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October 2020 Issue – Volume 44 • Number 10

Exercises for Internalizing 16th-Note Permutations Displacement is a beat-editing tool that can make a groove sound glitchy. This is achieved by shifting the groove in such a way that what was originally played on beat 1 is now landing somewhere else in the bar. The more recognizable the original pattern, the more tension the displacement causes for the listener, and the more difficult it becomes to continue to feel the quarter-note pulse. For example, if you heard someone play the following bar without a metronome or accompaniment, do you think you would feel the first note as anything other than beat 1? The moment you hear that first bass drum, your brain will insist that it’s beat 1. This is why beat displacement works the way it does. We’re so used to hearing grooves being grounded by the bass drum that it’s difficult to perceive those notes existing anywhere else. […]
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Articles in October 2020

Deep Purple’s Ian Paice

Of all the remarkable rock drummers to have originated in the late 1960s/early 1970s, none was more astonishing than Ian Paice. If John Bonham was the zeppelin, Carl Palmer the tank, and Nick Mason the perpetual clock, Ian Paice was…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Chad Smith’s Three Basic Beats to Infuse with Your Own Thing

You can get ten different people playing on a basic drumset, playing a basic rock beat, and they will all sound different. We each have a signature, and that’s a beautiful thing. It’s not “my way or the highway”—it’s about…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Iúri Oliveira

The Portuguese percussionist has made an art out of creating unique hybrid sets for each act he supports—but sometimes a lone shaker is all he really needs. During a recent phone conversation, Portuguese percussionist and drummer Iúri Oliveira was a…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Sugar Percussion Snare Workshop

Transforming Raw Planks to “Perfect” Circles It all started with a few innocuous text messages: “How would you like to attend one of my snare classes and maybe write a little article about it?” asked Jefferson Shallenberger, founder and master…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Bill Stewart

Striving for Clarity His appearance on the new John Scofield album marks thirty years of one of modern jazz’s great partnerships. But of course that’s only part of what he’s been up to lately. When Bill Stewart made his first…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020
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Amy Aileen Wood

The drummer played an outsized part in bringing one of the most anticipated and well-received albums of the year to fruition. Amy Aileen Wood is a comfortable conversationalist, modest and engaging even when she downplays her immense skill as a…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Remembering Neil Peart

Part 2: “De Slagwerker” Drum Solo Neil and I often talked about improvisation. He told me why his solo in “De Slagwerker” was so important to him. What follows are some of Neil’s own words, taken from his Drum Channel…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Stick Technique Revisited

Part 4: Alley-Oop The alley-oop technique is what I call a wrist/finger combination used for playing double strokes (diddles) and triple strokes. While it can be likened to the push/pull technique, which is a wrist stroke followed by a finger…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Chad Smith

The longtime Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer is enjoying a wave of great reviews for his work on the new, critically acclaimed Ozzy Osbourne album, Ordinary Man. The takeaway? If there’s one contemporary drummer on the planet who wholly embodies…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Rick Shutter

“Day by Day,” the gargantuan hit single from the Grammy-winning musical Godspell, gets by with some tasteful cymbal swells and tambourine shaking—until drummer Rick Shutter blasts the ride-out with a driving rock groove. It’s a classic moment on a timeless…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Samba Funk

Modern Fusion Beats Based on Traditional Brazilian Rhythms Hi, everybody! It’s a pleasure to be back writing for Modern Drummer and sharing some of my Brazilian culture with you. This time I am talking about my application of samba funk…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

In the Studio With Miles McPherson: Touring Pro Turned Session Ace

Miles McPherson moved to Nashville in 1986, when his father, Jerry, relocated the family there so he could work in the studios as a session guitarist. Miles was expecting to be a guitarist—until he sat at a drumset for the…

Modern Drummer
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sE Electronics - V Pack Arena Microphone Kit

A perfect set for capturing the punchy, full tones of a five-piece drumset. Chinese musician/composer Siwei Zou started sE Electronics twenty years ago in an effort to improve the design of some of the microphones that were coming out of…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

The Next Best Thing

In his cover story this month, Chad Smith says, “It’s great to play in a room and record yourself. But…to me, to truly be playing music you have to be playing with other people. That’s the fun part, the human…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

“Getting the Sound”

Detailed tutorials for recreating classic recordings from a drumming, engineering, and mixing perspective. We first checked in with Hoboken, New Jersey–based session drummer/engineer/online educator Dylan Wissing back in November 2013, when he had just gotten his studio, Triple Colossal Studio,…

Modern Drummer
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Gretsch, 64 Audio, Istanbul Mehmet, Latin Percussion, Promuco Percussion, DW

Gretsch Heritage Build Setups USA Custom and Broadkaster drums are now available with a Heritage Build option. This vintage-style look is available in any drum finish and features center-mount, double-ended lugs and extended tension rods of different lengths to suit…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Joe Morello

Chops Master and Musical Poet Joe Morello inspired thousands of drummers during his long career, which spanned from 1957, the year of his first recording session with Dave Brubeck, to 2011, when he passed away. Morello’s legacy reached a wide…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Noble & Cooley

6x14 Copper and 4.75x14 Painted Alloy Classic Snares Premium metal drums that provide maximum impact withoutsacrificing versatility or sensitivity. The Massachusetts-based Noble & Cooley drum company has lineage that goes back as far as 1854, when Silas Noble and James…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020

Trivium’s Alex Bent

The metal phenomenon has an irrepressible drive to succeed—and he’s done so stunningly, slaying two of Trivium’s best albums to date, earning a Grammy nomination, and touring Europe and the U.S. extensively since 2017. Alex Bent has lived many metal…

Modern Drummer
Sep 1, 2020
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Covet’s Forrest Rice

The drummer, who’s honed his skills with a number of math-rock groups, brings ever more sophistication and fire on the new Covet record, Technicolor. MD interviews him and also chats with the band’s compelling guitarist, Yvette Young, to learn about…

Modern Drummer
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