December 2014 Issue – Volume 39 • Number 12

December 2014 Issue – Volume 39 • Number 12

Frankie Dunlop

Francis “Frankie” Dunlop, a great jazz drummer of precision, sensitivity, inventiveness, and deep swing, passed away this past July at age eighty-five, after a long struggle with illness. Born December 6, 1928, into a musical family, Dunlop possessed determination that…

Gregg Bissonette

Sure, he can floor you with chops. And his lightning-fast ability to understand and play exactly what the song needs is legendary. But it’s his heart and soul that always seal the deal.   It’s no secret that the music…

Consecutive Flams Part 1: Spaced Out

This month we’re going to kick off a challenging three-part series on flams. All of these exercises will consist of single flams followed by sets of two, three, and four flams. Then we’ll reverse the order to end up back…

Omar Tavarez

Miami is the quintessential melting-pot city, where no one blinks when a country-hip-hop ditty like Pitbull’s “Timber” tops the charts. But simplicity can be deceiving, and the drummer/ musical director in charge of making the rapper’s multicultural style sound perfectly…

The Journey of Self-Discovery

Thoughts on Developing Your Own Musical Voice     One of the things I mentioned in last month’s column was how I feel there are way too many drummers who sound alike in the field today. Of course, this is…

Dan Weiss

Oh, he knows his jazz history, and his rock as well. But by immersing himself in concepts far afield of traditional Western drumset approaches, he’s developed a pure musical voice, a highly sensitive ear, and a world of ideas to…

Aric Improta

It’s all in the work. When Night Verses’ firebrand isn’t touring the world, he and his bandmates are holed away for hours and hours, refining, improving, refining, improving…   When we spoke with Aric Improta, his band, Night Verses, had…

Catching Up With Ginger Baker

In December of 2014 Modern Drummer interviewed Ginger Baker, who died this past weekend at the age of eighty. We spoke to Baker, one of the most influential and notorious drummers in rock history, on the occasion of what would be his last studio album as a leader, Why?

The Paradiddle Polyrhythm Pyramid

Sharpen Your Rhythmic Awareness and Control The following exercise was going to be called the Paradiddle Polyrhythm Rudiment, but I felt that it was too long to be just one rudiment. Instead, it makes for a formidable polyrhythm exercise in…