The 7 Best Online Drum Lessons of 2023 – Free & Paid

Best Overall: Drumeo Edge

• Price: $20 to $30 per month
• Subscription Required: Yes
• Instructor Feedback: Yes

Why We Chose It

Drumeo Edge offers online video lessons with weekly Q&A sessions, so students get the best parts of in-person classes while learning at home at a reasonable price.

Pros & Cons

Overview

Features and Benefits

The website is well-designed, comprehensible, and fresh. It offers lessons, play-along tools, downloadable sheet music, and a huge song library.

You can take more than 230 lessons through a 10-level curriculum. Lessons cover a lot, from drum-playing fundamentals to how to use your intuition to hear and understand music better and train your ears.

Lessons are taught by world-renowned drummers like Aric Improta, Domino Santantonio, and John Wooton.

Moreover, the song library has 2000+ songs of different genres. You can learn songs from artists like Nirvana, Miles Davis, The Roots, and Led Zeppelin.

Not only can you access the online drum lessons and practice/learning materials at all times, but you’ll also have access to teachers and a community. You’ll get weekly live events and personal feedback.

What Sets Drumeo Apart From Other Platforms?

Drumeo is arguably one of the most popular and reliable drumming platforms. The website is run by people with a passion for drumming, and you can notice that in the quality of the content.

Who is Drumeo For?

Drumeo is an excellent learning source for beginners but it also contains lessons for experienced drummers.

Drumeo Edge offers members access to more than 230 step-by-step courses, covering everything from rudiments to ear training, and more. Making up these courses are more than 2,000 individual video lessons with Grammy-winning session drummers, players from the world’s biggest rock bands, and beyond.

What sets Drumeo apart from all the other recorded options is its weekly live Q&A sessions and interactive forums. This means that you can access the recorded lessons and sequential curriculum whenever you want, but if you hit snags or need personalized encouragement, you have teachers and a community to turn to.

In our opinion, this makes for a really compelling offer, especially if you value both the flexibility of pre-recorded lessons and the interactivity of live assistance.

The whole package goes for $30 per month without a commitment, but you can save by pre-paying $240 for a full year. The interface is intuitive and modern for an enjoyable user experience.

Runner Up, Best Overall: Mike’s Lessons

• Price: $29.99 per month
• Subscription Required: Yes
• Instructor Feedback: Yes

Why We Chose It

Mike’s Lessons gives students a personal lesson vibe while learning from home, including weekly Q&A sessions to ask questions and virtual shed sessions to work on improvising music.

Pros & Cons

Overview

Features and Benefits

High-quality lessons are divided into Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced sections. They are designed to teach you a specific skill set – they will help you to improve your speed, fills, grooves, independence, or technique.

Mike is a great teacher, and he explains the material in chunks and in an approachable, natural manner.

Apart from specialized thorough lessons, he shares information about drum kits and equipment on the website.

Since there are weekly live lessons, you’ll also have an opportunity to ask questions, which is a great feature. Although they aren’t specifically one-on-one sessions, the opportunity to ask questions is very useful.

What Sets Mike’s Lessons Apart From Other Platforms?

This learning platform offers weekly live-streaming lessons and live Q&A sessions. Besides providing you with fresh knowledge, these sessions will definitely make you feel engaged and involved.

Who are Mike’s Lessons for?

Although this online drum course offers content for all skill levels, it’s probably most useful for players with some experience.

Since lessons are focused on a specific skill and you can search lessons via the search bar, it’s perfect for people who know exactly what they want to work on.

Mike’s Lessons is a great example of the value you can get when a platform starts as a labor of love from one person. Unlike the giant aggregate-based recorded lesson formats, Mike’s Lessons feels really personal and really natural to one drummer’s style of teaching.

This can be a mixed bag—if you’d prefer a different teacher, you won’t have the option to change here. But the value is really hard to argue with. For one flat price of $29.99 per month, you’ll get access to all the levels offered: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. This means you’ll be able to work through his full course set, developing your skills as far as you want.

Plus, there are weekly live lessons that will later become available as archived lessons. Each of these live sessions, if you’re able to attend when they’re happening, will end with a live Q&A to answer questions and address any issues. This isn’t quite the same as getting one-on-one attention from a teacher, but it’s a pretty good middle ground.

What’s more, is that Mike also offers in-person drum camps at his headquarters in Northern California throughout the year for an additional fee. This means you have the option to get a really well-rounded drum education, from pre-recorded lessons to online Q&As, all the way to in-person boot camps.

Best for Scheduling: Preply

• Price: $10 to $30 per hour
• Subscription Required: No
• Instructor Feedback: Yes

Why We Chose It

Preply is a platform for drum teachers and students to connect with each other, allowing students to try out different classes and find the teacher that best suits their needs.

Pros & Cons

Overview

Features and Benefits

The whole method Preply is based on is one huge benefit. The possibility to talk to a teacher, receive direct feedback, and build a true student-teacher relationship is precious.

So, how do you choose your Preply teacher when there are more than 49,000 online tutors? Use filters to narrow your search and check their ratings, price points, and the number of students they currently have.

You can also book a trial lesson before you finally decide. But even when you do, you can always change your mind and find another tutor.

Once you find a perfect fit, book an available time for your lessons. When the time arrives, enter the virtual classroom and connect with your tutor through the comprehensive video platform.

Although Preply is not the most affordable solution, you’ll certainly receive a high-quality one-on-one learning experience and gain or improve your drumming skills.

What Sets Preply Apart From Other Platforms?

Preply’s one-to-one drum lessons will help you achieve your goals in a quick and effective way. Having a private online tutor is truly precious – you’ll get valuable feedback, suggestions, and encouragement.

Who is Preply For?

Preply is a very specific learning platform that will allow you to have private online lessons. This can be very beneficial both for beginners and advanced players. Beginners can learn more smoothly with clear guidance, and experienced drummers can get valuable tips and suggestions.

Many online lesson services tend to offer monthly plans as their primary means of sign-up. Preply takes a more customized approach by allowing you to choose your specific teacher based on their bio, select a time that works for you, and start building a relationship with one teacher.

The drawback here is that you’re limited to the teachers on the platform, and in the case of drums, there are only half a dozen teachers available. This isn’t super surprising, considering most of the tutors on the platform specialize in teaching languages rather than music.

But searching “drums” in the home page search bar brings up some lesson teachers to choose from. The search result page lists the teachers along with info like price point, rating, and the number of active students. This allows you to tailor the experience based on the price you want to pay.

You won’t be locked into a monthly subscription, and you can try as many lessons as you want at a price you’re comfortable with. This customization does come at the cost of having a ton of preset lessons to choose from—and you are limited in terms of instructors, particularly in the drum category. But this choose-your-own-terms structure is really great for those getting started on online lessons.

Best for Teacher Selection: Lessonface

• Price: $20 to $120 per hour
• Subscription Required: No
• Instructor Feedback: Yes

Why We Chose It

Lessonface has more than 2,000 teachers available for lessons on its website. Students can filter teachers by language, availability, skill level, and even drum style or genre to find their perfect match.

Pros & Cons

Overview

Features and Benefits

Just like Preply, Lessonface provides a tremendous selection of drum teachers.

The fact that the results can be filtered should help you. You can search for anything you want, perhaps a type of drum you want to learn how to play, steel drums, Cajons, or online jazz drum lessons.

When you find someone you want to work with, learn more about them by reading all the details on their page. You can see the prices, ratings, and if and when they are available.

You can pay however you want, and there is no monthly plan to worry about. You can have as many lessons as you need with your preferred teacher and improve your music skills through a fun, personalized learning process.

What Sets Lessonface Apart From Other Platforms?

Unlike Preply, Lessonface offers only music lessons. Therefore, you’ll come across more specialized drum lessons. Some lessons are focused on a specific type of drum, music genre, technique, and so on.

Who is Lessonface for?

Lessonface is for anyone who wants to learn drums in live online lessons.

You can also learn about notation, songwriting, or music production, so if you have a specific skill you want to improve or learn, you can do it with Lessonface.

Lessonface has a really vast selection of teachers available to its students, which is a particularly tough thing to find, especially if you’re looking for drum teachers. Many of the lesson services have no shortage of guitar teachers, but drummers tend to be more difficult to find—most likely due to the cumbersome nature of the instrument to teach online.

Start your Lessonface journey by searching available teachers rather than signing up for a monthly trial. We like this feature because it allows you to customize your lesson experience based on the specific teacher you want. This doesn’t just mean finding the right drum teacher, but it means finding the right teacher who will show you the style of drums you want to learn.

You can filter results by general drum expertise, but you can also drill down to specifics like Hand Drums or Steel Drums. Overall, we found the experience of finding specific teachers really intuitive, even if the interface of the site is a bit clunky.

Once you land on a teacher you’re interested in, you can go even further on their page which provides a really high level of detail, showing you their bio, ratings, pricing, and availability. This level of transparency is refreshing because it means you don’t need to lock yourself into a monthly plan. You can start with the teacher you want rather than just a general service.

Best for Online and In-Person: Takelessons

• Price: $40 to $75 per hour
• Subscription Required: No
• Instructor Feedback: Yes

Why We Chose It

Takelessons allows students to sign up for either online or in-person lessons (or a combination of both), letting them customize their schedule to best fit their learning needs.

Pros & Cons

Overview

Features and Benefits

Takelessons works similarly to some of the websites we’ve already mentioned – you can choose from a large list of teachers. Each tutor is different and unique, but since there are so many of them, you will undoubtedly be able to find someone you are fond of.

You can choose from a variety of lessons covering all levels and styles.

Most of the valuable information is available on the website before you even create an account, and the page is easy to navigate. It’s also great how you can choose both online and offline lessons all under one platform.

What Sets Takelessons Apart From Other Platforms?

Takelessons is a popular platform that can provide you with customizable private lessons. You can choose the length of your lessons, as well as focus on your goals and preferences.

Who is Takelessons for?

Takelessons is for anyone searching for individual and affordable lessons.

There are lessons for all levels and styles, so if there’s an exact skill you want to improve, you’ll surely find someone on the website who can help you.

Takelessons is another one-stop shop for finding a private tutor online. The directory offers lessons from a variety of different types of topics and angles, but their offering is surprisingly robust in the drummer department.

While similar services like Preply offer limited online tutors, Takelessons seems to have a lot of private instructors. Similar to the other directory services, there is no direct price range available here—you’ll have to choose a teacher based on their preferred pricing. That’s not all bad, considering you can save a lot of money by going with a really affordable teacher.

The interface isn’t quite as intuitive as some of the others we’ve seen, but what we really like is how easy it is to toggle between online teachers and local teachers via the map interface. If you live in an area where there are in-person drum teachers available, you’ll be able to find them, but if you prefer online lessons you’ll see them here, too.

Once you select your lesson teacher, you’ll be taken to their page to read their bio, their reviews, and more detailed info about their pricing. It’s all really transparent, and we like how much information is available, even before creating an account. And as stated, it’s really nice to have online/offline flexibility.

Best for Mobile Players: ArtistWorks

• Price: $23.25 to $35 per month
• Subscription Required: Yes
• Instructor Feedback: Yes

Why We Chose It

The ArtistWorks platform gives students the opportunity to record their lessons from wherever they are for the teacher to send feedback on their performance.

Pros & Cons

Overview

ArtistWorks has a really unique business model that sets them apart in an otherwise crowded field. While most other services offer either video-learning libraries or one-on-one chats, ArtistWorks takes a different approach, allowing for what they call their Video Exchange Library. This basically means that, once you start up a plan, you’ll have the option to go through lessons and then record yourself playing, wherever you are.

It’s extra handy if you’re learning world percussion and can play outdoors, but still want to record a video on your mobile phone. Then, you send that video to your instructor, and then he/she will get back to you with video feedback about your performance. This allows for personal, one-on-one feedback on your schedule.

But what’s extra cool here is that ArtistWorks will then take that video interaction and add it to the library, so other players can learn from the exchange. This means that the library of learning resources is literally always growing. The drum options, from a curriculum standpoint, aren’t quite as robust as the guitar options as there are only two main categories: Drums and World Percussion. But because of that ever-growing database we mentioned, you should have plenty of more lesson options as the community grows.

Pricing is $35 per month for three months, with better prices locked in with more months’ commitment. It’s not the most affordable, but it is a really unique option that might be best for those who can’t commit to weekly lessons.