About

From 0 to 240 bpm

My name is Sebastian and I am 30 years old. I’m going to become an extreme metal drummer.

When I turned 30, I realized that the most important thing missing in my life was drumming. I have always been deeply consumed by extreme metal, a genre in which drummers are clinically insane. Despite being a guitarist for most of my life, what’s always fascinated me the most about music in general and metal in particular has been drumming. There is just something magical about those blast beats.

So what’s the deal with this blog? When I turned 30, after so many years of not realizing what I should have been doing all my life, it dawned on me. Just like that. I ordered some sticks and a double bass pedal, and I rented a time slot for a rehearsal room once per week, every Sunday evening.

The first rehearsal was mind-boggling. Just sitting behind that kit, childishly exploring the sound and feel of each drum: I instantly felt at home. My deep fascination for drumming has left me no stranger to drum videos on YouTube, something that was also one of the catalysts to this series of events. But this also sparked my curiosity for actually learning how to play, not just drooling over all the great drummers out there. So I scoured the web for anything and everything that I could learn from, since I wanted answers to the most basic of questions:

  • What good exercises are there for gaining speed?
  • How am I supposed to hold the stick?
  • Why does my weak side suck so bad?

Finding these answers proved more difficult than I thought. I will try to remedy this. This will be my journey from 0 to 240 bpm.

The name for this blog, Getting up to Speed, has many reasons:

  1. Getting up to speed with drumming is what I should have been doing all my life. It’s time.

  2. This is my attempt at sharing my journey with you. My journey from knowing virtually nothing about playing drums to hopefully becoming a great drummer some day. I have yet to find good resources on what it’s like to start out, going through the pains and the frustration of sucking. A lot. I’m hoping that I can get you up to speed quicker, should you be in my position. And I’m hoping that I can look back on this with pride, knowing that I’m improving all the time.

  3. It’s of course also a pun: I want to play fast as hell, so getting up to speed is exactly what I intend to do.

  4. If you haven’t noticed, the acronym is GUTS, and I simply couldn’t ignore that. It doesn’t get any more metal than that. Plus, Guts is also the main character in an awesomely gory anime series called Berserk. Double the fun!

I will collect my thoughts and experiences into this blog. I will try to convey what it’s like to really start from scratch, slowly molding my body into a blast beating machine from hell. Sometimes I will write, sometimes I will post videos. I will discuss exercises, techniques, progress, injuries, and I might even showcase some of the gear I’m using.

So, enjoy! I sure as hell am.

Sebastian Lundström March 2015

YouTube Channel

By the way, all videos that I make are uploaded to my YouTube channel.