About 100 years have passed since the first classes of percussion instruments appeared. In the early days, when professional training intended for percussion performers dated to, teachers faced a large number of problems, in particular, lack of a full set of percussion instruments in the classroom, the availability of instructive, educational, pedagogical and concert repertoire alongside scientific and methodological literature. As a result, the work of the first educators was based, first of all, on their personal pedagogical experience and many years of performing practice. In this regard, the appearance of the first teaching aids was a milestone in the development of professional training in playing percussion instruments. For a century-long period, not so much educational and methodological literature has appeared, which was conditioned by a number of objective and subjective factors. At the same time, each methodological manual has taken its rightful place in the development of teaching methods for playing the percussion instruments. However, time is relentlessly moving forward and, unfortunately, today, they have become less in demand, as they do not always meet the modern requirements and approaches to teaching how to play the percussion instruments. Today, Ukrainian scientists and teachers have free access to a large amount of information. Therefore, they have an opportunity to familiarise themselves with interesting developments of our foreign colleagues. However, in most cases, they cannot be used in domestic pedagogical practice, as they are not adapted to the current realities of the educational system of Ukraine due to various socio-economic and cultural factors. Thus, the issues related to the need to search for the most effective forms, methods, and approaches to teaching how to play the percussion instruments is of particular importance and relevance. The article is devoted to the methods based on the playing form of instructions which are used in schools of aesthetic education and, in particular, at the classes of percussion instruments. The purpose of the work is to present new promising areas in teaching percussion playing, based on the author’s pedagogical practice. These methods were used in the study: analysis, observation, deduction and induction. The following issues are considered in the article: the influence of learners’ age characteristics on the choice of teaching methods, the essence of the group form of training and its importance for activating the pedagogical process, traditional and non-traditional approaches to teaching / learning, as well as the analysis of the methods that are widely used in the author’s teaching practice at the classes of the percussion instruments playing. As a result of the study, some new ideas were proposed related to the training at the initial stage and the ways of their implementation by introducing the methods of collective listening, imitation, “playing with the ball”, “sweet tooth”, etc. into the pedagogical practice.