August 2021 – Volume 45 • Number 8
On 31st Aug 2021
Articles in August 2021
Mike Reid
Taking it to In the Heights, Janet Jackson, Alicia Keys, and Beyond. Mike Reid started playing drums at the age of three and never looked back. The Baltimore, Maryland, native joined his school and church bands to begin his first…
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…
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…
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…
Earl Young
Legendary Timekeeper for The Sound of Philadelphia Earl Donald Young, bassist Ronnie Baker, and guitarist Norman Harris formed the Philadelphia-based rhythm section known as Baker Harris Young. That the trio helped change the music world is not an understatement. In…
Eric Kretz
Stone Temple Pilots Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Tiny Music…Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop with a Deluxe Box Set If one were to characterize Stone Temple Pilots, you might say melodic songs, killer riffs, dynamic delivery, and deep grooves.…
The Etiquette of Sitting In
The Considerate Guest Let’s assume you are going to sit in with a group—either at your request or their invitation. There are definitely some things you should do before you actually come up on stage to play. The first and…
Todd Sucherman's New Styx Album, First Solo Release
Longevity and relevance are key components to any successful career. The Beatles were together only eight years, but the group’s prolific music catalog still stands the test of time. Formed in 1972, Chicago-based, progressive pop-rock group Styx is closing in…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The Healing Power of Silence
The center of a musician’s world is often thought to be within their love for sound, melody, and rhythm. Most of you reading this article will be big fans of sound in general—creating sound, appreciating sound, and listening to sound.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
