What would you pay (if anything) for a downloadable drumming course

[Jonathan Curtis]

Here's the situation:

The academy for which I teach briefed me with writing a "distance learning course", akin to the Open University, about a specific area of drumming. I picked double bass drumming, as it's a commonly confused topic, and began writing ten weeks' worth of course.

However, it now appears that they wanted a media heavy, YouTube style series of lessons, which mine certainly is not, and I'm now faced with the prospect of having my course rejected. As I've put a lot of time and effort into it, should that happen, I'm thinking of hosting it and selling it myself.

Basically, it's ten lessons worth of educational lessons on double bass drumming, loosely following the first 3 Trinity grade requirements, but getting really rather difficult towards the end. It covers rudimental application, co-ordination exercises, odd times etc. etc., presented asa explanatory articles, with notated examples and audio demonstrations.

If you could buy and download this from an online market, what would you consider a reasonable price? There's ten weeks worth of lessons, with everything transcribed, covering absolute basics, through to playing fast, ostinatos and all of the above.

£19.99?

£50?

£5?

I was originally told they would retail for £100, of which they'd take a 35% cut for hosting, marketing etc., so I'd aimed to flesh it out as much as possible to make it worth £100.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks

 

[brentcn]

I'm sure there's some market for double-bass drumming tutorials, but probably not enough to make it worth your while financially. The "YouTube Drum Instructors" that already exist -- they likely have memberships where an individual can request to have a song or lick explained/demonstrated/transcribed, in addition to a wide catalog of lessons. If not, then this is something to look into.

One problem with selling a bunch of lessons is that the student probably does not need them all, or they progress too quickly or slowly, or don't cover the material the student wants, etc. It's a "one size fits all" approach, when most students need/want their own custom tailored suit.

It covers rudimental application, co-ordination exercises, odd times etc. etc., presented asa explanatory articles, with notated examples and audio demonstrations.

I know you mean well here, but most students simply don't care about rudiments, coordination, or odd-times. The vast majority of students like music, and they like the drums in the songs. In all my teaching, I've had one student ask me about Gary Chaffee. One. I wouldn't have heard of him myself if I hadn't heard a Vital Information CD playing in a drum shop years ago.

If you honestly want to help drummers learn, then you should be willing to engage them directly. If it were me, I'd give the lessons away for free, and offer explanations, video demonstrations, and transcriptions of specific songs or song parts for a fee or subscription. During the explanations, sneak in some teaching.

 

[Arky]

I'd say £19.99 - but this is without knowing how many PDF pages and MP3s there are. You say it's a 10-week course but the tutorials I'm buying usually aren't structured as for an x amount of time so I find it hard to estimate the overall scope of your work.