Claudio Reis, a Brazilian/Australian drummer, started teaching drums when he was 19 years old. A few years later he started working on the idea of combining everything he had learned into a single book that would help teachers and students during lessons and home practice.
Today, Pegada Drum Method is composed of five books: Fundamentals to Intermediate, Mid-Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, Lower Advanced, and Mid to Upper Advanced.
More about the history of Pegada Drum Method at the end of this article.
Note to Drum Teachers
Students that learn very fast and have very good coordination skills usually need about 40 hours of lessons to complete the Fundamentals to Intermediate book. But
this scenario is rare. Most students need more than 80 hours of weekly lessons before they are ready to study the second book.
When Pegada is combined with evidence based teaching strategies it's guaranteed that all beginners learn how to play. Intermediate level
drummers transform the way they approach their traditional study methods, rebuilding their skills from the ground up.
It is crucial that you quickly and easily state what you want your students to be able to achieve.
Clear lesson goals help teacher and students to focus every other aspect of a lesson on what matters most.
+ With Pegada Drum Method, multiple goals can be set in small sections during a lesson.
Show & Tell
Telling involves sharing information or knowledge with students while showing involves modelling how to do something. Focus your show and tell on what matters most.
+ Remember that in our case, asking the student to read a bar of music is also part of the Show & Tell step.
Questioning to Check for Understanding
Check for understanding before moving onto the next part of a lesson.
Plenty of Practice
Correct practice makes perfect, helps students to retain the knowledge and skills that they have learned and also allow another opportunity to check for understanding. Students do
better when their teacher has them practice the same things over a spaced-out period of time.
Provide Students With Feedback
Feedback involves letting your students know how they have performed on a particular task along with ways that they can improve. Unlike praise, which focuses on the student rather
than the task, feedback provides your students with a tangible understanding of what they did well, of where they are at, and of how they can improve.
Be Flexible About How Long It Takes to Learn
The idea that 'given enough time, every student can learn' is the central premise behind mastery learning (level of performance that all students must master before moving on to the
next unit). Keep your learning goals the same, but vary the time you give each student to succeed. We can all do it to some degree.
Teach Strategies Not Just Content
Increase how well students do in any subject by explicitly teaching them how to use relevant strategies; strategies that will deepen their comprehension,
aiming for effective execution of tasks.
+ I don't simply teach Fills, I teach my students how I end up creating those Fills.
Nurture Meta-Cognition
Meta-cognition involves thinking about your options, your choices and your results. When using meta-cognition your students may think about what strategies
they could use before choosing one, and they may think about how effective their choice was (after reflecting on their success or lack thereof) before
continuing with or changing their chosen strategy.
+ Along with showing (on a drumkit and on the book) and telling the students what to do, I also play simple melodies on the guitar.
Many times the melodies help them understand what they are playing and how a particular drum beat fits in a song.
So, what’s in the books?
The massive and powerful content of Pegada Drum Method was carefully organised in order to create a better learning experience for the students,
and to help teachers follow a program according to each student capabilities and goals.
Basically, the content consists of rudiments, stick control exercises, references to techniques, coordination exercises, hundreds of grooves, fills, songs
suggestions, and, what makes this method unique: many instructions that multiply its own content.
Rudiments
All 40 Essential Rudiments are meticulously spread in the books.
The most commonly used rudiments are in the Fundamentals to Intermediate book. At the end of each book you find Rudiment Application sections,
which are exercises involving rudiments previously learned.
Stick Control and Technique
Drumming technique can’t normally be learned from a book. Stick control exercises and the references to techniques are a guide to teachers
and students. Teachers show the students how to play stick control exercises based on what rudiment is being applied and at what pace the exercise is
being executed.
Examples:
- the different techniques you need to apply when you play slow double strokes or fast double strokes.
- the different ways of playing slow single strokes versus fast single strokes (whipping motion, push and pull, or finger techniques).
Coordination Exercises and Limb Independence
The Coordination Exercises consist of variations played on the hi-hat, snare drum and bass drum that prepare the student for what comes next, be it grooves or fills.
At the intermediate level, Limb Independence exercises help open up a series of possibilities.
Drum Beats
Many of the hundreds of grooves you find in Pegada books are related to their respective song names.
Variations of rock, pop, funk, disco, indie, hip hop, blues, soul, reggae, metal, jazz, Latin and fusion grooves are carefully organised in
their many forms: quarter, eighth and sixteenth hi-hat beats; sixteenth snare or bass beats; hi-hat triplets, and so on.
Fills
From basic fills, through sticking exercises later transformed in fills, to more complex fills that also involve the hi-hat or bass drum,
students learn how to incorporate flam, drags, fast double strokes and other rudiments to their new fills. The fills content end with rhythmic
patterns transformed into very exciting variations.
Song List
The first three books include lists of suggested songs. Those are songs that students asked and were capable of playing at the beginner or intermediate levels. They are all at least relatively famous hits, and were carefully listed in an order that makes it possible to progress from a basic level.
Multiplying Instructions
One of the most interesting features of Pegada Drum Method is the short paragraphs of instructions on how to multiply almost all previously
learned content. They guide teachers and students on a journey of how to transform basic pop/rock drum beats into shuffle/blues,
reggae, or incremented funky grooves. There are also complex exercises on how to use cymbals, hi-hat foot, double kick and percussion accessories creatively.
Music Genres
The many different styles of music are also explained in simple paragraphs, therefore easily multiplying previous learned grooves. The clearest example is how easy it is to transform a simple rock beat into a blues beat.
Jazz and Latin rhythms are different though, having their own exclusive pages.
It will be up to the teacher, of course, to show the student how to play the different styles of music, specially when on the music sheet they look exactly, or almost
exactly the same.
Teachers' Roles
In conjunction with the instructions in the book, teachers are supposed to:
- follow a program according to each student's individual pace;
- teach students how to play their favourite songs when requested;
- suggest songs to be learned;
- encourage students;
- give frequent, immediate and detailed feedback;
- answer questions;
- and correct students' techniques.
"Basic or advanced? HOW do you play?
It’s always important to remind the students that 'basic' or 'advanced' is not always related to how much we know, but
actually to HOW WE PLAY."
Where did it all come from?
Claudio had private lessons for many years in Sao Paulo, the cultural capital of Brazil. Maybe 'samba' and 'bossa nova' are the only genres that come to mind
when one thinks of Brazilian music. In fact, the rock, funk and hip-hop scenes are also huge in Brazil. Some world famous Brazilian rock drummers are, for
example: Aquiles Priester, Eloy Casagrande, Bruno Valverde, Igor Cavalera, Ricardo Confessori, Edu Cominato and Fernando Schaefer.
Along with his teachers, Claudio also studied books written by Carmine Appice (who literally wrote the book on rock drumming);
Joe Morello, Gary Chafee (former teacher of some big names) and many others. He also attended mastersclasses or learned from Brazilian legends Duda Neves
and Vera Figueiredo; and many other less famous but awesome contemporary and modern drummers.
Claudio also attended master classes of Dave Weckl, Virgil Donati, Thomas Lang, Benny Greb, Mike Portnoy, Will Calhoun, Anika Niles,
Gene Hoglan, Sonny Emory, Tony Royster Jnr, Marco Minnemann, and Pete Drummond. And in 2019 Claudio did the whole Dave Weckl online course.
The combination of the above, along with over 37 years of live performances in different styles, resulted in Pegada
having a touch of Brazilian and Latin rhythms. Though rock and funk variations and interpretations are the main focuses.
At the end of about two decades, books, DVDs, notes and videos were already organised in a way that Claudio could wisely study all material he had
accumulated. That’s how Pegada Drum Method was born and continues grow and amaze teachers and students.
In 2004 Claudio moved to Sydney, Australia, and the journey of learning and teaching continued when he founded Drum Lessons Sydney in the same year.
By the end of 2015 hundreds of students had already benefited from the impressive drum syllabus Pegada Drum Method.
Many students end up choosing to learn from Claudio after trying 3 to 5 local music schools. They feel the difference from lesson one. And Claudio knows
that this has a lot to do with having Pegada Drum Method as a reference to organise the lessons, to follow up student's home practice, and most
importantly, the use of the books by the students outside the lesson.
Nowadays Pegada Drum Method is used by other drum teachers that literally quit most of their other books.
Updates
Almost every year a new edition is released. Since the 2017 edition not much has changed in the first two books, and basically only new content is being added to the more advanced ones.
You can buy Pegada Drum Method by contacting Claudio directly on claudio@drumlessonssydney.com.au or via
PayPal.
When buying directly from Claudio:
- If you can collect the books from Woolooware NSW Australia, you don't pay for shipping, so you pay only $20 per book.
- 10% OFF when you buy all 5 books at once AND collect from Woolooware.
- Cash payment on pick up OR pick up after funds are received via bank transfer.
Pegada Drum Method books are not to be reproduced. If you require additional copies for you or your students, they can be purchased from DrumLessonsSydney.com.au.
Note: “pegada” is a Brazilian Portuguese slang that means “grip” or “feeling” (in regards to music - a firm hold/control).
Claudio Reis is the founder and deliberately only teacher at DrumLessonsSydney.com.au in Sydney, Australia.
