Good basic material for a non-drummer such as myself who wanted a taste of hands/feet coordination in the hope it would tighten up my own sense of time. I also wanted to understand

how drum beats are put together in various styles to help "compose" rhythm tracks with a drum machine.

The book is in the form of lessons and begins with the most basic time keeping and quickly demonstrates authentic-sounding drum parts in a variety of styles including rock, funk, swing

and blues. You're not going to learn how to play solos here, but you will learn the essence of feel and groove.

This might sound nuts, but just playing "air drums" with the exercises in this book taught me a lot of about time and the body's relationship to it. I'm sure drummers

know this stuff instinctively but for this string player it's been an enjoyable eye-opener.

The recording contains tracks with and without drums to demonstrate the lessons and function as a play along.

As a professional drummer and drum teacher, I literally cringed at the drawings of proper seated position in this book! It shows that drummers should slouch. Unfortunately, this is not a unique problem - I've seen the same thing in piano books and for other instruments, too... but you';d really hope that a Berklee Book wouldn't show this kind of mistake.

Many of the other illustrations in the book are clear, although the setup pic also showed some problems (such as the location of the seat.

As far as what to play, this book is INCREDIBLY simple. I've seen harder stuff written out for 4 year olds.