modern drummer
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.
Catching Up With…Jason Bittner
In 2007, at the Sounds of the Underground festival in Phoenix, Arizona, where Shadows Fall was on the bill, Jason Bittner heard that Kelly Smith, drummer for the thrash veterans Flotsam and Jetsam, was in attendance. Bittner first met Smith…
Catching Up With… Good Tiger’s Alex Rüdinger
Since kicking down the door to the metal world with his jaw-dropping YouTube play-along videos more than six years ago, twenty-four-year-old journeyman Alex Rüdinger has filled in on tours with Monuments and Revocation and recorded and toured with his still-breathing…
Steven Tyler’s Sarah Tomek
I was first convinced of Sarah Tomek’s eminent skills on a night when our bands were both on the bill at Asbury Lanes, a bowling alley turned rock club in Tomek’s hometown. Yup, the same one immortalized in the title…
Paal Nilssen-Love
Imagine an organic synthesis of Elvin Jones, Art Blakey, and Milford Graves poured through a thoughtful post-hardcore player, and you have Norway’s Paal Nilssen-Love. A busy musician who divides his performances between solo concerts and support roles, Nilssen-Love brings the…
In Memoriam: Remo Belli 1927–2016
Remo Belli started out like most of us: a humble drummer, looking to make a difference on the scene. Even he could not have predicted that, in time, that scene would encompass all of humankind. In this special tribute, players…
Around The World - African Pop Meets American Funk
Popular African pop rhythms from the past twenty to thirty years are starting to appear in American funk music. In this article we’ll explore the triplet-based African rhythm mangambe, which we’ll apply to a funk setting. TO READ THE FULL…
Concepts - Playing From The Inside Out
This month I’d like to discuss one of the biggest issues I see with young drummers: the loose and questionable sound of unintentional ideas. This usually happens during fills and solos, but it sometimes exists during grooves as well. Many…
Jazz Drummer's Workshop - Five-Note Patterns
We discussed Tony Williams’ use of five-note ride patterns in the February 2015 issue of Modern Drummer. In this lesson we’ll analyze approaches that Max Roach and Bill Stewart have used to utilize five-note groupings around the drumset, and we’ll…
Catching Up With…Will Kennedy
The future was a mystery for Will Kennedy at the turn of the millennium, after he announced that he’d leave the high-profile electric jazzers Yellowjackets to focus on other projects. Now, after returning to the band in 2010, he’s sounding…
Catching Up With…Bun E. Carlos
While the current members of Cheap Trick used the run-up to the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction to promote a new album and take potshots at former drummer Bun E. Carlos in the press, the famously bespectacled…
Charles Haynes
Charles Haynes is a true drumming multi-talent. The forty-year-old Boston resident has toured the globe with the pop stars Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Ed Sheeran, and Queen Latifah. TO READ THE FULL STORY: SUBSCRIBE TO ACCESS LOG IN
Great ’80s Drum Performances, Part 1
The era known as the ’80s, roughly the period between the dawn of punk and rap in the late ’70s and the rise of indie rock and hair metal in the middle of the next decade, was a time of…
Steven Wolf
The modern-day hit-making machine has all the chops you’d want, grooves like a feel-good metronome, and programs drum parts that make you think, Are those real drums…or is it programmed? Most of the time, it’s both. TO READ THE FULL…
Setting Sights: Navene Koperweis
After taking time away from doing the band thing to focus on his solo electronic project, Navene K, the multi-instrumentalist is relishing the struggle of leading a group again. TO READ THE FULL STORY: SUBSCRIBE TO ACCESS LOG IN
