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.
Progressive Drumming Essentials: Another New Realm of Groove
Progressive Drumming Essentials is a collection of articles originally written for Modern Drummer magazine. They are exactly what the title says, PROGRESSIVE drumming essentials. This series of articles, and the book that contains them all, represent a great deal of…
Tapping Into Your Drumming Intuition
There’s a kid’s game called random lines, where you take a piece of paper and draw a line anywhere on the page. Then, you pass it to the next person, and they draw another line connected to the first, and…
Applications on the Drumset: Part 2
Some of you might have seen my snare drum book entitled 20 Modern Snare Drum Solos that was released in 2024. When I wrote that book, I really had the drumset in mind meaning that most of the vocabulary found…
Tower of Power’s “The Skunk, The Goose and The Fly,” from East Bay Grease. Drummer, David Garibaldi
This month, we travel back to 1970—the explosive dawn of funk music. At the time, James Brown ruled the genre, building its very foundation alongside legendary drummers Clyde Stubblefield and Jabo Starks. Concurrently, Sly and the Family Stone were riding…
Jeff Elwood: Engineering A New Way to Play
For Jeff Elwood, giving up the drums was never an option. After a life-changing accident left him paralyzed from the chest down, he spent years experimenting with homemade triggers, modified pedals, and custom setups in order to find a way…
Jimmy Madison: Drumming. Climbing. Living.
There is always a lot to be learned from a drummer who has been successful in the music business for 60 years. Jimmy Madison has seen it all. In 1966, he toured with Lionel Hampton. He came to New York…
Greg Clark Jr. Taking Things Seriously and Keeping Things Interesting with Will Smith and Stanley Clarke
When you talk to Greg Clark Jr. there are two words that you will hear him say many times: “interesting” and “100 percent!” They are also the two words that might best describe him and his drumming. After listening to…
Lamb of God’s Art Cruz: Learning and Listening, Musical Moments, and Healthy Obsessions
After hitting the East LA music scene with his band Winds of Plague and spending four years and doing four records with Prong; Art Cruz got the call of a lifetime in 2018. Lamb of God was one of his…
YAMAHA YOUNG PERFORMING ARTISTS COMPETITION, MID ATLANTIC DRUM CAMP SCHOLARSHIP CONTEST WINNERS
Yamaha Honors Two University of North Texas Students in its 37th Annual Yamaha Young Performing Artists Competition Elijah Marrewa and Alex Parker, students at the University of North Texas in Denton, TX, are among the thirteen winners of the 2026…
Speed-A-Beat: Universal Bass Drum Pedal Roller-Ball Module
Can you double your foot speed? That’s what John Crocken’s Speed-A-Beat sets out to answer. The patented module is built around a single mechanical idea: replace the friction between foot and footboard with a bed of free-spinning steel bearings and see what happens. John Crocken, known…
YAMAHA EAD50, NEW PORTER & DAVIES USERS, NEW AKAI SOFTWARE UPDATE
New Yamaha EAD50 Yamaha is proud to introduce two exciting additions now available to drummers: the EAD50 Electronic Acoustic Drum Module, a high‑spec next‑generation model that expands on the EAD10 concept, and the DSU50 stereo condenser microphone, included with the…
Yamaha EAD50 Part 2: It Feels Like Home
In Part 1 of this series, David Frangioni and I brought the Yamaha EAD50 into Markee Music in Deerfield Beach, Florida, to evaluate its most basic configuration in a professional studio environment. With the DSU50 drum sensor mounted to the bass drum, the system…
Music Minus One
The running cliche amongst my peers these days is, “Don’t fall down.” We’re all desperate to remain injury-free. Stories shared are more often about non-slip hotel bathroom shower stalls than musical conquests (romantic conquests went the way of the sideman…
Summer Drum Reading
Summer is here! If you are touring you will be logging many hours in busses, vans, and planes. If you are vacationing, there may be hours at the pool, lake, or beach. Maybe you are a homebody and just enjoy…
