to him.
I charge $40 per hour.
I only charge $20 an hour, but I don't teach anything particularly advanced. I'm still studying and have no financial problems, living at home with my parents, so I'm mostly teaching for the experience, money is a bonus.
Here in LA, my teacher is a Berklee grad, working pro drummer and he charges me $50 an hour. Not sure if that's high or low for the LA market, but I'm not complaining ;)
I pay 50 an hour here in Tucson. My instructor is very good and very patient lol!
Tell me about it. One poor kid I've been teaching, I've had to spend literally weeks and months every time correcting bad posture, grip and timing habits that a supposedly experienced drum tutor at a music store never took the time to correct (most likely because the vast majority of stores around here and elsewhere seem to just do half hour lessons, which quite frankly, I don't see is enough time in a lesson....for most I usually insist of hour long lessons in order for any student to get the full benefit....mind you, with real young students I trim that time down a bit, depending on their particular needs). With this guy in particular, he would often lean his head to the left, which in turn made him throw his time right out when it'd come to playing the bass drum, and his left hand would smack into the snare flat handed, with no snap of the wrist. Naturally, this would throw his time out with even the simplest of rock beats, let alone what he wanted to achieve with stuff that was way above his ability.Quote:
Originally Posted by rickthedrummer
I couldn't believe when his father told me that they were going to the previous teacher for two years and yet straight away I could see there was nothing done to correct this problem. It sure did cut my work out for me correcting those faults.
$50 an hour!! £32, i don't think i'd pay that much.Quote:
Originally Posted by danydew
When Chad Wackerman used to live here in Sydney, he would have charged more than that per hour.....but then again guys like him have such a pretty good professional reputation (Frank Zappa was one of his bosses, and I think Chad was one of his longest lasting drummers) and coupled with that such great technique (Wackerman's from a family of drummers, his dad was a drum educator, plus his hand technique's courtesy of the great drum educator Murray Spivack, who sadly passed away years back). Drummers, indeed, any musician of that calibre and finesse I would pay good money for, as you simply could not learn that sort of technique from a video alone, you need to have the guidance of that particular player, if you want to learn that level of playing control.Quote:
Originally Posted by markthechuck
Nowadays with all the free and easy to understand online help you can get, it's just not worth it to pay for a drum teacher. You might be a good teacher, but who's going to pay for something they can get for free? There's new methods to compete with that there wasn't before, and accessing them is as easy as stopping by a library or a music shop. It's the internet, it's making things very competitive and tough to stay in business.
^Yeah but Russ, that may work for drumkit, however from a percussionist's point of view I can tell you that I can watch as many videos on mallet and hand percussion (and I do), but really there are so many subtleties of technique that can be better explained by a real teacher in person. If there was a decent mallets teacher (especially one competent in four mallet grips such as the Gary Burton grip for vibes or the Stevens grip for marimba) or if I knew of a well schooled Indian tabla player (one who understands the difference between the various 'schools' of North Indian tabla playing, and can systematically teach the Hindi syllables necessary to execute all those rhythms)....if I had any of those guys living locally, I would gladly pay to learn from them, because there's a real scarcity of those kind of specialist players around that can also teach them out my way. In fact, I'd have to go to the other side of Sydney to get that sort of tuition, to expand the little that I know (and I've not the spare time to do that at the moment, doing tuition on my side of Sydney), and whilst I do have a lot of Youtube 'faves' (and DVD's and old VHS videos such as "Dave Samuels' Mallet Keyboard Musicianship") for percussion lessons.....they're still lacking to a certain degree. That's what I'd say anyway.
I was taking lessons from someone else to start with and ALL we worked on were rudiments. That's it. And I had come to him to learn to play a drum KIT. I was paying him $60 a lesson, which would usually go for a little over an hour. Unfortunately, because I knew him in another capacity (I had acted in a music video for his band) he wanted to spend a lot of time socializing. After 3 months of that, and having all the fun sucked out of it from only doing rudiments, I decided to change teachers. My new teacher, the one that charges $50 an hour, spends the entire hour WORKING. I have made tremendous progress since signing on with him. He knows when to push and when to back off. He works all of my limbs, works my brain, and makes it fun (which is the whole reason I wanted to learn drums in the first place). Also, because I am there in person, sitting across from him, he can walk over and easy see what I'm doing and correct it right there. So to me, the $50 is completely worth it. :biggrin:Quote:
Originally Posted by markthechuck