June 2021 – Volume 45 • Number 6
On 18th Jun 2021
The Rhythm of Resonance and Feel
Dame Evelyn Glennie is a world-class musician, a master listener, and an extraordinary human who is perhaps the first person to make a life-long career strictly as a solo percussionist. You cannot categorize her sound creation into one musical style. What she does is not classical, folk, orchestral, rock, Latin, blues, or world music. She is simply a solo percussionist—a profession so new that there aren’t any classifications for the practice.
She also happens to be profoundly deaf.
Glennie grew up on a farm in Methlick, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. At age eight, she started losing her hearing, and by 12, she was profoundly deaf. Glennie started wearing hearing aids, but found she could feel sounds without them, and she started using her body to listen.
“I assumed that sound came through the ears,” she said during an interview on the Norwegian/Swedish talk show, Skavlan. “But I learned the initial impact came through the ears, but the resonance was felt through the body.”
Articles in June 2021
Sean J. Kennedy Salutes Ray Deeley
I studied drums and percussion with Ray Deeley while I was a high-school student back in the mid 1980s. Ironically, so did my wife, Heather, who went to a different high school about an hour away from where I lived.…
Roland – VAD306 Compact Electronic Drumset
This past year, Roland unveiled the new VAD (V-Drums Acoustic Design) series. These innovative drums provide a familiar acoustic drumset look and playing experience, but with all the technological advantages of their electronic mod-ules, mesh pads, and rubber cymbals. We…
Syncopated Fills
This month, we’ll explore another type of drum fill—one that incorporates syncopation. Syncopation is displacing the regular metric accent and emphasizing the weak beat. In this context, that means resting on the downbeat. With one or more of the strong…
Three-Against-Four Polyrhythm
These exercises will guide you through a fusion of African and American elements. On the American side, we have shuffle and shuffle-funk. On the African side, we have the rhythms from Cameroon known as mangambe and bikutsi. Playing these exercises…
The Power of Exciting an Audience
Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but Nandi Bushell is the youngest drummer ever to grace the cover of this magazine. (Honorable mention to 16-year-old Tony Royster Jr., who appeared on the January 2000 cover along with Dennis Chambers.)…
Gruv Gear – VELOC Drum Transport
Gruv Gear is a lifestyle-accessories brand that provides musicians with thoughtful and innovative products that help keep things organized, efficient, and stylish. We reviewed the company’s stick and accessory bags in the November 2020 issue, and we were blown away…
Session Thoughts
From the MD Archives Modern Drummer has assembled tons of wisdom from incredible players throughout its 45 years, so it’s no surprise we have exhaustive data on how drummers approach their art in the recording studio. Here are ten quick…
Six-Way Independence
In my “Six-Way Independence” master class on Drum Channel, I wanted to give my students the opportunity to learn the way I learned, and how I came up with my concepts. I started thinking about all of the combinations I…
Terry Keating
Spreading the Gospel of Bonzo Terry Keating’s Bonzoleum channel has been a fixture on YouTube for the wide community of John Bonham devotees since 2008. Keating is prolific, with hundreds of videos ranging from play-throughs of songs, a wealth of…
Double-Bass Eighth Notes with Foot Two
Realistic Double Feet can be performed on a double-bass drum set or a regular drum set with foot one playing the bass drum and foot two playing the hi-hat. For this exercise, dive into the rhythmic concept first, and then…
Drum Miking on the Cheap
Many of us have read about the stellar, well-populated microphone cabinets of famous big studios that were used to record famous big albums. Fabulous luxury-mic manufacturers such as Neumann, Telefunken, Earthworks, and Coles get tossed around in these articles, and,…
A Wealth of Options
Christian Morissette’s Rig is Ready for Any Style Christian Morissette is a psychologist in Quebec, Canada, who somehow finds the time to not only pursue his passion for drumming, but also to do session work, run a home studio, teach…
John Densmore
Modern Drummer, December 1982 “On the Doors albums, I always went for the drums to have real personality. I always had the bottom heads off all of my drums, and I hated new skins and new drums. I liked to…
Marco Minnemann
Composition Takes Center Stage Germany’s Marco Minnemann exploded onto the drumming scene in the late 1990s with his extreme interdependence innovations and advanced technique that quickly earned him international super-drummer status. His fearless, dynamic, and entertaining approach to soloing includes…
Balancing Grunt Work and Creativity
This is a follow up to the March 2021 article I did for MD entitled “Practice Like a Pro.” (You can find it at moderndrummer.com.) In that piece, I shared techniques that can be used to effectively learn songs. Muscle…
ProMark, Low Boy Custom Beaters and Vic Firth
ProMark Carter McLean Signature Drumsticks The Carter McLean signature stick is made from hickory with a custom wood tip. It measures .571” in diameter and 16 1/8” in length with a lacquered finish. The custom tip shape provides a range…
Dream Cymbals – Dark Matter Bliss and Vintage Bliss
Canadian company Dream introduced the drumming world to its dry, raw, twice-torched Dark Matter cymbals in 2010, and they’ve remained top-sellers ever since. Meanwhile, the Bliss series—one of Dream’s original lines—continues to motor on, providing players with warm, dark, and…
The Frankie Banali Collection
In the early 2000s, I received a call regarding some Elvin Jones items I was selling. It was quickly apparent the person I was speaking to had studied Elvin’s playing intensely and had been deeply influenced by him. Our conversation…
Bobby Morris 1928 – 2021
When Bobby Morris first reached out to see if Hudson Music would be interested in publishing his autobiography, My Las Vegas, I had two concerns. First, “Do enough people in the Hudson Music audience know who he is?” And second,…
