When starting to write this Drumeo review there was one truth on my mind – that taking the right lessons makes or breaks a drumming career.
Invest in the right ones and you can learn in months what other drummers have learned in years. Pick ineffective lessons and you’ll end up wasting not only those years but also your money.
So it’s good that your not limited to choosing from the 5 drum teachers around your corner any more. In the age of the internet, you can get yourself a new world-class drum instructor every other week.
Drumeo is now the largest platform for online drum lessons on the internet. But does it really work?
Is Drumeo worth it? Is it better than traditional face-to-face tuition or teaching yourself via Youtube? And what about this in relation to Drumeo cost?
My answers are right here in this Drumeo review.
What Drumeo offers: Courses
Drumeo offers a lot of videos (2500+) and adds several more each day. That is a lot and potentially too much – unless they were usefully organized.
And organized they are: Drumeo has compiled over 260 courses consisting of a handful of videos each.
One course covers one topic and each video within it will explain one particular aspect of that topic. So you won’t get overwhelmed at all. You just watch a video and practice what’s explained in there.
When you feel comfortable with it, you move on to the second video – until you’ve completed the course. That’s as simple as 1, 2, 3.
At the same time you’ll never run out of things to learn, because Drumeo offers such an enormous amount of videos: course topics range from Useful grooves every drummer should know and How to learn songs quickly down into specialized stuff such as Polyrhythmic phrasing over the barline or Gospel drumming.
This variety is perfect for you as an evolving drummer, because you will have to experiment to find your niche. It would be hard though to find a private teacher who has mastered both Rock drumming and Latin. On Drumeo you simply get to learn from a master in each field.
And even if you’re confused and don’t know what to learn next: simply filter courses according to your level of proficiency. (In addition, I’ll offer to get you a free lesson plan tailored to your individual needs at the end of this article.)
And the final strength of Drumeo’s course format is this: alongside every video lesson, you can download everything that’s covered. That might be an mp3, a table detailing a practice routine to tick off, or sheet music as shown below.
This way you can simply grab the essence of a lesson and practice even when you’re away from your computer or left with no internet access. On Youtube you’ll almost never find this.
Drumeo Professional Teachers & Famous Drummers
Drumeo lessons are delivered by over 80 professional drummers, including drumming celebrities like Thomas Lang and Benny Greb as well as world-famous instructors such as Pat Petrillo.
The latter charges $15 for only one weekly online lesson on his own website. Thomas Lang and Benny Greb do not even offer lessons anywhere outside Drumeo (they only do face-to-face workshops for $1000+).
But Drumeo doesn’t only come with master teachers. It also comes with lots of them – more than 80 – and you are free to choose.
That is a serious strength, because your teacher around the corner might be a hard rock pro. But then it’s more than likely that he is not quite the jazz drummer. Simply because both styles come with different techniques, different motions and even different mindsets attached to them.
At Drumeo you can pick a different teacher for each style. And you’ll learn from someone who has mastered hard rock – and from someone else who excels at jazz.
A word of caution
Of course, Drumeo does have its weaknesses. The most important one is that you won’t receive feedback on what you’re practicing.
Now, some people are very good at emulating what they see and correcting themselves in the process. If you are that kind of person, Drumeo will be just fine. They explain technique just as well as any other teacher would (and in the member videos they sometimes use slow motion cameras which helps to decipher those really quick movements you can’t differentiate in real time).
If you think you’re not very good at correcting yourself, especially with respect to motions, this doesn’t mean Drumeo isn’t for you. It’s just that you might need some feedback from a physically present teacher every once in a while.
Anyway, the best way to find out is to get the 1 month free trial and to test which kind of person you are. You might be pleasantly suprised!
Last but not least, Drumeo also hosts so-called “student focus” sessions for which you can apply, send in a video of your drumming, and have the instructors dissect what you do and suggest improvements. Besides learning a ton, it must be a huge motivational boost to be featured on a video that’s part of the instructional library of 147,000 users.
Are people successfully learning the drums with Drumeo?
With millions of students (some of them famous guys like Petr Cech, the goalkeeper of Arsenal London) Drumeo is by far the largest online drumming platform out there – and it is growing by the day. As is usual on the internet, you can find negative talk about Drumeo, but I think the numbers testify to the contrary.
And so does Brian Crane.
Brian had been a hobby drummer for some years. He knew the basics, but he never really practiced consistently or with any goal in mind. Then he tried Drumeo. With nothing else but the video lessons, he practiced for two years and then emailed one of the founders of Drumeo with a video of himself on the drums. The Drumeo team was blown away and gave Brian the opportunity to put up a lesson on Drumeo himself.
That’s a potential audience of millions people. So here could be your first long-term goal: get Drumeo, get good, and show them all.
Of course, at the end of the day success is up to you – not Drumeo or any teacher in this world. Yet, Drumeo motivates tremendously. And it provides an effective framework to become a successful drummer. Brian thinks so too.
The price tag
That’s the easiest part: not a dime for the first 30 days. You’re in for a free trial.
You will have to give Drumeo your credit card details, but you won’t be charged until day 29 – unless you cancel before that. This is a no-brainer and after all that talk, I can only recommend you jump in and try it out for yourself.
After 7 days, Drumeo does cost money, and it does so on a monthly basis. That might be annoying to some of you, but Drumeo is not a static product. New videos and courses are added each day, the members’ area gets the latest design every other year, and Drumeo hosts community meetings every few months. So you’re paying for a product that lives and grows.
This costs you $29 per month or $240 if you pay annually (in which case you save $108). Even if you go for the more expensive $29 option, this is what the average face-to-face teacher would charge for 1-2 lessons of 45 minutes. With Drumeo there’s no limit on the instructions.
Plus: you still have a 90-day money back guarantee after the first month. So in essence you could use Drumeo for 120 days and still come out paying nothing (but obviously most people do stick around).
Drumeo review at one glance
I can talk all I like and (deservedly) praise Drumeo. And you can believe me or you can’t. But the best thing is: you can try it out now. For 30 days and for no money at all. If it isn’t for you, you won’t have wasted a dime (and learned something anyhow).