The true struggle comes in the practice room, facing those drums everyday for 10 hours. — Famoudou Don Moye When I was in college I decided that, at some point in their career, everyone who […]
Category: Modern Drummer
Erskine on practicing
An exchange about general practice topics, from Peter Erskine’s 1978 Modern Drummer interview with Gary Farmer. GF: [W]hat would an ideal practice routine consist of? PE: When I work on the snare drum, I try […]
Gadd on time
Another item from Rick Mattingly’s 1983 Modern Drummer interview with Steve Gadd. It’s encouraging that a lot of the very common fuzzy talk about time makes no more sense to the greatest studio drummer in […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Steve Gadd on reading
“Reading improves just from doing it. It wasn’t easy for me, but thanks to the encouragement of my teacher, John Beck, I stuck with it and it has been very useful. The more you do […]
Drumming myths
A decent piece from the Modern Drummer site— 12 Drumming Myths Debunked. Here are the entries that interest me, with my comments on them: 2. Mistakes are always bad. Honor thy mistakes with repetition—I think […]
Daily best music in the world: two drummers
The Modern Drummer website has a decent little list of great double-drumming tracks. I was ready to come down on them for not including the Butthole Surfers, but no, there they are— a bold choice for […]
Art Blakey in a nutshell
Play it strong. Hard at work with new record stuff and next-tour stuff this week, so we’ll be on light posting for a moment. But here’s a little something from the Art Blakey web site: a brief […]
Mel Lewis on cymbals
More on cymbals from Mel Lewis’s 1985 Modern Drummer interview. This is pretty much the bible of the subject, as it relates to jazz: Number and type The average drummer usually uses two to four […]
Ed Blackwell in Africa
Since we’re doing a lot with Ed Blackwell lately, here’s a little snippet from his November, 1981 Modern Drummer interview by Scott K. Fish, in which he discusses his 1967 and 1968 tours of Africa, […]
Metronome perspectives
There’s an excellent piece on the Modern Drummer site getting views on metronome use from a number of top drummers and educators. I’ve excerpted some of the best bits, but go read the whole thing. […]
Bob Moses on “dependent” drumming
Or as he called it a little later in Drum Wisdom, “non-independent” drumming. This is relevant to some of the things I brought up both in the ECM feel post and the open-handed post: “I […]
MD column: hi-hat technique
OK, I’m not meaning to turn this into a fair-use abusing, exclusively old Modern Drummer stuff blog, but a longer post is taking its sweet time getting finished, and this is just what I happen […]