I completed the Grooving & Improving course yesterday, and thought it was worth a quick comment.
After the first couple of lessons, I was beginning to think that it was too low-level for me. I’ve been playing piano and guitar and bass for many years, and programming drums for almost as long, and I was finding finger-drumming easier than I expected. But I decided to stick with the course, and I’m glad I did. Even though sometimes it felt easy, I liked that Rob’s beats were different to what my fingers would tend to play, which pushed me to try new stuff (especially the off-beat kicks in the last beat). Also, it was fun to try and get everything 100% right, and then to try and get it as much in time as possible. I think it helped build a good foundation, and my fingers now absolutely know their way around the pads
Tl;dr - this course is definitely worth the time for anyone starting, even if it feels a little too basic at the start. Thanks @Robert_Mathijs !
There’s a lot of upside to making video courses. Scalability and therefore affordability for students, but… it’s always a balance between going too fast for some people and too slow for other people.
That said, if we’re talking about “deep” grooves, a solid foundation playing basic stuff is actually a must for most drumming purposes. The number one example all drum teachers use is the Michael Jackson Billy Jean beat.
If you record yourself trying to play it (which is actually the most basic beat ever) and then you listen to Billy Jean you notice your own beat doesn’t sound that great somehow
My goal with the Quest for groove is to at least give students the tools to slowly but surely also getting that deep groove into their playing and sometimes that requires practicing “too simple” stuff really well.
If you feel ike you want to move along faster you can always send me a message and I will see if I can come up with some sort of more tailored selection of the lessons for you by the way.
