The Drum Suite Jams

The Drum Suite Jams is a self-published drum education book that teaches young musicians to play through songs they actually want to learn.

Musicians coming up today grew up online. They're aesthetically conscious, self-taught, and find their way into music outside of traditional routes, which has been true of rock and pop musicians for decades. The design rejects the clean, conservative aesthetic of typical music education publishing deliberately, drawing instead on rhythmical typography and contemporary illustration to signal that this is a book about playing, not studying. That rejection of convention is central to the author’s own approach: self-taught, instinct-driven, and rooted in how musicians actually emerge.

Working with drum tutor, Rob Simms, the project extended beyond the cover to include full publication layout, sheet music typesetting, and editorial copywriting throughout. Rob's teaching philosophy, that students learn better when they're relaxed and enjoying themselves, shaped every design decision, from the approachable visual language to the tone of the written copy. The result is a book that doesn't look or feel like a graded music syllabus, even though it's designed to support students from SQA National 5 through to Advanced Higher.