…and then Pete Townsend says, “Can anybody play the drums?”

I was thinking about reinstalling Rock Band again recently, but I decided that, even though I really loved playing it back in the day, I am at a point in my life where I would rather spend that time actually learning an instrument, instead. I have played bass guitar and ukulele in the past. I also played guitar in the way that every lame college dude does, which means I never learned any theory, but I memorized some guitar tabs and chords, and sort of faked my way through a few songs for friends who were either too polite or embarrassed to tell me how bad I was.

I was sort of thinking that doing it as a game would be fun, so I gave Rocksmith guitar a try, but after about two hours of different game modes, it’s not for me. It was like all the frustration of Rock Band or Guitar hero, but without any of the fun of pretending that I was a rock star. I may plug in my old bass guitar (which is now a vintage instrument because I’m old) and try that mode, but for now, I’m going to try something different.

I have always wanted to learn to play the drums, and I was pretty good at the Rock Band drums when we played all the time, so I decided to pick up a small, inexpensive, student kit, and use YouTube videos to master the basics. While I was shopping around about a week ago, there was a shiny little kit on sale at woot, and it had more pieces and cost less than the three piece kit I was looking it, so I bought it. It was delivered today.

I’ve been putting it together, which is really fun, but murder on my old hands and knuckle joints, so I took a break to write this dumb post about the new experimental hobby thingy I’m doing: Is it possible for a 45 year-old dude like me to learn how to play the drums, using only the resources available online?

I intend to find out. I’ll document the process here.