August 2021 – Volume 45 • Number 8
On 31st Aug 2021
Articles in August 2021
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…
Justice James on Swingin’ Surf
It seemed like a pretty normal surf show until it wasn’t. The Young Barons were onstage performing their edgy, modern-primitive style of surf music. Suddenly, the drums exploded like Buddy Rich torturing the squares at a 1940s swing dance with…
The Pocket Queen
The Viral Drummer’s Brand-Building Strategies Like a superhero with an alter ego, Taylor Gordon’s transformation into The Pocket Queen had a seismic effect on not just her own career, but also upon legions of music fans and aspiring drummers. With…
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…
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…
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…
Killing the Mud Monster
There are tons of things that can kill your home-studio project. A nuclear error is recording a crappy song to start with. But you also need to beware of signal-chain distortion, really awful gear (mics, preamps, etc.), format futz-ups, bad…
Bobby Bond
The Beat Goes On As time marches on, and we lose more and more of the rock-and-roll hitmakers of the 1960s, those stars still soldiering on via ‘60 rock cruises and package tours have become living embodiments of the era…
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…
Judy Cocuzza
The Return of Betty Blowtorch Betty Blowtorch was one of the most ferocious, hard-rocking, and riotously in-your-face all-female rock bands to ever tread onstage. From 1998-2001, drummer Judy Cocuzza, guitarists Sharon Needles and Blare N. Bitch, and bassist/vocalist Bianca Halstead…
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…
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…
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…
Terry Bozzio
Modern Drummer, July 1994 “Even though I’ve got that humongous drum kit sitting there, I’ve learned I don’t have to use it all at once. Igor Stravinsky thought nothing of having five solo cellos play a section in the middle…
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…
Eric Boudreault’s Treetop Percussion
Just about every pit gig and live-performance for a multimedia theatrical production can be tough. Negotiating myriad cues, charts, conductors, actors, and other elements can stress out even the most skilled professional. But is your gig, 23-feet-in-the-air-atop-a-tree tough? That is…
Burn, Baby, Burn!
Hello, everyone. I hope your summer has been going as well as it can be. Welcome to another special issue of Modern Drummer. Come on, you have to admit the last few issues have been pretty amazing. (Thank you, MD…
Get Into the Groove
To further celebrate the soulful, timekeeping majesty of this month’s cover artist Earl Young, we dove into the Modern Drummer archives to find ten other groove masters talking about how they make the music move. Greg Errico, October 2011 “Sly…
