Feature Stories
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.
George Wettling: The Ultimate "Chicago style" Accompanist
George Wettling was one of the leading proponents of the early “Chicago style” of jazz drumming. A tasteful, imaginative, unobtrusive player, Wettling quickly built a reputation as the ultimate band drummer. Wettling took the conceptual and stylistic elements of Baby…
William "Cozy" Cole: The Father Of Coordinated Independence
Cozy Cole, an incredibly adept player, was strongly rooted in the rudimental style, but he contributed much to jazz drumming. One of the first players to develop his own brand of hand and foot coordination, he mastered the technique thoroughly,…
Drum Therapy: An Introduction
by Pat Gesualdo This monthly column is designed to assist drum instructors, doctors, and teachers in helping their special-needs students and patients develop physical and cognitive functioning via the drumming art form. Each month I’ll guide you through the Drum…
What Do You Know About...Richie Hayward?
by Bob Girouard Classic Hayward A hallmark of Richie Hayward’s style is his feel. The New Orleans influence is all over his playing, especially in the way he approaches shuffles and second-line rhythms. Here are a few of the drummer’s…
"Papa" Jo Jones: Drumming’s Fearsome Father Figure
It’s been said that modern drumming made its first step towards maturity when Jo Jones arrived in New York in 1936 with the Count Basie band. Within a few years, “Papa” Jo became the idol of hundreds of drummers across…
Roy Haynes: The Hippest Of The Hip
It’s taken the jazz community nearly half a century to catch up with the inventive and super-hip stylings of Roy Haynes — the oft-proclaimed “father of modern drumming.” Nowadays, you don’t have to look too hard to spot Haynes’ influence…
Arthur "Zutty" Singleton: True Jazz Drumming Pioneer
“We just kept the rhythm going and hardly ever took a solo.” —Zutty Singleton Zutty Singleton was born in Bunkie, Louisiana in 1898, and was basically a self-taught drummer. During his illustrious career he worked with Steve Louis, The Tuxedo…
Warren “Baby??? Dodds: The World's First Great Jazz Drummer
“Dodds was swingin’ so much, I was late an entire set. But I couldn’t leave. I sat down and just stayed.” —Philly Joe Jones “Baby taught me more than all the others. He was the first great soloist.” —Gene Krupa…
Han Bennink: Things No Drummer Has Ever Done
In his video, Solo, Dutch phenomenon Han Bennink does things no drummer has ever done in any performance, much less on video. Han ties ropes around a drumset and then crashes the drums and cymbals together like dominoes spinning in…
Elvin Jones: The Great Liberator
When Elvin Jones moved from his home town in Michigan to New York City in 1956, the jazz-listening world wasn’t quite ready for the drummer’s outer-space conception. His loping, circular sense of swing and abstract, barline-blurring breaks weren’t easy to…
Gene Krupa: The Man Who Made It All Happen
If anyone can be considered the founding father of modern drumset playing, it’s Gene Krupa. Krupa legitimized a collection of instruments known as the “traps” at a time when both the instrument and its players were barely tolerated. He led…
Buddy Rich: The World's Greatest Drummer
Buddy Rich has been called the greatest jazz drummer of all time—a statement that few would argue with. Buddy was born on September 30, 1917, and his drumming career spanned seven decades, beginning when he was just eighteen months old…
James "The Rev" Sullivan
The supercharged Avenged Sevenfold timekeeper keeps old-school metal alive with brute force, machine-like precision, and a flair for the dramatic by Michael Parillo Avenged Sevenfold does nothing halfway. From their wacky aliases to their arm-covering tattoos to their breakneck…
Ask A Pro: Jason Bittner
In this video we join Jason backstage at a recent Shadows Fall concert, where he shares some exclusive up-close demonstrations of his playing on the track "King Of Nothing," from the band's latest album, Retribution. Jason Bittner King Of Nothing Lesson…
