Bill Bruford

“My passion in continuing Quiet Riot has everything to do with the fact that drumming is what I’ve always wanted to do,” Quiet Riot’s Frankie Banali told Modern Drummer in a 2015 interview. “I worked very hard and struggled a lot to get to the point that we did with …

Jonathan Schang, drummer and leader of the neo-prog band District 97, has graciously invited Modern Drummer to premiere the group’s video to the song “Sleep,” from their upcoming album Screens.

This past April 21, Eric Slick, the drummer for the ’60s-influenced indie-rock band Dr. Dog, released his debut solo album, Palisades.

What is the rhythmic essence of progressive music? What makes prog so different from other genres? Does it require a specific skill set on the drumkit, or does the nature of the music make it open to interpretation? MD posed these and other questions to the drummers in Spock’s Beard, …

I’m the drummer and primary composer of the Chicago-based progressive rock band District 97 featuring 2007 American Idol female finalist, Leslie Hunt. You may remember me from the 2012 Modern Drummer Readers Poll, when I placed in the Best Up and Coming drummer’s category….

Since its inception by camp director Petar Curic in 2007, this one-of-a-kind drum camp has featured such world-class instructors as Bill Bruford, Horacio “El Negro??? Hernandez, JoJo Mayer, John Riley, Gary Chaffee, Mike Mangini, Marco Minnemann, Benny Greb, Pete Riley, Pete Lockett, Gabor Dornyei, and Kim Plainfield. The weeklong camp …

The October 2013 issue of Modern Drummer magazine features an article in which seven MD Pro Panelists share some of their favorite “hidden gems.??? Here MD’s editorial staff weighs in on their personal favorites….

The bandleader and longtime guitarist with the legendary British band discusses the great drummers he’s played with, as well as his latest release, Genesis Revisited II….

October 2013 Issue of Modern Drummer featuring Mike Portnoy Contents

We asked the members of the MD Education Team to share their thoughts on how they prefer to tune their drums. Here’s what they had to say….

Hi, MD readers! I have had many firsts in the past year as the drummer for Alabaster….

The Minneapolis-based music video network MetalKast has announced a new Internet radio and video streaming show, Rög’s Talkin’ DrumZ. Production for the first season is underway, with a few episodes complete. A Kickstarter fundraiser campaign was started on November 5 to help complete production for the first season. The campaign …

Odd times, intergalactic themes, and more tom-toms. Rock drumming gets interesting….

The sixth annual Croatia Drum Camp will be held this August 5-12 at the Jeunesses Musicales International World Meeting Centre in Groznjan, Croatia. The picturesque backdrop of this 14th-century Mediterranean hilltop village overlooks sprawling vineyards surrounding the Adriatic Sea, making the camp one of the most unusual and geographically attractive …

I’m Tim Walsh of the Stepkids, and I’m excited to be on here and hope to add to the wealth of knowledge that is MD’s awesome thirty-five-year history…

Two drummers working it out, face to face—trading licks, contributing to a massive groove, spurring each other on—it’s one of the great musical traditions, and surely it goes back to the very invention of the drumkit at the beginning of the last century. This group of tunes focuses on tracks …

MD Pro Panelist Daniel Glass on the magic of Deep Purple’s Ian Paice.

The recently retired drummer whose groundbreaking work has earned him the respect of generations of drummers, has announced additional dates for his ongoing speaking engagement tour. Bruford will be showing live performance footage and discussing his career and issues raised in his recent autobiography.

Welcome once again to the MD Readers Poll, where the greatest drummers on the planet are honored by the most educated drum fans around. Let’s get right to it: the envelope, please….

The Reasons To Love feature in the March 2011 issue of Modern Drummer is dedicated to progressive-rock and jazz-fusion icon Bill Bruford, who’s recently released his autobiography. Watch Bill talk about his fascinating new book here:

An educated, entertaining, essential addition to every drummer’s library—and to the history of modern drumming—The Drummer: Classic Rock Collector’s Edition magazine builds on content from Modern Drummer’s Top-selling The Drummer book with expanded coverage of drumming royalty from the golden age of rock ‘n’ roll.

Hello, Modern Drummer readers! I’m Charlie Woodburn, and I am a session drummer in Los Angeles, California. First, I would like to say thank you to Modern Drummer for letting me add to the blog because I have been reading the magazine since I was fifteen years old. MD has …

We come from Finland and play epic melodic metal…

Greetings, drummers and percussionists around the world! First I would like to send love and blessings to you all, wherever you may be. I am deeply honored to be writing this blog for Modern Drummer. My name is Ricc Sheridan, and I’m the drummer/percussionist for Earl Greyhound. We are about …

In this online exclusive, two drumkit legends, Horacio “El Negro??? Hernandez and Bill Bruford, talk about their collaborations with Lockett. Hernandez and Lockett played together for the first time at the 2009 Groznjan International Percussion Summer Camp in Croatia, in an stunning improvised duet that was one of the event’s …

Bruford has spent most of his playing career on a never-ending quest for new musical vistas….

If you were to ask any jazz historian to name who they feel is most responsible for setting the standards in bebop drumming, 99.9% of the time you’re going to get one name: Max Roach.

The supercharged Avenged Sevenfold timekeeper keeps old-school metal alive with brute force, machine-like precision, and a flair for the dramatic…

Drew Steen has been the drummer for teen pop sensation Demi Lovato for a little over a year now, and Jerry Roe is the new beatkeeper for 2008 American Idol runner-up David Archuleta.

My own little record store, containing only albums I still like after twenty-five years–that’s suddenly what all my records look like splayed out across my room.

Since his June 2007 MD cover story, German drumming sensation Marco Minnemann has played numerous clinics, drum festivals, and concerts worldwide, recorded two multi-instrumental solo albums, appeared on an animated TV series, and recorded performance segments for the Drum Channel Web site.

The March issue of MD (out now) features Billy Ward’s fascinating conversation with Simon Phillips, Doane Perry, Marco Minnemann, Thomas Lang, and Jerry Marotta about the grooves that inspired them to play drums early on, and that continue to today. It seemed to make perfect sense for MD’s editors to …

“I stopped focusing on the muscles in my arms and started focusing on the big fat muscle in my head. That’s where the good stuff comes from.???

I started off as a rock drummer, but over time I’ve evolved into classical, jazz, and world-music playing styles…

The resurgence of progressive rock has opened the door for younger drummers to rediscover the more technically challenging aspects of this classic art rock culture….

2007 was another jammed year of traveling. Fifteen countries, and many of them more than once! Here are some highlights….

I’m convinced that, ten years from now, we’re going to look back at 2007 as an unusually fertile time in music and in drumming.

Simply put, Max Roach brought jazz drumming into the modern age. Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell revolutionized jazz with new melodies and concepts; Max matched these musical geniuses with startling rhythms and reactive, action-packed drumming that still influences drummers on a profound level today….

If there is one thing I feel pretty confident discussing, it’s the concept of adaptability. In terms of drum history I went from being a tri-tom field drummer in high school to playing a Brufordesque Simmons kit in a prog-core quartet Jello Biafra called “the ‘Rush of hardcore.”…

Mike Portnoy may very well be the hardest-working drummer in the business. His recent three-DVD set, In Constant Motion, speaks for itself. The undisputed king of progressive metal never sleeps!

Progressive rock’s evolution from its nascent days in London’s university halls and local clubs to stadium-filling global phenomenon has its roots in the tumultuous melting pot of 1960s rock and psychedelia.

A couple of years ago, legendary art-rock pioneers King Crimson were asked to share the bill with modern day prog-metal masters Tool. More recently, Tool invited young “art metal” explorers ISIS to tour with them….

Mind-twisting rhythms meet super-fat grooves? Gavin Harrison is a rare artist who knows how to do both…

As Yes continues their world tour – featuring the return of keyboardist Rick Wakeman, signifying the reborn “classic” lineup – the band simply gets hotter and hotter. Drummer Alan White recently sat down with Modern Drummer, inaugurating the magazine’s brand-new Playback column, in which the world’s greatest players reflect on …

For Mastodon drummer Brann Dailor, playing in a band named after a huge prehistoric beast makes perfect sense. “When I’m performing or writing,” Dailor says, “I sometimes think, That definitely sounds like a Mastodon part.”

Cheap Trick recently celebrated twenty-five years together with the release of the appropriately titled Silver, a two-disc collection of hits and best-loved tunes recorded live in the band’s hometown of Rockford, Illinois….

Like all the masters of psychedelic pop, The Flaming Lips blow your mind with the most ordinary of devices. These seem-to-be eccentrics, who’ve recently won a Grammy for the instrumental “Approaching Pavonis Mons By Balloon (Utopia Planitia),” are really just a bunch of hard-working regular guys, using modest tools: a …

You may have spotted the advertisement for a unique CD titled Drum Nation. It represents the music of drummers, created outside of the constraints of record labels. Terry Bozzio, Josh Freese, Bill Bruford, Steve Smith, and Stephen Perkins are just a few of the top players involved….