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Electronic drums for beginners
Electronic drums for beginners are electronic kits with pads, a sound module and pedals that help you learn to keep time and coordinate your hands and feet. Their main advantage is volume control: with headphones, you can practise in a flat even in the evening. You can choose from full kits by NRG, Alesis, Roland, Yamaha and Nux, as well as compact electronic drums that fit on a table or in a bag. Drumsticks are included with almost every kit, and many also come with a stool and headphones.
Rubber pads or mesh heads for your beginner electronic drums?
Electronic drum pads are made from rubber or fitted with a mesh head. A rubber pad is durable and simple, but makes more tapping noise when struck and gives the stick a harder rebound. A mesh head is quieter, lets the stick rebound more like an acoustic drumhead and has adjustable tension. Kits with mesh heads include Alesis Debut Kit, Alesis Turbo Mesh Kit and Alesis Nitro Max Kit, while Roland TD-02KV has a mesh snare drum and Roland TD-02K has rubber pads.
A full kit or compact electronic drums?
A full electronic kit is mounted on a rack and has separate pads for the snare, toms and cymbals, a bass drum pedal and a hi-hat pedal. You move as you would at an acoustic drum kit, so it prepares you well for drum lessons. Compact electronic drums, such as Yamaha DD-75, have pads in a single unit and small pedals, also run on batteries and suit children or a small room. AeroBand PocketDrum 2 MAX consists of sticks with motion sensors that let you drum in the air while wearing headphones.
| Design | Who it suits |
|---|---|
| Full kit mounted on a rack | Anyone who wants to move on to acoustic drums or take lessons |
| Compact electronic drums | Children and small spaces |
| Sticks with motion sensors | Playing anywhere, including on the go |
If you want to play real drums with drumheads and have room for them, take a look at acoustic drums for beginners. You can find the full selection for new drummers on the drums for beginners page.
What does the sound module do, and what is USB for?
The sound module turns your strikes into the sound you hear through headphones or a speaker. It contains preset kits with different drum and cymbal sounds, usually 10 to 50 on beginner kits. Almost all the kits here have USB: they send information about each strike to a computer or tablet over USB MIDI, so you can play with learning apps, record or use drum sounds from software. Even when you use headphones, the tapping of the pads and pedal impacts travelling through the floor can still be heard, so a carpet or mat under the kit helps in a block of flats.
