Here are some excerpts from an interview I reread many times on the long bus rides on drum corps tour, about the great avant-garde (that’s where he’s typically filed, anyway) drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. From […]
Category: Modern Drummer
Grooves o’ the day: found items
[UPDATE: Link fixed!] I found these inside an old copy of Mel Bay’s Stage Band Drummers’ Guide I just purchased on Ebay: two pages of beats cut out of 1984 issues of Modern Drummer. I […]
MD column: Alternative open roll stickings
Here’s an interesting piece from that same old Modern Drummer from 1977. The writer, Mickey Earnshaw, proposes a set of alternate roll stickings, using the RLLR/LRRL paradiddle inverion or the RLLR/RLLR sticking in place of […]
Butch Miles on ensemble playing
Big band drumming tips from Butch Miles, from the Oct. 1977 issue of Modern Drummer. They apply to all types of music, of course: SUPPORT. If the band has a difficult passage, support them strongly. […]
MD interview: Ben Riley on Monk, more
Here are some excerpts from a Ben Riley interview I hadn’t read before- I didn’t know who he was when the September, 1986 issue of Modern Drummer came out. It’s a nice companion piece to […]
My Vinnie Year – part 1 – “My left hand is kind of funky.”
It was actually more like three or four years closely studying Vinnie Colaiuta’s playing, but this sounds better. Anyway, ’87 was when I was really deep in it- or so I thought- and he happened […]
1984 Modern Drummer interview: Andy Newmark
Here are some excerpts from another great Modern Drummer interview from my youth, this time with session drummer Andy Newmark, drummer on Sly Stone’s Fresh, John Lennon’s Double Fantasy, David Bowie’s Young Americans, and much […]
1978 Modern Drummer interview: Tony Williams
From the Modern Drummer digital archive, here are some excerpts from a 1978 interview with Tony Williams. I’ve edited out the large hunks of it where they discuss single-headed toms, the merits of fiberglass drums, […]
Bob Moses interviews Rashied Ali
January 2003 interview of the late Rashied Ali by another great drummer, Bob Moses. This is only available through jpegs, so I can’t quote it without typing it out, and you should read the whole […]
1985 Modern Drummer interview: Alan Dawson
Have I mentioned lately what a great resource the Modern Drummer digital archive is? Here are my excerpts from a 1985 Modern Drummer interview with one of the great teachers of the drums, Alan Dawson. […]
March 1985 Modern Drummer interview: John von Ohlen
Interview with big band drummer John von Ohlen from Modern Drummer, March, 1985, by Scott K. Fish, with the many good parts pulled out here, by me. Von Ohlen toured with with the Woody Herman […]
Kenny Clarke on the invention of the ride cymbal
…and modern drumming in general, excerpted from Ed Thigpen’s Kenny Clarke interview in the Feb. 1984 Modern Drummer. I originally posted this last year on the Drummerworld.com forum. From Thigpen’s introduction: It’s understandably difficult for […]