Jost Nickel Beginner Book

Drum School for Beginners!

The Jost Nickel BEGINNER BOOK is perfect for you if you want to start or restart drumming and prefer a hands-on approach. You skip long theoretical explanations and instead get helpful tips on setup and essential techniques to immediately play complete grooves.

You learn the right notation step by step and can listen to all examples thanks to the online audio tracks recorded by Jost himself. With gradually increasing difficulty, you practice fills in various note values, play duets with a friend, your teacher, or the corresponding audio examples, and internalize important playing techniques like ghost notes, cross stick, and rimshots.

Almost effortlessly, you train your coordination and precise timing, learn standard patterns, and develop an understanding of musical structures. The BEGINNER BOOK is sensibly rounded off by Jost’s tips for effective practice and several playlists with song examples for many different playing techniques.

Since 2006, Jost Nickel has been a band member of Jan Delay & Disko No. 1 and has also played on many top 10 albums and with bands and artists like SEEED, Johannes Oerding, Marteria, Mousse T., and Sasha. He has worked live and in the studio with international jazz greats such as Randy Brecker, Jeff Lorber, Bob Mintzer, Jimmy Haslip, Barry Finnerty, Mitch Forman, and Brandon Fields.

Jost is a lecturer at the Pop Academy Mannheim and has made a name for himself with performances at many renowned drum festivals worldwide. "I wrote this book for beginners and newcomers." This led to his 2016 nomination as Best Clinician in Modern Drummer magazine (USA) and in 2016 and 2017 to being honored as one of the 10 best clinicians worldwide by Musicradar (UK). "I’m confident that its practical approach makes it highly suitable for teaching. The playing technique needed for the first rhythms is quickly explained and mostly intuitive. The real challenge lies in coordinating the different limbs."

His three instructional books—Jost Nickel’s GROOVE BOOK, Jost Nickel FILL BOOK, and Jost Nickel SNARE BOOK—have been published in various languages and were included in the Modern Drummer magazine’s list of best instructional works in 2019 and 2020.