Drum lessons by Dr. Seuss

Mark temporarily quit drum lessons last summer due to a bout of apathy. He was more interested in horsing around than playing drums, so when the instructor gently suggested I might save myself a few bucks by discontinuing lessons, I hung my head in shame, and did exactly that.

But I'm no quitter, and I determined my son wouldn't be, either. What kind of message was I sending by saying it's okay to quit something just because you're bored? (If that was the case, I wouldn't know any gainfully employed people!) Besides, we have an expensive drum kit that I gave up my garage for, and my sacrifice will not be in vain.

I did give Mark a few months off, though. We focused on soccer, which took up a good chunk of the fall, and gave me a chance to find a new instructor. I figured maybe Mark just needed a new challenge, teaching-wise.

Last night was his first lesson. The new instructor was great: funny, easy-going, but not too much so. He kept Mark on task, even when Mark was distracted by a nearby fancy electronic drum kit. He asked Mark to play along with a couple songs, which Mark did wonderfully. The only blip came when he asked Mark to read the music notes, and Mark forgot some of them. (I wasn't surprised, he's hardly practiced at all since last summer.)

But there was one moment when I knew that Mark and the new teacher would get along famously. The teacher reviewed the notes, but then said, "Now I'm gonna show you the cheater's way to remember them. I'm gonna teach you the right way to read them, too, but just to get started, I'll teach you this shortcut."

Mark's eyes lit up at that.

"You are preaching to the choir," I told the instructor. "This boy is all about the shortcut, and the cheater's way!"

And he was -- Mark did great! The teacher taught him to hit the drums based on the sounds they make: boom for the bass and high hat, chip for the high hat, bap for the snare and high hat. He wrote them out as musical notes on paper, and added a legend with the corresponding sounds. Mark was playing three, then six, different lines of music in no time.

"That's right!" the teacher said. "Boom chip, bap chip, boom boom bap chip! Now do it again." And he repeated himself enthusiastically, playing air drums along with Mark.

At one point, I started cracking up, and they both looked at me. I apologized, explaining that it sounded like Dr. Seuss to me. ("Boom chip, bap chip, boom boom bap chip" -- it just stuck in my head.) It reminded me of the Tweetle Beetle battle from the book Fox in Socks.

Instead of being offended, the instructor smiled and said, "Yeah, it is kind of like that!"

When the lesson ended a few minutes later, everyone was happy. The instructor was impressed by Mark's timing and ability to pick things up quickly, and Mark seemed sufficiently challenged. (He was also thrilled to play the electronic drum kit.) I was just happy to get him back into music.

Who knows if all the love and enthusiasm will last. Probably not, when Mark realizes he'll have to start practicing regularly again. But at least for last night, all was good in the drumming world.