The harmonica is another great instrument for beginners as it can be cheap in price. The cost of purchasing a harmonica is relatively low compared to other instruments. It's compact, easy to carry around, and has a unique sound that can be used in many music genres.
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There may be a slight learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be able to play songs in no time. The harmonica can be an especially fun instrument to learn. It's great for travelling, as it fits easily into your pocket, and its sound is unmistakable and evocative. Learning how to play the harmonica may require some practice but once you get the hang of it you will soon be able to play lots of songs with ease.

My name is Nicholas Sentongo and I am a director at a company called Fixnrev Mechanics in Uganda. Having lived in Uganda for a year and a half, I travelled the country mainly for work but have really seen the suffering of people, especially young teenagers and children.
 
I felt I had the opportunity to give back. There are several ways in which we as a company are supporting local charities and the main charity we support is an orphanage called “oasis of life” based in Kampala, Uganda (please see our charity page on our company website.
https://www.fixnrev.com/sponsored-charity).

Some of you may feel ready to go out there and find your band, others might want to join workshops, collectives and jam with other musicians to get a better idea of which direction they want to go in, musically. 

The advice is always the same - If you practice hard, give it your all and keep an open mind, you're likely to do just fine.

Putting the work in will open doors to all sorts of opportunities and the more you put yourself out there, the more chance you have.

Get involved, stay focused and things will fall into place.

Don’t forget if you're a drummer, that compared to the other members of a band, drummers are in high demand, so use this to your advantage.

And above all – ENJOY THE RIDE!

due to her recent passing, but I was instantly inspired and curious to learn more about her. As it turns out, she was pretty epic. In a male dominated industry (and world), she was quickly promoted as the ‘fastest girl drummer in the world’ in the 1930’s, alongside blazing a path for women in music. Viola played a giant drum set that included a double bass drum, an instrument that would years later become a tool for hard-hitting rock drummers.

Where did it all start?

​Viola smith took up drumming as a teenager in Wisconsin, when her father assembled the ‘Schmitz sisters family orchestra’ (there were 8 daughters)! Their band played in theatres during school holidays and Viola took lessons from drummers in the orchestra pits. They were soon in demand for weddings and fairs. By 1938, she formed another all-female orchestra - The Croquettes. They moved to New York in 1942, where Viola studied under legendary snare drum innovator Billy Gladstone.

I always loved music and messing about on instruments when I was a kid, but never found that one thing that I just became obsessed with until I sat down at a drum kit during a lunch break at school.

A bunch of my friends played guitar and bass and while I was hanging out with them, the only seat free was the drum stool.They were messing about with some Chilli Peppers tunes and I picked up some sticks and decided to join in. Straight away I knew there was something special about this drumming malarkey.

After swiftly being told off by the music teacher for using what turned out to be expensive beaters instead of cheap drum sticks, I started work on convincing my parents to get me a drum kit for Christmas.

I taught myself. I convinced friends of learn instruments so I would have someone to play with. I ended up forming a band and playing gigs for years around London. We all got a bit older and I became a little lazy.
 
I was so far into my comfort zone that I didn’t even consider pushing myself any further. This was it. This is how I drum and this is the limit of my abilities.
Then I went to a theatre showfor the first time since I was a kid. I saw The Book Of Mormon and it was amazing. The music and the musicians were just incredible.
 
After the show I couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment with myself. I’m not saying I now want to work in theatre, but I realised there was still so much to learn. Why had I just stopped?
 
My partner convinced me to get in touch with Planet drum and think about doing my grades. A year and bit later and I am studying for grade 7 and learning so much.

I realised something very important: drummers need to learn to be comfortable playing on unfamiliar drum kits.
 
You can’t always take your own kit with you, especially when you’ve just started out and you’re playing support slots in dingy London bars.
 
Other people’s bass pedals are weird. Tall drummers have incredibly low seats. Some long-armed musicians have cymbal stands locked in place at a higher altitude than Mount Everest.
 
Before a gig, I would get really, really nervous. Not so much about getting on stage and playing in front of people, but nervous about what the equipment is going to be like.
I quickly learnt that you’ve just gotta suck it up and get on with it.There was one time where there were not enough stands for the amount of cymbals I use. I only had one crash where I would usually have two. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but because some of the songs were so engrained in my muscle memory, I tried to hit a non-existent cymbal on a few occasions during that gig!
 
I learnt to get over the fear of the unfamiliar drum kit by making myself play the same drum beats to my band’s songs on different parts of the kit. I would play the song using less cymbals and think about the pattern of drum fills rather than the actual drums that were being hit. That way I knew if all else failed, I could play them just on the snare and not put any other band members off.
 
Once I let go of having my cymbals in a certain place, and putting up with it if my seat was an inch lower than I usually had it, I realised I could get through any gig regardless.

Laura Barnes 
PD Student

All of these artists have at one point used a specific rhythm pattern that is so identifiable you would recognise it even if you have never heard the original title song.
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At just 6 seconds long it is the most sampled rhythm in the history of drums.

The Winstons, below, were an American funk and soul band who were not very well known, (their drummer G.C. Coleman even more so) and they released a song in 1960 titled ‘Amen Brother’, listen below! Little did they know that a sample derived from the drum solo in this track would become the ‘Amen Break’ - the most sampled rhythm in the history of drums.

The Amen Break is a loop of 4 bars that was popularised by the drum sample album ‘Ultimate Break and Beats’ released in 1986 for the DJ population. Since the sample was created it has become a prominent feature in mainstream music, featuring in a host of famous songs such as; Oasis - ‘D’You Know What I Mean?’, Nine Inch Nails - ‘The Perfect Drug’, Slipknot - ‘Eyeless’ and Björk - ‘Crystalline’.

Blog post by Planet drum teacher, Sebastien Solsona