Joe Porcaro

With the passing of studio great Joe Porcaro, we’ve gone back into the vault for his November 1994 Modern Drummer feature, in which we learned about his path to the top of the L.A. studio scene, and got an inside view of what it was like during the heyday of …

My background is heavily steeped in jazz and rudimental drumming, but I grew up listening and jamming to lots of heavy metal and classic rock and roll.

Hey MD peeps! This is a great honor for me to be able to tell some of my story. Like most of you, I first subscribed to MD at an early age (back in the mid-’80s, yikes!) when I was busy trying to be what I eventually became―a pro drummer.

Hello! On July 31, we played our first show as Donald Fagen and the Nightflyers, kicking off a two-month tour (twenty-eight shows) around the US and Japan. It was a monumental night for my bandmates and me as we had spent the last eight months preparing and a lifetime dreaming …

Over the course of his forty-year career traveling the globe to teach, perform, and conduct clinics, Dom Famularo has interacted with some of the finest drummers and drum instructors in the world. The following list contains many of those names, organized by country/continent. If you’re looking for top-notch drum instruction, …

Joe Vitale is currently touring with Joe Walsh as well as starring in the movie Ricki and the Flash, featuring Meryl Streep. We continue talking with Joe about a few practice tips as well as some of his influences….

Summer is a great time to develop musical skills, and the Los Angeles College of Music offers two week-long intensive summer music programs designed to give teens interested in music as a career a leg up on the competition….

We asked the members of the Modern Drummer Education Team if they felt that it’s important for all drummers to study Latin music and other musical genres, even if they don’t intend to ever perform those styles. Here’s what they had to say….

Tuesday, August 5, will mark twenty-two years since the passing of legendary drummer Jeff Porcaro….

Good day, fellow Modern Drummer fanatics. Most of you don’t know who I am, but if you skim your way through this brief and painless memoir of my drumming existence, you’ll probably end up knowing more about me than you bargained for….

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….

LAMA College for Music Professionals has announced details for its upcoming drum recording workshop on February 2, 2013.

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 …

The adventure started in Australia, in 2008, when I joined the band the Indigo Frequency. With them I had the craziest experience of my life, touring the whole country for six months, traveling in a van, and playing every kind of place, from nice clubs to gold mines!

The drummers of Sticks ‘n’ Skins are now among the honored innovators and artisans on display at The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

More with the world-renowned right-hand man to rock’s singer-songwriter royalty, who is featured in the Different View column of this month’s issue of MD.

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….

Although he’s a talented drummer who has studied with famed player/teachers Joe Porcaro, Al Lepak, and Gary Burton and whose groups Moto and Spiral have featured top New York and Boston musicians, Bob Gatzen is perhaps best known as a producer, inventor, and drumming Renaissance man whose motto is “explore—discover—create.???

by Bob GirouardIt seems that since Danny Seraphine made a comeback of sorts of the 2006 Modern Drummer Festival, he’s kicked the current phase of his drumming career into high gear, appearing at events like Drummers for Jesus, the 2009 Chicago Drum Show, and a Terry Kath tribute, and making …

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 …

I started playing drums at the age of eight, when my father introduced me to the Beatles.

I started playing drums at the age of eight, when my father introduced me to the Beatles.

Hey, Modern Drummer heads! My name is Chris Peacock and I’m addicted to drums. I’ve been playing for twenty-years and I started at the age of twelve. I’ve studied with Ralph Humphrey, Joe Porcaro, and Mike Shapiro and have worked in all sorts of musical situations including rock, pop, jazz, …

World-renowned for his enormous list of sessions, Jeff Porcaro is also remembered as a co-founder of Toto.

I am Brandt Frenchman, and I’ve been a drummer for most of my life. I love all types and styles of music, although I’ve always gravitated toward the heavier rock side of things.

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 …

Jon Wysocki has been laying down his tasteful, well thought–out grooves with the chart-topping band Staind for thirteen years. The group, which hails from Springfield, Massachusetts, also includes lead singer/guitarist Aaron Lewis, lead guitarist Mike Mushok, and bassist/vocalist Johnny April. They’ve recorded six studio albums and four number-one singles, and …

My name is Oli Hecks, from England, currently living in Los Angeles…

My name is Oli Hecks, from England, currently living in Los Angeles…

In the February 2007 issue of Modern Drummer, we ran a feature called “Double Drumming’s 25 Greatest Hits.??? At the time we asked MD readers to submit their own favorite double-drum performances, which we’d post online at a later date. Well, the time has arrived, double-drum fans—the floor is yours!

Curt Bisquera has been a first-call studio drummer since 1991, appearing on recordings or playing gigs with Mick Jagger, Tom Petty, Celine Dion, Morris Day, Ronan Keating, The Dixie Chicks, Seal, Bonnie Raitt, The Spice Girls, Boz Scaggs, Johnny Cash, Dave Koz, Ricky Martin, and Elton John. Here Curt talks …

Paving the way for some of the great studio musicians of our time, like Jim Gordon, Jim Keltner, Jeff Porcaro, and John JR Robinson, were Earl Palmer and Hal Blaine. MD recently sat down with the jovial drummer to walk a bit down memory lane.

Drummer Kevin Frank, singer Walt Lafty, bassist Brian Weaver, and guitarists Nick Perri and Mark Melchiorre of Silvertide created quite a buzz in their hometown of Philadelphia. In fact, the band was so hot, it led to an all-out label bidding war that veteran music mogul Clive Davis won. That’s …