i've noticed many of my favorite musicians are multi-instrumentalists who started on drums or whose best instrument is drums, you included. my main instruments are voice, piano, and guitar in that order, but i would really like to have that drum-based foundation/way of thinking about music & songs. however, i don't have access to a proper drumset right now. do you think a practice pad/pillow would be good enough to learn these concepts?
to learn drums, in music, there actually might be something more important than owning a drumset and it's this: playing in a band for a live audience, where you are the drummer and thus are largely responsible for directing and guiding the rhythmic cohesion of the whole group, and hence the whole room. this is the part of drumming that i think will strenghten you in the way that you are looking for