Professional Drummer, Drum Tutor, Holy Vessels & Sunless '97. Available for Sessions, Live & Lessons.

Every lesson I teach is tailored around the individual student’s musical taste, needs and ability. This way the student is motivated and focused throughout the lesson. My experience enables me to break drum teaching into 4 key areas:

• Sight Reading / Aural Perception – From basic notation and values to advanced chart reading, transcription, studying genres of music, drum grooves, click tracks, pieces and performance and Grades 1-8 also taught, if required.

• Technical Development - To achieve a perfect technique, study of Moeller system, Drop and snap technique, sticking, posture, breathing and all aspects of drumming technique.

• Drum Grooves & Fills - Study of specific grooves relating to individual genres, these include; Rock, Pop, Funk, Metal, Country, Afro-Cuban, Drum & Bass plus many more. Also study the relative drum fills used within these genres to help to form an understanding of how to write the perfect drum part.

• Session Drummers & Live Performance - Studying a vast selection of drummers and genres. Learning key performance techniques and songs to be performed live and along to tracks.

• Additional Subjects:

• Drum Tuning - How to make you sound great behind a kit, as you can learn all the greatest techniques, but if your drum kit doesn’t sound good this will have less impact. Also cover drum-kit care how to look after your gear and the internal workings of your drums.
• Music Industry - Learn the basics of how the industry works and how to get the best out of your career as a musician and own musical project.

My lessons are taught from my own written syllabus with aspects of other workbooks and exercises, techniques to achieve the ultimate drumming experience and information. I am also currently writing my own drum workbook.

I have my own drum studio based in Brighton where I teach from, provide mobile drum lessons where I travel to the student and teach on their own kit and also offer interactive drum lesson through Skype.

CRB checked.
Musicians Union Member.
Skype Username: thommillsdrums

Rates – £30 per hour / £15 per half hour.

Bibliography;

• Progressive Steps To Syncopation For The Modern Drummer – Ted Reed
• Stick Control For The Snare Drummer – George Lawrence Stone
• Master Studies – Joe Morello
• Advanced Techniques For The Modern Drummer, Vol 1 – Jim Chapin
• Conversations In Clave – Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez.
• The Drumset Musician – Rod Morgenstein & Rick Mattingly
• Advanced Funk Studies – Rick Latham
• Play Rock Drums – Joel Rothman
• Jungle/Drum ‘n’ Bass For The Acoustic Drum Set – Johnny Rabb
• Afro-Cuban Grooves For Bass And Drums, Funkifying The Clave – Lincoln Goines & Robby Ameen
• Trinity Guildhall, Drum Kit 4, Pieces & Studies, Grades 7 & 8.

Thom Mills – Drum Tutoring CV.

Thom Mills – Music Industry CV

I have now started a new music blog, check it out here: http://teenagedeer.wordpress.com/

A preview video of the forthcoming Holy Vessels album, to be released later this year. Features track ‘Golden Hair’ from the LP entitled ‘Last Orders At The Marshall Arms’. Check out www.holyvessels.co.uk for more info.

I have a brand new section to my site entitled “Drum Solos”, and it contains drum solos, wierdly. On there I have a live recording of a piece written when I was studying my music degree, a jazz style piece and a new addition an Afro-cuban style solo both recorded in my home studio. I will be updating this section with more pieces in different genres to promote my drum tracking recording service.

I have now started to do Skype drum lessons, so you can now learn to play the drums from anywhere in the world! If you are interested you can contact me here or email me on thommillsdrums@aol.co.uk. My Skype username is thommillsdrums, take a look at the video I did for www.gigsido.com to see into my drumming window…

You can also checkout my profile on gigsido.com here:
http://www.gigsido.com/Lessons—Tutoring/49/teach-you-to-play-the-drums-and-become-the-ultimate-drumming-monster!-

And check out my new website…

The second installment of the Sunless ’97 Maida Vale live session was played out on Huw Stephens show on wednesday night. You can hear 2 extra tracks, Heaven Below & Illuminations and an interview here…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/showcase/clips/justadded#/clips/p00p11pg/in/justadded/justadded

Slightly momentous occasion for me, as last night I graced the airwaves of Radio 1 for the first time! It was a live session I recorded with Sunless ’97 at Maida Vale at the end of last year. You can hear 2 tracks from the 4 recorded , the last 2 are gonna be played on Huw Stephens show next wed night (Midnight-2am).

To listen click the below link and go to 1:13:00.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01b8wzf

I have finally recieved my custom made drum kit from C&C in the US and have been able to put into practice the tuning knowledge I have gained so far. I have managed to get her sounding great and wanted to share a few findings that I have learnt in the last month or so of my tuning experiment.

Firstly the main and most important fact I have learnt is that tuning is all about finding the sound you like. This is why it is sometimes called a ‘dark art.’ The best advice is to ‘trust your ears’, as drums are of an indefinite pitch therefore achieving a sound is different from person to person. Finding what sound you like at the start is hard enough, then you have to learn how to achieve that sound from the way you tune, and importantly what skins you use.

There are many different types of drum heads but I now know that my personal preferred sound is achieved with coated remo heads. I have always used clear demo heads, pinstripes, but they give a very bright open sound which isn’t the sound I was striving for. I had been struggling to tune my old drums with these heads. Coated heads give more attack and have a mellow deep sound that I really like.

In terms of the tuning process, seating all the heads on the drums properly is very important and something I had previously overlooked. From the prof sound drum tuning bible I  learnt how to do this process properly. Please read the seating heads section for more accurate instructions. In a nut shell you need to finger tight screws until just touching the washers, back off a 1/4 turn, then 1/2 turns around drum (opposites) to 3 turns, then make sure the skin is in tune with itself. Finally, use a hairdryer around the bearing edge to seat the drums properly. You will hear a cracking of  glue when it’s ready. This works!! Then I took the drums right back to no resonance, (from finger tight), 1/4 turn on each lug on the bottom and top, then another 1/4 turn on bottom skin lugs. This achieved a lovely drum sound for the toms and kick, and more importantly was the sound I have been trying to get. The top head is nice and lose so the feel of the drum is correct. This is also a really important factor as how a drum feels when you hit it makes a huge difference to the way you play and your overall sound. The only problem area is the snare drum as I am having real problem with snare buzz, when I hit the snare it produces a nice note, and sounds great together with the kit, but isolated the snares buzz for a long time after the strike. This week I shall be experiementing with the snare drum, beginning with tuning the drum with the snare’s removed first, then adding the snare wires and seeing if I can isolate the lengthy snare rattle.

Hello! I shall be partaking in the Brighton Marathon this year, on April 15th and I am running for an immensely important charity, The Terrence Higgins Trust, they are the leading and largest HIV and sexual health charity in the UK.

To do the run I have to raise a minumium of £350 so please sponsor me, any help will be greatly appreciated! You can donate here:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/thommills

Virgin Money Giving is a not for profit organisation and donations will be quickly processed and passed to my charity. You can also sponsor me in person if you prefer, just message me and I can sort it out.

Massive Thanks again for any donations, no matter how big or small!

Thom.x