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Modern Drummer is the world’s most widely read drum magazine, is dedicated entirely to the art of drumming and caters to the needs of amateur, semi-pro, and professional drummers.
Burn, Baby, Burn!
Hello, everyone. I hope your summer has been going as well as it can be. Welcome to another special issue of Modern Drummer. Come on, you have to admit the last few issues have been pretty amazing. (Thank you, MD…
Eric Boudreault’s Treetop Percussion
Just about every pit gig and live-performance for a multimedia theatrical production can be tough. Negotiating myriad cues, charts, conductors, actors, and other elements can stress out even the most skilled professional. But is your gig, 23-feet-in-the-air-atop-a-tree tough? That is…
The Healing Power of Silence
The center of a musician’s world is often thought to be within their love for sound, melody, and rhythm. Most of you reading this article will be big fans of sound in general—creating sound, appreciating sound, and listening to sound.…
Killing the Mud Monster
There are tons of things that can kill your home-studio project. A nuclear error is recording a crappy song to start with. But you also need to beware of signal-chain distortion, really awful gear (mics, preamps, etc.), format futz-ups, bad…
Justice James on Swingin’ Surf
It seemed like a pretty normal surf show until it wasn’t. The Young Barons were onstage performing their edgy, modern-primitive style of surf music. Suddenly, the drums exploded like Buddy Rich torturing the squares at a 1940s swing dance with…
Get Into the Groove
To further celebrate the soulful, timekeeping majesty of this month’s cover artist Earl Young, we dove into the Modern Drummer archives to find ten other groove masters talking about how they make the music move. Greg Errico, October 2011 “Sly…
Roger Hawkins October 16, 1945 – May 20, 2021
Roger Hawkins—one of music history’s most recorded drummers—died peacefully at his home in Sheffield, Alabama, after a few years of declining health. He was 75 years old. Hawkins has been called an architect of the Muscle Shoals sound. He was…
Terry Bozzio
Modern Drummer, July 1994 “Even though I’ve got that humongous drum kit sitting there, I’ve learned I don’t have to use it all at once. Igor Stravinsky thought nothing of having five solo cellos play a section in the middle…
Celebrating Drummers and the MD Community
This month’s issue represents another milestone in Modern Drummer’s storied history: Sheila E. is the Modern Drummer Readers Poll 2021 Hall Of Fame inductee! It’s hard to believe that Sheila is the first woman to be recognized by our readers…
Crowded House
Markus Gerhard Branches Out Lake Ridge, Virginia-based drummer Markus Gerhard plays with the band Given Eye, which just dropped its first release, “Soops Hoots,” in May 2021. The band sounds a bit like a ‘90s-indie-rock recast of 10cc—which is pretty…
Multisensory Perception and Drummers
We have been taught the five basic senses are sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and skin. Anything perceived as outside of these basic receptors has been considered “extra sensory”—falling under E.S.P. or psychic guidelines of…
8 Tips for Mixing Drums with Maximum Impact
While the pre-vaccination era of COVID annihilated any chance for musicians to earn revenue from live shows, it also boosted collaborative, home-recording projects by insane degrees. Everyone was quarantined for a time, so anyone with an idea for a tune…
The Appice Brothers Take to the Airwaves
In one of those sci-fi-esque synergies of parallel dimensions, interviewing Carmine and Vinny Appice about their Hangin’ & Bangin’ livestream show is practically like being in an episode. Carmine’s enthusiastic rat-a-tat delivery is often gleefully interrupted with punctuations and elaborations…
Harvey Mason
Modern Drummer, July 1981 “Artists generally give me creative freedom. Sometimes, I feel that people are intimidated, and they don’t want to tell me what to play—which is too bad. I want everything. I want it both ways. I want…
