Your first hour on the kit

If I get one hour with somebody who has never played, I am not spending it on rudiments and I am not spending it on a practice pad. I am spending it on beats you already know, because the fastest way to make somebody a drummer is to let them play something that sounds like music before they leave the room.

I go straight at the ones that carry the most music: "The most important beats in the world, the most popular beats." Here is the order.

Minutes 0-20: the rock beat

Everybody starts here. It is under thousands of songs you have heard since you were a kid, and once your hands and feet find it, you have a beat for life.

Get it slow. Slower than you think. Get the three parts talking to each other before you speed anything up. The mistake in the first ten minutes is always the same: people rush, the limbs stop lining up, and they decide they have no rhythm. You have rhythm. You had it before you sat down. You just went too fast.

Minutes 20-35: the reggaeton beat

"I would take them from there to the most popular beat in the world now: the reggaeton beat."

I mean that literally. Turn on the radio anywhere on earth and this beat is on it. It also happens to be a great second lesson, because it moves your limbs differently to the rock beat while still being simple enough to hold onto in one sitting. Learn these two and you can already sit in with people.

Minutes 35-55: reggae

Then we go to reggae, "which is basically three different beats that make up most reggae music." Learn those three and most reggae songs open up for you.

(Brian will name the three reggae feels in the lesson itself; this guide keeps to what he has said on the record.)

I will say the thing about reggae that took me the longest to learn, and it is not a technique tip: "To play reggae correctly, you almost need to live the lifestyle for a minute at least. Really dig into the culture and listen." And: "Most importantly, just listen to a bunch of the music." You can play the pattern correctly on day one and still not be playing reggae. That part comes from your ears, not your hands.

What we are not doing today

Jazz. "I would never start them with jazz stuff unless that was their main focus." If you dig in and want to go further, we will get there, and it is a beautiful place to end up. It is just a terrible place to begin.

What to do tonight, on your own

"Put some headphones on with your favorite music and play along. See what happens."

That is genuinely how I learned most of it. Headphones, favorite records, play along, no plan. The formal instruction I did get went a long way, and I would tell anybody to get some. But the two together are the whole recipe: "A good balance of formal instruction and playing along."

Some people sit down and a beat just falls out of them - "Right off the bat, they're just playing a beat, and they don't need a whole lot of instruction." If that is not you, do not read anything into it. It says nothing about where you finish.

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Want your actual first hour? I teach beginners in Austin, outdoors: book a lesson.