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.
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…
The Etiquette of Sitting In
The Considerate Guest Let’s assume you are going to sit in with a group—either at your request or their invitation. There are definitely some things you should do before you actually come up on stage to play. The first and…
16th-Note Accents
Excepted from Accent Control Accents add color and dynamic variation to our drumming, and they’re an extremely essential aspect of every drummer’s technique. The 16th-note accent patterns that follow should be practiced using the four stickings shown: (a) alternate sticking…
Funky Shuffles
Music has changed a lot, but it’s important to see where the shuffle evolved from, because it really has a lot to do with all of the other rhythms that you play. For example, when I was playing “Kissing my…
Dynamics Mechanics
Excerpted from Rhythm & Chops Builders I believe that a drummer should be able to pick up sticks and make music on any sound source. The two biggest keys to doing this are having extensive rhythmic and rudimental vocabulary and…
Yamaha Super Rack System, April 1990
When SimCity—a video game that allowed players to conceptualize and build simulated metropolises—debuted to the public in 1989, it became a phenomenon. Given the massive architecture of the 1990 Super Rack System, it appears a few folks in the Yamaha…
8 Affordable Home Recording Tools
There certainly hasn’t been a bucketload of good about pandemic lockdowns, but when you have ambitious and creative musicians stuck at home, they tend to figure out ways to get their music out there. Many creators upgraded their home studios,…
Donn Bennett’s Drum Vault
Glen Sobel’s 2015 Green Snakeskin Mapex Kit Virtually any musician can tell you about the early influences they idolized, imitated, and obsessed about. The names change, but the story is usually pretty much the same: You listened to their recordings…
Low Boy
Custom Lightweight Bass Drum Beater Customizing stuff is one of my guilty pleasures—I’m always “building” cars on manufacturer websites that I have no intention of actually buying—so the opportunity to design my own beater was what initially attracted me to…
EAROS
EAROS ONE Decades of standing in front of guitar amps, drums, and mixing consoles has “rewarded” me with tinnitus, difficulty hearing some frequencies clearly, and if you’re sitting a few chairs away from me in a loud, ambient restaurant, you’ll…
Audix
DP7 Drum Mic Pack For any pro- or home-studio engineer, live-sound mixer, or weekend tone miner, the goal is to get the sound crisp, clean, and just right. A lot of the gig is having ears, knowing the ins and…
Gretsch
Classic Renown 57 I was immediately aware I was in two kinds of big trouble when I opened the initial press-release announcement for the Limited Edition Gretsch Classic Renown 57. Big Trouble Number One: The photos of the kit in…
NEW GEAR - August 2021
Status Audio Between Pro Wireless Earbuds I have to dig that Status Audio was founded by a drummer, New York’s James Bertuzzi. Bertuzzi’s company was recently crowdfunded to the tune of $1 million (a very good sign, indeed), and he…
Peter Criss
Excerpted from the February 1999 Cover Story Peter Criss—born Peter George Criscuola—is a true rock ‘n’ roll survivor. The Brooklyn-bred drummer, whose affinity for jazz prompted him to seek out Gene Krupa as a youth, ran an ad in Rolling…
