Chair drumming: Teaching the drum kit using chairs!
Musical Futures has been using chair drumming in our professional learning workshops ever since the development of our Just Play Programme and it now forms an integral part of our Beats Unit and Level 1 Musical Futures certification.
In that context, it’s a great ice-breaker, loads of fun and is an activity that everyone can participate in together, at their own level without needing to wheel in 30 drum kits and some ear defenders.
Kids love it too. And as well as being fun, here are a few reasons to use chair drumming this term:
- It improves coordination skills, fine motor skills and brain development
- It is cheap and accessible, you can do it anywhere and you don’t need loads of expensive gear to take part
- It is adaptable, easily scaled up or down depending on the group’s ability and experience (this is written into the Musical Futures International playalongs throughout)
- It engages the whole body and gets you moving, which can help release energy and increase focus
However, there is a big difference between pressing play on a chair drumming video and ‘teaching’ chair drumming. What exactly are we teaching? And why?
As with all Musical Futures resource-led activities it's important to have some learning objectives in mind before you log into the platform and load up your favourites.
Your objectives might be related to being a drum kit player in a fledgling whole class band. In which case they might be observational, looking at students individually to check on some basic musical skills:
- to be able to play kick and snare in time with music heard
- to be able to interpret and follow simple rhythmic grid notation
- to be able to hear and maintain a pulse
- to recognise different rhythms in the music they heard
Or in more depth:
- to build core rhythmic skills, such as tempo control, syncopation, and steady beat.
- to be able to internalise rhythms that can later be applied to other percussion instruments
- to build familiarity with patterns commonly used in certain rock and pop musical style and listen within the texture to hear and respond to these as they play
Or you might decide to pull apart the resource and learn to play along from the inside out, rehearsing sections, digging into how the music is constructed, how the drums form an integral part of the music, how they are used to define different sections, create a groove and give the music energy. For advanced students you can introduce syncopation, polyrhythms, or notated rhythms. With younger students use simpler patterns with clapping or tapping only.
As the teacher, you’re far better placed than we are to identify learning objectives for your students and classes. But we reckon chair drumming has a lot more to offer than just bashing some chairs for fun. You can also ask chatGPT for a chair drumming lesson plan - it’s got some great ideas which our resources support beautifully! (Here's a prompt you can try straight away!)
Once you have defined and met your objectives, it’s time to jump out of the resource and apply the learning to something else. Here are our top 3 skills for going beyond the playalong using chair drumming:
Introduce some improvising, encourage students to solo or create their own drum fills inspired by the music they heard in the resource whilst playing along to a song
Put on a new song and encourage them to play along, listening carefully to when the sections change and choosing a new rhythm from the selection in the resource to play. Bon Jovi’s Livin' on a Prayer is great for this as they can also add fills when they hear a new section coming up and take out the hi hats during the verses when the music is quieter
Explore some cross curricular links e.g. make cultural connections by teaching rhythms and drumming traditions from around the world. Or apply some maths skills using the drum grids transcribing the rhythms and counting the subdivisions of each pattern
You can find out more about going 'beyond the playalong' at our Level 2 workshops (read more about Level 2 here).
If you haven’t already subscribed then check out below how you can get hold of our hugely popular chair drumming resources, including our brand new chair 101 medley new for 2025!
There are 3 options:
- Get a the Starter Pack subscription and it's included, along with the 2 other Chair Drumming 101's (they are super fun too - gives you lots of variety).
- Get the Full Access Pack subscription (recommended!). This includes the 3 x Chair Drumming 101's, plus it includes 201 and 301 if you're ready to take your chair drumming unit to the next level.
Click on a button below to get started: