a drum book by Stefan van de Brug
Maybe a three is all you need.
Drum Trifecta · A Method for Flow, Calm and Creativity on the Drum Set
A drum book about the whole picture: the drummer who drums on the drums, and stays aware of all of it. Coming in 2027.
One sample worksheet now, one email when the book is out. Nothing else.
You already play.
You have a folder full of exercises, a few licks that work, and a feeling that it doesn’t quite come together. More technique rarely fixes that.
I see it every week in my lessons. A fill doesn’t work, and the first reflex is to practise harder: faster, one more rudiment. But most of the time the problem sits somewhere else: in how you sit, in how you move, in how the kit is set up around you. The stool is too low, the shoulders come up and the breath stops as soon as it gets hard. A kit that is set up wrong looks like a technique problem.
That is why Drum Trifecta always looks at the whole picture: the drummer, the drumming and the drums. Or as Maharishi put it: water the root to enjoy the fruit. To improve the fill, take care of the drummer first.
where was the balance lost?
The Drummer
Tension and breath. One stroke on the kick says enough: an open tone, or a beater that presses the head dead?
The Drums
Your triangles. Can you play them without compensating? A stool that is too high or too low is the most common cause.
The Drumming
The four knobs. Turn them back towards the start until it plays by itself again.
You run this list while you play: in a groove, between groove and fill, and around the kit.
One cell. Four knobs.
Drum Trifecta starts from one small idea: a cell of three notes, played by your right hand, your left hand or your foot.
You take that cell and turn four knobs, one at a time: what you play, how loud, where on the kit, when in the pulse. That gives 7,488 settings. Each one is a flow to settle into, not a page to get through.
one setting
Three parts, and the whole.
Part I, The Drummer
Rishi
How you sit, how you move, how you strike. The foundation you take into every exercise.
Part II, The Drumming
Devata
Cells and dynamics: a language for your hands and feet, one knob at a time.
Part III, The Drums
Chhandas
Shapes on the kit, and space in time. The same cell, now out on the drums and into the beat.
Part O, The Whole
Samhita
How a flow becomes a fill, a groove, your own playing. Present from the first page on.
What’s inside
- 30
- step plans that take one combination through the whole system.
- 30
- worksheets, written out, ready to play.
- video
- for every exercise, so you hear it before you play it.
- matrix
- The Trifecta Matrix: the whole system on one page, to lay next to your kit.
Who it’s for
Intermediate and advanced drummers who want a way of playing that is their own, and teachers who want a system they can build on.
A beginner can start on page one. Everything builds up, from simple to complex, from grounding to freedom.
before it goes to print
Test it with me.
Before the rest is written, I am testing the worksheets with drummers of every level: in my lessons in The Hague, and at home, wherever you live.
You get worksheet 11 straight away. If you are in the test group, you also get the video and a short feedback form. You play it for a few weeks and tell me what works and what doesn’t. The material is in English.
about the author
Stefan van de Brug
Stefan started teaching drums at fifteen and opened his own school at twenty. Today Drumschool Stefan van de Brug in The Hague has ten teachers and around 150 students a week.
He trained as a coach and body-oriented therapist, and as a Maharishi Consciousness Advisor. This book is twenty years of lessons, written down.
Calm is the basis of learning.
Structure makes freedom possible.
One sample worksheet now, one email when the book is out. Nothing else.