Education
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.
Joe Morello: Master Studies
In our further celebration of Joe Morello’s legendary book Master Studies; in the next few months Modern Drummer will be bringing you one of the best and most beneficial sections of the book and Joe’s teaching, the Control Studies. While…
Triplets to Sixteenth notes
This is an exercise that I call Triplets to Sixteenth notes. This entire exercise can be played over the foot patterns written in bar A, B, and C. For starters, I will play a bar of triplets and then I’ll…
Open Handed Drumming is to play ‘Open Hearted’
The ‘Open Handed’ Mindset You might have seen me play and noticed I do things a little differently. By now you know ‘different is good’, because there are no rules! The way I play is called OPEN HANDED DRUMMING, which…
Double Bass Drumming Part 5 Eight Note Triple Fills
This month we will continue with more fills from Joe Franco’s groundbreaking book, Double Bass Drumming. This month Modern Drummer is including Joe’s explanation of eighth note triplet double bass fills using his Single Stroke System, and we are including…
The Polyrhythm Conversion Timetable
The following comparative timetable illustrates how polymeters and polyrhythms work with one another when played at the same tempo and time signature.The first fundamental polymeter starts with with 3 over-4 notes (3:4), followed by 5:4, 6:4, 7:4, and 8:4. Within…
Carmine Appice: Realistic Sixteenth Note Triplets
Continuing Modern Drummer’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Carmine Appice’s Ultimate Realistic Rock book, this month we present a sound often associated with Carmine’s playing in Vanilla Fudge, many of John Bonham’s Led Zeppelin grooves, and later with Dennis…
MIDI 2.0 - The biggest advance in Music Technology in 40 years
In this month’s column, we will focus on MIDI, discuss the role of the MIDI Association with the continuing evolution of MIDI technology and take a close look at the expanded features coming soon with MIDI 2.0. The upshot is…
The Business Side of Drumming
For this month’s article, I’m going to share some of my personal insights for dealing with the business side of drumming. If you’re lucky enough to be making a living playing drums, then you are already aware of the importance…
Accent Options
Drum Channel and I would like to share something with you that I created called accent options. This is a warmup or rudimental exercise that I like to use. You can take any rudiment that has an accent and apply…
Double Bass Drumming Single Stroke System
This month we will continue with a section from Joe Franco’s groundbreaking book, Double Bass Drumming. This month Modern Drummer are including Joe’s explanation of double bass fills using his Single Stroke System, and include several of Joe’s fantastic sounding…
Joe Morello: Master Studies
George Lawrence Stone was a legendary drum teacher and musician, one of his prize pupils was Joe Morello. Joe carried on Stone’s valuable teachings and added his valuable insights in his books Master Studies and Master Studies II. This month,…
Sound Design Part 2: The Microcosm Effects Pedal
In Part 2 of this Sound Design Series, we will explore the use of hardware effects pedals as a means of processing drum and percussion sounds. In Part 1 of this series, we focused on computer-based effects plugins used in…
Realistic 9/8 Time
Continuing Modern Drummer’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Carmine Appice’s Ultimate Realistic Rock book, this month we present one of the bonus sections that was included in Ultimate Realistic Rock, and not included in the original text of Realistic…
The Game Changers Part 2
Welcome back for part two! Last month we discussed several important topics that I felt were monumental in my growth as a player. Those were: understanding subdivision, learning to read music, developing your ears, and learning to write charts/roadmaps. Once…
