FIG. 1: Kevin O’Sullivan’s DanceDrummer.com site features video performances demonstrating an assortment of African drums, along with synchronized notation.

Anyone who has browsed the Web knows that the Internet encourages a stream-of-consciousness approach to research. One idea leads to a Web search that leads to a page that has a link to another idea that generates another Web search, and so on. Such was the case during my research for this article. While searching the Web for multicultural music sites, I was impressed by the number of sites related to drumming, and I began to realize that the Web is a great resource for the frustrated drummer in all of us.

www.dancedrummer.com
In my quest for multicultural sites, I happened upon a nice site on African drumming. DanceDrummer.com (see Fig. 1) hasn't been updated in a while. The resources are still valuable, however, and the topic is still new to many of us. The site's author is Kevin O'Sullivan, a Fulbright scholar who studied in Ghana during the 1994-95 academic year. He learned how to play the kogiri, a traditional Ghanaian xylophone, as well as other traditional percussion instruments of the Anlo-Ewe peoples of the region.

O'Sullivan's site contains video clips demonstrating drums with such exotic names as the axatse, gankogui, kaganu, kidi, sogo, and atsimevu. Each QuickTime movie shows a drum in performance with synchronized notation. The Virtual Drum Museum allows visitors to play each of the drums. O'Sullivan also demonstrates how to simulate the Ghanaian drums using a standard drum kit. This site should be useful to teachers preparing lessons about world music or African drumming.

www.drumbum.com
A link on dancedrummer.com led me to drumbum.com, which contains links to more than 400 free lessons and drum tabs. I am sure drummers enjoy this site, but as a nondrummer, I find it particularly useful for teaching sequencing.

Making effective use of the drum kits available on General MIDI keyboards is a challenge for those of us who have never played the drums. The lessons on this site provide loads of standard patterns to help students learn to play authentic rock beats, rhumbas, shuffles, bossa novas, Afro-Cuban percussion, and other idioms. There are lessons on individual percussion instruments, such as the clave, conga, and brushes. You will even find lessons on instruments such as the djembe and taiko. This site makes extensive use of links to other sites, so the quality and presentation of the lessons are not uniform. Even so, there is a lot of great content here, and you should be able to find help mastering most basic and some advanced aspects of drumming.

www.drummingweb.com
RUDIMENTAL DRUMMING
www.rudimentaldrumming.com
RudimentalDrumming.com and DrummingWeb.com are useful sites for all of the kids in the band who are studying percussion. These sites have numerous articles about technique, and all of the standard rudiments are shown in notation. In some cases, photographs and audio and video clips are available to help you learn the patterns. DrummingWeb.com also maintains a discussion group called Rudiments that is devoted to discussing drums and drumming.

By this time in my research I wanted to play some drums, so I looked for online experiences to simulate playing a real drum kit. I found several very good virtual drum sets available on the Web. They vary in features and style, but here are three you will enjoy using with your students.

www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/tweenies/songtime/milosdrumkit

FIG. 2: The colorful Milo is the “star” of Milo’s Drum Kit, found on the BBC Web site. Milo plays the drums in response to tapping the number keys on the computer keyboard.

For children of all ages, I recommend Milo's Drum Kit found on the BBC Web site (see Fig. 2). Milo is a purple apelike creature who plays the drums for you. To make Milo play the bass drum, you tap the number 0; the floor tom is number 1, the snare is number 2, and so on. The animation is simple but very clean, and the responsiveness is quite good. There are no special features, but this simple drum kit works well and is easy to use.

www.buckle.com/text/content/games/2003fall_drum_set/drums.html
Buckle.com, an online clothing retailer, has a fun games section that includes a nice virtual drum set. (It also offers a nice little audio mixer.) Like Milo's Drum Kit, the Buckle Virtual Drum Set uses keys on the computer keyboard to play the individual drums; there are also three preset patterns the visitor can play as background tracks.

FIG. 3: At the elaborate Virtual Drum Kit site, you can record and play back a 2-track sequence of drum patterns. You can then loop the sequence and improvise over it. Be sure to check out the virtual drummer.

www.mediageezer.com
The most feature-laden drumming site of the bunch is the Virtual Drum Kit (VDK; see Fig. 3) by David Clutton. Clutton created the VDK as a project for his graduate degree. To get there, click on the drum set in the Games section of the home page. The software allows visitors to record and play back a 2-track sequence of drum patterns. One cool way to use this feature is to record a simple bass and snare pattern, click on the Loop button, and then improvise on all the other drums while listening to the bass-snare pattern.

The VDK has three drum kits: orchestral, Mexican, and copper. There is also a tutor feature that introduces visitors to basic drum patterns through imitation. My favorite part of the VDK is the virtual drummer. He appears on demand as a wire-frame, 3-D character who plays the drums as you click and tap keys on the keyboard.

Steven Estrella owns Shearspire, Inc. and StevenEstrella.com, creating interactive media for business and education. He teaches for Villanova, Duquesne, and Central Connecticut State Universities and is on the National Board of Advisors and Board of Directors of TI:ME. Contact him at steve@stevenestrella.com. For links to more great sites, see www.stevenestrella.com/mused/websitings.html.