Casey Scheuerell's Masterful Drum Pocket on Chaka Kahn's "And The Melody Still Lingers On (Night in Tunisia)"

Today probably more than ever, the division between drum pocket and drum shredding has become quite a point of discussion and display. An entire generation of players have attained a level of technical ability, blazing speed, and consumption of available space in musical time that leaves many drummers from the time before MIDI in the dust. But in 1981, Casey Scheuerell’s drumming on Chaka Kahn’s…

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Neurodiversity Behind the Drum Set - How Accepting Tourette Syndrome Helped Me Embrace My Music Truth

The term “neurodiversity” has been making the rounds for several years now, the newest buzzword that carries interesting associations and implications. Socially, and more specifically medically, when someone says they are “neurodiverse,” the term is often used to express their particular condition, such as autism, Asperger’s, or in my case, Tourette Syndrome. I did not receive a proper and…

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The Day I Met Lou Harrison, The Man Who Redefined My Future

In the summer of 1985, I was living in Santa Cruz, California. I was 26 and struggling to figure out how to complete what would eventually become The Elements of Rhythm, Vols. I & II. I had handwritten hundreds, probably thousands of fundamental rhythm pattern combinations and their note value variations, but the book still needed a great deal of refinement and comprehensive structure. I found…

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Whisper Drumming and Why You Need to Practice It

I was reading a great blog this morning by Cruise Ship Drummer about YouTube drumming videos at an absurd level. By absurd I mean ridiculous content taken to extremes. So much of the Internet bombards us with louder, faster, stronger, that it becomes the norm and the expectation of what we should learn and how we should practice.   We have for at least a decade and will likely continue to be…

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Joe Zawinul: The Somewhat Long Lost Interview about Drummers and Weather Report

Joe Zawinul: The Somewhat Long Lost Interview about Drummers and Weather Report

Have a seat, kids, I have a story to tell you, about a once young freelance music journalist and drummer who blew the biggest writing assignment of his life and has been plagued by it since 1993… / / On January 20, 1993, I borrowed by roommate’s truck and boom box and headed over the Santa Monica mountains from the San Fernando Valley to the Malibu residence of one Joseph Zawinul. I’d been sent…

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Hudson Music and The Elements of Rhythm, Vols. I & II

Hudson Music and The Elements of Rhythm, Vols. I & II

The world has changed exponentially since I first began work on my binary rhythm pattern theory books, The Elements of Rhythm, Vols. I & II. What started in 1981 with a simple drum lesson with Terry Bozzio at a rehearsal studio in Los Angeles became a three-decades-long journey to figure how to make sense of the origin and evolution of rhythm pattern development. During that time, electronic…

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Anders Mogensen - New Album release and 20 Questions with a Master Jazz Drummer

Anders Mogensen – New Album release and 20 Questions with a Master Jazz Drummer

Imagine you’re hiking through the Himalayas. You come upon a clearing and find a lone shack, with a man practicing martial arts in the front yard. His style is immediately fluid, dynamic, instantaneous. You easily recognize half a dozen classic schools in his movements, mastered and applied with no effort. He could hold his own with anyone in the world. Yet here he is, in the middle of the…

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Robyn Flans: 20 Questions with The First Lady of Drumming Journalism

Robyn Flans: 20 Questions with The First Lady of Drumming Journalism

  Few names resonate through the world of drumming journalism like Robyn Flans. In a male-dominated industry since its inception, the drumming world came to know Robyn’s work through Modern Drummerfor nearly four decades. She interviewed the top names of the day, and she helped shaped the fledgling world of drumming journalism by being in the right place at the right time with the necessary…

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RPPW 14 – Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop, and The Elements of Rhythm Vols. I & II

RPPW 14 – Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop, and The Elements of Rhythm Vols. I & II

In June of 2013, I received a Yahoo Society of Ethnomusicology groups e-mail regarding a call for papers and presenter for RPPW 14, Rhythm Production and Perception Workshop, hosted this year by the University of Birmingham, in Birmingham, England. I had never heard of the workshop but was immediately excited at learning of their existence.

One of my long-term goals is to share my books, The…

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Mastering Quintuplets (5-note Groupings) as Polyrhythms

Mastering Quintuplets (5-note Groupings) as Polyrhythms

Getting quintuplets under your belt is not that hard to do if you start simple and build from there. This following an excerpt from The Elements of Rhythm Vol. I, my rhythm pattern theory text.

Quintuplets are simply 5-note groupings that are evenly spaced. They can be written in very complex forms, but to begin our study, we’ll first look at them as quarter notes.

There are exactly 32 quintuplet…

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Floyd Sneed: The Unmistakeable Backbeat of Three Dog Night

When I was a kid growing up in Delaware in the 70’s, I listened to a lot of top-40 radio while in elementary and middle school. Three Dog Night was one of my favorite groups, and it was the first group where I distinctly remember listening to the drummer for the feel he created. That drummer was Floyd Sneed.

He played a clear, acrylic Zickos kit with double bass, which at the time was about as…

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Five Top Practice Areas For Increasing Your Drumming Speed

Welcome to the AfterTimes. We live in strange days and a new world as of only a few months ago. It’s filled with a great deal of uncertainty that until now we’ve only seen in movies. Kids born today will be referred as Generation WTF, I’m sure of it.

As we wait for better days, some things never change. The need to practice and improve our drumming craft doesn’t have to succumb to Covid-19 or…

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Readiness Potential and Drumming: Priming Your Neural Pathways Like A Boss

Readiness Potential and Drumming: Priming Your Neural Pathways Like A Boss

In the spring of 1985, I lived in Santa Cruz, California. It’s a beautiful beach town with hills overlooking the pristine Monterey Bay. I was attending Cabrillo Community College with hopes of transferring to UC Santa Cruz to study the more esoteric aspects of drumming and psychology in a self-study environment. One of the classes offered at Cabrillo really caught my eye because of the link…

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Readiness Potential: Keeping the Neural Pathways Primed, and Why You Should Care...

Readiness Potential: Keeping the Neural Pathways Primed, and Why You Should Care...: http://wp.me/pEUfF-U

In the spring of 1985, I lived in Santa Cruz, California. It’s a beautiful beach town with hills overlooking the pristine Monterey Bay. I was attending Cabrillo Community College with hopes of transferring to UC Santa Cruz to study the more esoteric aspects of drumming and psychology in a self-study environment. One of the classes offered at Cabrillo really caught my eye because of the link…

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Hey Drummers, Compose Your Musical Future!

Hey Drummers, Compose Your Musical Future!

Howdy again from ATX, home of SXSW and some very entertaining bats who erupt from underneath the Congress Avenue bridge. I moved back home two years ago to regain some perspective on a lot of things, including music and drumming. I wanted to share a few thoughts with you about both in this piece, focusing on how we create our true musical future.

Many years ago, a friend of mine from high school…

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Two Grooves, Keep Your Hands Low

Two Grooves, Keep Your Hands Low

Happy New Year from Austin, Texas, and my nifty new rehearsal studio. I finally found a great room (Music Lab) where I can put allllll of my drums and percussion equipment, including my vintage Fibes and my cool little Gretsch Catalina Club Street kit.

  Here’s two short clips for you to demonstrate something I’ve spent a fair amount of time on over the past few years: keeping my hands low, until…

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Meet Gary Leach and Beats Exotiques – Drum Grooves For Independence

Meet Gary Leach and Beats Exotiques – Drum Grooves For Independence

  Three years ago or so, I was experimenting with posting video clips on Periscope. In a short period of time, a following developed, including positive comments and encouragement from an English gentleman named Gary Leach. He posted his own videos, shot in a small room, using his iPhone. What struck me about Gary the most was his sincere enthusiasm and desire to impart his vast knowledge of…

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