About us
An academy, not a subscription app.
The Drum Masters Academy trains on one instrument: the drum kit. A certificate in twelve months, a diploma in twenty-four, and a bachelor programme whose accreditation is in progress.
It grew out of an observation every drum teacher knows: at some point an hour a week is not enough any more. Anyone wanting to go on seriously used to have two options — a conservatoire, with a move and an entrance exam, or a video platform that shows a great deal but has nobody who listens. Between the two lies a gap, and most people are stuck in it.
This academy closes it with the combination neither side offers: a complete curriculum with exams and an award on one hand, and a dedicated tutor for the whole duration on the other. No subscription, no streak to keep alive, no badges for seven days in a row. An enrolment, a curriculum, an award.
And we stay with one instrument. Anyone who offers everything teaches nothing properly — and a curriculum that has to stand up to four examined terms cannot be written for five instruments on the side.
Certificate, diploma, bachelor
Two awards that exist, and one being worked on. What applies to which is written on the card, not in a footnote.
- 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.
What we stand for
Rigour rather than entertainment
The curriculum is built around what a drum programme demands: scope, system, examinations. No leaderboard, no streak, no reward for turning up. Anyone finishing after two years has four exams behind them, not 400 ticked-off lessons.
A person who listens
The part that cannot be filmed is the core here rather than the upsell. The same person for the whole duration, with a fixed allowance, without every question triggering a booking.
Location does not matter
The programme happens where your kit is. Nobody has to move, resign or leave their band to learn seriously. What has to stay personal is the teaching — and that is an appointment, not a video.
We say what actually applies
The certificate and the diploma are own awards, not academic degrees. The bachelor accreditation is a procedure that has not concluded. Both appear on every page where they matter, not only in the terms and conditions.
Who is behind it
Six people, each with a clearly defined responsibility — academic leadership, faculty, business development, technology and academic advice.
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.
About us
What we stand for
What we offer
Drum education: a certificate in twelve months, a diploma in twenty-four.Who the provider is
The Drum Masters Academy itself. The certificate and the diploma are its own awards, not state-conferred academic degrees; accreditation of a bachelor programme is in progress.Where the data sits
Accounts and course data in Frankfurt am Main. The full list of the services involved is in the privacy policy.
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.