Certificate · Diploma · Bachelor in accreditation
Training you can hear.
Unleash the best drummer inside you.
Flo Dauner live with Die Fantastischen Vier
Our tutors
Earl Harvin
- Sam Smith
- Tori Amos
- Jeff Beck
Udo Maßhoff
- Alicia Keys
- Max Martin
- Apple
Katrin Hahner
- BIMM University Berlin
- Reykjavik Art Festival
- People Festival Berlin
Gábor Dörnyei
- Thriller Live
- Stanley Jordan
- Glastonbury Festival
Ulf Stricker
- Kelly Clarkson
- Bobby Kimball (TOTO)
- Heino
Aylin Hikl
- Channel strategy
- Content concepts
- On-camera coaching
Flo Dauner
- Die Fantastischen Vier
- Paul van Dyk
- Joss Stone
Jakob Kiersch
- Alphaville
- Wolfmother
- Maxïmo Park
Jan Pfennig
- Sido
- Marteria
- K.I.Z.
Stefanos Dimitriou
- Vasilis Papakonstantinou
- George Dalaras
- Arturo Sandoval
Dee Simone
- Doechii
- Ravyn Lenae
- Alison Wonderland
Why we do this
The best drummer only you can be.
There is that one moment in the day. Sticks in your hands, your head goes quiet, and for a while the time belongs to you alone.
There is music in everyone that nobody has heard yet: ideas, grooves, a sound of your own. Often the only thing missing is the craft to play it. That is exactly what we want to give you, so your hands can play what you hear in your head.
This is not about being better than anyone else. It is about becoming the best drummer only you can be.
Unleash them.
Your picture
What kind of drummer do you want to become?
You've carried this dream for a long time. Maybe since the first time you sat behind a kit. And you know there's more in you than you can play right now.
Imagine how it feels when it locks in: you count in, and everything runs. In the rehearsal room, on stage, in the studio. The others listen to you because they can rely on you.
Whether you want to make a living from it or give it your whole heart alongside your job, it comes down to the same thing: taking your dream seriously.
You're no longer playing to prove you can. You're playing because you can.
Not someday, when there is time. Now.
Jakob Kiersch, ex-Alphaville (photo: Thorsten Samesch)
Your path
Where are you right now?
You play well. Your band knows it. But you hear the difference: when pros play it sounds fuller, looser, and people move. You're not there yet — and the frustrating part is that you don't know how they do it.
No plan.
You practise, but you don't know what comes next.
Always the same fills.
Ideas don't come on demand.
It falls apart under pressure.
On stage you only play the safe version.
The song drags.
Because of you.
The left hand can't keep up.
And that's where your speed stops.
Not clean.
Ghost notes, dynamics and precision don't sound the way you want.
There's more in every drummer — just not along the same path. It's not that you don't want it enough: you haven't had a path that meets you where you are.
The awards
Three routes, one instrument.
How far you go is decided when you enrol — and you can extend later. The first twelve months are identical for both routes: if you continue, you carry on rather than start again.
- Entry route
Certificate
12 monthsTwo terms. The foundations, taken far enough to hold: hand technique, time, reading, and the basic grooves of the four style families. Concludes with an exam.
- Rudiments, stroke, rebound, stick height
- Subdivision, playing with and without a click
- Notation and reading up to a simple chart
- Rock, funk, jazz and Latin in their basic forms
- The full route
Diploma
24 monthsFour terms. The certificate year plus a second one: independence, odd meter, style in depth, recording and studio work. It ends with a prepared programme and a sight-reading section before an examining panel.
- Everything from the certificate year
- Ostinatos, comping, broken figures
- Odd meter and metric modulation
- Recording, click work, studio situations
- Final exam with programme and sight-reading
- In preparation
Bachelor
In accreditationWe are working to turn the diploma into an accredited bachelor programme. The procedure is under way. Until it is complete we confer no academic degree, and we say so wherever it matters.
- Accreditation procedure initiated
- Curriculum built around the requirements
- No place and no promise while the procedure runs
The certificate and the diploma are the academy’s own awards, not state-conferred academic degrees. Anyone enrolling receives that in writing — before the first payment, not after.
Your path
And where will you be then?
Six sentences that will then be true of you. Not because they arrive on their own, but because every single one is worked on — and because at the end of each half-year there is an exam to show whether it holds.
You are free in your playing.
Head off, music on. Play what you feel.
You feel secure.
You can trust yourself instead of hoping it will come off.
Enjoy the stage, and have fun.
No more fear of playing live: you know what to play, and you can enjoy every minute of it.
Show who you really are.
You finally have every tool you need to show people what is actually in you.
Feel real progress.
No more treading water. Practice makes sense again, because you have the tools and the method for it.
You get seen.
Other musicians take you seriously as an artist and seek you out, because you no longer have to hide.
Feedback from experienced drummers
A system that grows with you.
Lessons you can buy anywhere. What makes this a training programme are the people: once a month live in front of everyone, in between one to one with you.
- Every month
Masterclass, live
Three hours with someone whose work you know from records and tours. Questions go straight to them. The recording stays with you.
- From your allowance
One-to-one, with others too
Regular one-to-one teaching with your main tutor. For single topics — brushes, double bass, Latin, studio — you book a session with a specialist tutor, out of the same allowance.
- Between two dates
Tutors who still play
The people who teach here are still on tour and in the studio. So you are not asking how it was ten years ago, but how it runs this season.
Your learning platform, all in one view
What comes next, when the next masterclass falls, how many one-to-one sessions are left and when the next exam is due.
Everything for a lesson in one place
Video, sheet music and play-along sit together. The platform remembers where you stopped — even if ten days go by in between.
Sheet music, play-alongs, subtitles
Every lesson comes with sheet music to print and play-alongs at several tempos. Subtitles are mandatory: without a checked track, a lesson cannot be published at all.
Your next step, always in view
Which lesson is due, when the next exam falls and how many one-to-one sessions you have left — on every page, not buried in a billing area.
Feedback in one place
What your tutor wrote after a session or about a submitted recording stays collected, and is still findable four months later.
What you work on
The fields a drum programme has to cover — at the kit and beyond it. How they are spread across the terms is set out on the programme page.
At the kit
- Rudiments
- Stroke & rebound
- Subdivision
- Sight-reading
- Reading charts
- Independence
- Ostinatos
- Comping
- Odd meter
- Rock & funk
- Jazz & brushes
- Latin & Afro-Cuban
- Double bass drum
- Click work
- Playing in a band
Your secondary subjects
What decides, beyond technique, whether someone lives off their music. Five of these fields are in the curriculum. Three are not, and that is said here rather than left out.
In the curriculum
- Studio & recording
- Live
- Sound
- Teaching
- Working with other musicians
In preparation
- Business
- Career
- Personal brand
The course supplies the material. Your feedback supplies the direction.
You are closely supervised, and from a number of different angles: by experienced drummers who know the drumming world as it is now and have seen stages and recording studios around the world from the inside. A video does not hear that your hi-hat is dragging, that the left hand is quieter than the right, or that the tempo drops in the fill. A person does.
- More than one pair of earsYour main tutor stays with you for the whole programme — they hear the development a single lesson cannot show. For individual topics you also hear someone who makes their living from exactly that: brushes, double bass, Latin, studio.
- Feedback that does not vanishWhatever someone wrote to you after a session or about a recording you sent in stays collected on the platform. In four months you can read back what you worked on — and what has changed since.
- Lessons with materialsEvery lesson comes with sheet music and a play-along. Subtitles are mandatory: a lesson without a checked subtitle track cannot be published at all.
- One-to-one teaching with an allowanceA fixed allowance of one-to-one sessions per academic year, with your main tutor. For single topics — brushes, double bass, Latin, studio — you book a session with a specialist tutor, from the same allowance. The balance appears on every page of the platform.
- An exam at the end of every termPass and you move on; fail and you repeat the section with your tutor. That is the difference between a programme and a library of courses.
Once a month
Masterclass
From records, from tours, from studio productions. Three hours, live, with questions.
They don't show you what they can do — they show you how they go about it: a groove, a sound, a song they are hearing for the first time. The recording stays with you, in case you're on stage that night yourself.
Who runs the programme
Academic leadership, the drum faculty, technology and academic advice. On a programme lasting one or two years it should be clear who stands behind it — by name, and with what each person brings.
Tim Rustemeier
Founder and academic leadershipFifteen years of teaching, twenty thousand hours of coaching — and at some point the decision to stop passing on what he had been taught and to question what counts as normal in drum tuition. Out of that came the Split Flow method: it works on the nervous system, not on practice hours. A trained mechanical engineer, he thinks in fault diagnosis.
Jakob Zenzen
Head of the drum facultyA bachelor’s and a master’s in jazz/pop from the Conservatorium Maastricht, where he now teaches as a guest. Eighty to a hundred performances a year: Cologne Opera, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Circus Roncalli, productions for WDR, plus big band, musical theatre and pop. That range is the yardstick for the curriculum he is responsible for.
Rico Horber
Business developmentMore than twenty-five years internationally as a musician, producer and entrepreneur: touring worldwide, and building several drum schools and franchise structures, among them the Swiss Drum Academy in 2007. He has already built what is being built here. His focus: partnerships, accreditation, curriculum.
Maksim Suras
Chief technology officerSelf-employed in IT for over a decade, working on building and running infrastructure. At the academy he is responsible for the architecture, security and operation of the learning platform: protecting course videos against redistribution, keeping the public website and the signed-in area apart, and the question of which data is stored where.
Nico Böhmelt
Head of platform engineeringBuilds and runs the learning platform: course structure, video delivery, session management, access. His yardstick is the practice room — anything you cannot operate there one-handed on a phone does not ship. That includes what nobody sees: that two people never get the same slot and that a quota adds up.
Dr. Gunnar Schomaker
Academic adviceAdvises on the methodology and didactics of the programme and on how progress at an instrument can be measured at all — what an examination can show and what it cannot. He is also the person who objects when a claim about learning outcomes sounds good but is not evidenced — which happens more often than is good for a training programme.
Numbers we can back up
- 12Months to the certificateDuration per the study regulations
- 24Months to the diplomaDuration per the study regulations
- 100 %of our tutors with credits you can look upTours, albums and productions — listed on each tutor’s own page, not as a total
Apply
Apply with your playing.
No certificates, no CV: you send a recording. A tutor listens to it and writes back telling you what is solid, what is in the way, and which of the three routes fits you. Applying costs nothing.
- Record one video: technique, playing on the kit, a short introduction.
- Upload it wherever you like and send us the link.
- Written feedback arrives within a few days.
Common questions
The questions that come up most often in the first conversation, answered here in advance.
What does the programme cost?
The academic leadership gives you the fee in the first conversation, in full and in writing: amount, payment method, instalment option and start date. The reason for the conversation is not the price, though — it is working out which of the three routes suits you.
How long does it take, and can I extend later?
The certificate takes twelve months, the diploma twenty-four. The first two terms are identical. If you want to continue after the certificate, you enrol for the second year and carry on — you do not start again.
Do I have to be online at fixed times?
Not for the lessons — you take those whenever you have time. One-to-one appointments you arrange directly with your tutor.
Do I have one tutor, or do I switch by topic?
Both, in that order: you have a main tutor — the same person throughout, who takes you through the year and prepares you for the exams. When a topic comes up where somebody else is the right person (brushes, double bass, Latin, studio), you book individual sessions with a specialist tutor: from the same allowance, agreed with your main tutor. Anyone who wants to stay with one person stays with one person.
How much do I need to practise?
Four to six hours a week is realistic, spread over as many days as possible. Twenty minutes a day does more than two hours on a Sunday — that is not an opinion, it is the reason the curriculum is built in small units.
How well do I have to play already?
You should be able to handle a kit and hold a basic groove. Reading is not a prerequisite; you learn that here. Whether your level fits is what your application video is for: you get written feedback, free of charge.
Do I need an acoustic kit?
An electronic kit is enough for most of the programme and is often the only option in a flat. For dynamics, cymbal work and brushes an acoustic kit becomes the better tool at some point. When that point comes is something you discuss with your tutor.
Is the award state-recognised?
The certificate and the diploma are the academy’s own awards, not state-conferred academic degrees. Accreditation of a bachelor programme is in progress; while it is running we confer no academic degree. We say this plainly because private diplomas are often advertised differently.
What happens if I fail an exam?
You repeat the section with your tutor and sit it again. It costs time, but it ends nothing — the point of an exam is that nobody is passed along with gaps.
Can I enrol directly here?
No. The conversation comes first, the account second. There is deliberately no self-registration: we want to know where you stand, and you want to know what you are taking on.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. There is rarely a computer in a practice room, so the platform is built for the phone — open the chart, start the play-along, carry on playing.
Apply to us now.
One video, a few questions, done. A tutor watches your playing and replies in writing — with what to work on next, and with which of the three routes fits you. If you would rather write than play, that works too.