You need surprisingly little to start drumming well: a pair of sticks, something to hit, and something to protect your ears. Everything else — double pedals, cymbal stacks, a bigger kit — can wait until the music asks for it.
Sticks
Stick sizes are a code: the number is roughly inverse to thickness, the letter is a historical accident. 5A is the all-purpose middle — start there. 7A is thinner and lighter (jazz, small hands); 5B and 2B are thicker and heavier (rock, metal, pad practice). Wood tip is the default. Buy two or three pairs of the same model so a broken stick never ends a practice session, and hold each pair before buying if you can — roll them on a flat counter to check for warps.
Something to Hit
There are three tiers, and each one is a legitimate place to live for a while:
- A practice pad (~the price of a video game) plus a metronome covers every rudiment and hand-technique lesson in Foundations. Quiet, portable, zero setup.
- An electronic kit adds feet and voices with headphone-level volume. The feel isn't identical to acoustic drums, but every coordination and groove lesson works on one.
- An acoustic kit — buy used. Entry-level acoustic kits lose most of their value the day they leave the shop, which makes the second-hand market a beginner's best friend. A used mid-tier kit with worn heads beats a new budget kit; heads are replaceable (see Tuning Your Drums).
Protect Your Hearing — Non-Negotiable
An acoustic drum kit runs 100–120 dB — louder than a chainsaw, well past the level that causes permanent hearing damage in minutes. Hearing loss and tinnitus do not heal. Foam earplugs from a pharmacy work; musician's earplugs (which cut volume evenly across frequencies instead of muffling the highs) are a modest upgrade that makes protected practice sound normal. Isolation headphones let you hear a click or a song while cutting the kit's volume. Whatever you choose, keep it at the kit so using it is easier than not.
What You Don't Need Yet
A double pedal, a second crash, a china, a cowbell mount, in-ear monitors, a drum rug with your name on it. All real gear with real uses — none of it teaches you a paradiddle. When a lesson in this curriculum needs a piece of equipment, the lesson says so.