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If you are a music teacher then probably any instrument would be fine to teach in homeschooling, right? But what is the right instrument if you are not a music teacher?
In homeschooling, drums are the best instrument for music because they are easy to play, require little setup time, and can be practiced by your child by themselves. The electronic drums can be played with earphones on so your household can remain quiet. Only your child who is playing the drums can hear it through the software.
Now, what if you don’t have any music skills at all? How could you supervise your child to practice? Well, read on and I’ll explain. The electronic drum system is smart and has lessons built it!
Electronic Drum Sets by Moplay Come With Songs and Practice Lessons
We got an electronic drum set late last year for our son because it came with special software and lessons for him to learn gradually from. You connect it to a tablet, in our case an IpadPro and it becomes fun to learn. I would even have fun finding some songs I liked and try to play along. The interface is simple to understand and color-coded for ease of learning.
My son was up and playing within a few weeks and had his first music recital after a few months of lessons and practicing. I believe you can still learn the basics and even how to play songs by yourself. But of course, if you have proper lessons and a teacher it would make it go smoother and probably less time. But my son played Dan + Shay, Justin Bieber’s 10,000 Hours and it was pretty cool!
Electronic Drums: Easy to Setup & Compact for Homeschool
Not only are the electronic drums easy to use, but they are also easy to set up for a dad with no musical experience at all! After I set up the compact system in my son’s room, I haven’t needed to touch it since. Just plug in some speakers and add a headphone and you will be done in 20 minutes. Try that with a cello for example! I spent some serious time trying to tune the strings and use a special tuner that I needed to buy and I felt like a needed a Ph.D. to set up my son’s cello.
My wife is a cello teacher so she dreamed that our son was going to be the next Yo-Yo Ma, but that had to take a back seat when we came across the drums. They don’t require any tuning and you just turn them on to start playing. Most string instruments require tuning every time you use them which takes valuable time and experience and equipment! We lost interest quickly since my son was 6 at the time and daddy didn’t have the patience to learn all that.
The electronic drum set is compact and requires minimal space in your home. It takes 5.5 meters squared of space or about 6 square feet of floor space. You could fold it up into a more compact area if needed. But once you set it up, you probably want to leave it set up. The only item you might need is an adjustable stool if you don’t have one in your home. Everything is easy to plug in and has color-coded wires.
Electronic Drums are Easy to Play in Your Homeschool
Once the drums are set up my son knows how to turn on the system all by himself. And you can either use the simple to use lessons on the Moplay software on an Ipad or you can simply practice with sheet music and music. One item you may consider to keep the rhythm is a metronome. Those are cheap and simple enough, and you may even get a free app for this as we use it. My son practices for around 20 minutes each time a few times per week. Sometimes he just hooks up the Ipad and plays a tune for fun.
The electronic drums are so easy to use, that they can even be considered toys. Although they are not cheap toys, they don’t cost that much. You can find a set from $100-$500 with ease online and delivered. That is a reasonable amount since many stringed instruments and pianos can cost more than that.
Recently we saw a Yamaha electronic drum set on Amazon for around $539 on discount at the time of this article.
And if you look around you will see Roland electronic drums as well, but those are over our budget! But they do seem pretty cool!
The best part of the drums is that you can either use the earphones to play in silent mode, meaning only the user can hear the drums as they are playing. And they can also use speakers that can be adjusted to a reasonable and quiet mode. There is minimal sound when they are beating on these electronic drums, so they are not 100% silent. But much quieter than most instruments.
Drumming Can be Therapeutic, Soothing, and Enhance Behavior
There is a mountain of data supporting music as a great way to enhance a child’s skills in school. But there is also data to suggest it can help improve behavior as well as cognitive skills. Our son is active and also plays soccer for his local school team. He takes part in daily soccer lessons in the afternoon with his team. But we find that he also seems to enjoy letting off some steam on his drums. He just bangs away and has fun at it. So we only learned about the benefits of it after we got the drum set.
Drumming generates positive effects in motor and cognitive skills, as well as behavior and learning
Drums Alive-EFFECTS OF A DRUMS ALIVE® KIDS BEATS INTERVENTION ON MOTOR SKILLS AND
BEHAVIOR
We also found that the cello is more difficult to control and play. Our son would get very upset and frustrated trying to get the right notes and control over the cello. A string instrument requires the bow to be held at just the right angle with the correct amount of pressure. Then you have to pull it across the strings to get the right sound. And you have to know where your other hand and fingers are to control the notes. All of that requires much concentration and motor skills.
When my son tried to practice with a cello, he would usually get so frustrated and call out for me to help him. And since I don’t have any musical skills I wasn’t much help. By that time my son would start to throw a tantrum and be thoroughly frustrated and just stomp out of the room and give up.
The drums are much different. You can still play rather easily and it sounds pretty good no matter how you play them. Certainly, you have to learn the beats and coordinate the notes correctly, but we find it much less frustrating. And the most important thing is my son can practice independently and it doesn’t require me to supervise. He can usually figure things out by himself and still have a good practice session without any assistance. But a few times a week my wife will supervise his practice session. As mentioned she is a music teacher so it does add some value for sure.
With Drums You Can Play a Tune After 1 Month of Practice
That’s right, only after 1 month, your child could be playing along with a tune after some work. We started with a Coldplay song, Yellow, and then eventually decided on We Will Rock You.
The reason to change was the difficulty of the song had too many different beats and we’d better start slow. And one useful app you should try is the Yamaha Rec’n’Share software for your iPhone or iPad, and also Android devices. You can download it in the Apple apps store here. This amazing free software lets you select a song from your music library and “the app’s tempo detection lets you add a click, change the tempo, and select sections to repeat. It’s a practice made perfect.”
If you aren’t a musician what that means is you may add a beat in the background of the song for your child to hear so they can remain in the right tempo with the song! It is incredible and you can slow the song down without changing notes or anything! Yamaha has done an incredible thing by making practice so easy. You can also record sound and video direct from your electronic drum set if it has this function. In a sense, you don’t need a separate metronome and everything is automatic!
With some good practice of the song, I realized that my son had fun with it. He enjoyed being able to play a real song. His drum teacher guided him and worked with him once per week and we practiced 3 times per week by ourselves. By 1 month he was playing by himself with ease and was ready for his first drum recital. We feel proud of him because we realized only after he played that he forgot his sheet music for the recital! But he still played it like it should have been without any errors. What a relief that was and a nice surprise.
Besides the Moplay system for electronic drums, there are many options available for every budget. Roland also has drum sets and software that you can buy and use on any of their electronic drum sets. You can find some useful information on their website right here.
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