Reviews
Modern Drummer is the world’s most widely read drum magazine, is dedicated entirely to the art of drumming and caters to the needs of amateur, semi-pro, and professional drummers.
CinqueCatch A Corner
CD Really, it could only be Steve Gadd’s ghost-stroke-laden, slightly behind the beat, super funky pattern that’s heard on “Conflicting Advice,” the opening track on Catch a Corner, a hip jazz-funk disc featuring B3 great Joey DeFrancesco. Halfway through the…
Learn To Read Rhythms...Better!by Pat Petrillo
DVD LEVEL: ALL $29.95 Drummers Collective instructor Pat Petrillo’s new multimedia offering is the next best thing to an actual live lesson. An “interactive reading boot camp that comes with a teacher,” the two-DVD set allows students to play along…
Rival SonsPressure and Time
CD This album’s easy to love. As enjoyable as Jack White’s recent foray into funky, riff-tastic garage rock with the Dead Weather has been, Rival Sons seem to inhabit that world even more comfortably. Bathed in a hugely enjoyable…
Gannin Arnold Project5 World Class Drummers
DVD LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE TO ADVANCED $24.95 Fusion guitarist Gannin Arnold assembles five badass stickmen to wail on his Jeff Beck-inspired material. The resulting two-DVD set is an often-fascinating look at the different approaches, ideas, and emphasis that each player…
John Robinson The Time Machine
DVD LEVEL: ALL $24.95 It’s been a good number of years since JR’s last instructional video, but this project is well worth the wait. Robinson is widely regarded as the world’s most recorded drummer, playing on records that have…
Neil Peart Taking Center StageDVD Review
DVD LEVEL: ALL $39.99 This jam-packed DVD follows Neil Peart during Rush’s 2010/11 Time Machine tour, featuring an entire two-and-a-half-hour concert, with cameras focused exclusively on the drums and a Neil-heavy audio mix. Each song from the concert is…
On the Beaten Path: Beginning Drumset Course, Levels 1, 2, and 3 by Rich Lackowski
BOOK/CDs LEVEL: BEGINNER $9.99 Here’s an interesting approach to learning how to play drums: starting right off (practically) copping beats that are part of the everyday musical landscape. In Level 1, Lackowski aims to win young hands and hearts…
Todd Sucherman Methods & Mechanics II
DVD LEVEL: ALL $29.99 Conceived in very much the same manner as Sucherman’s original Methods & Mechanics video, which won the award for Best Instructional DVD in the 2009 Modern Drummer Readers Poll, M&M II is a smorgasbord of…
Gospel and R&B DrummingHosted by Jeff Davis
DVD LEVEL: ALL $14.99 Narrator/host Jeff Davis is a gospel/R&B great who knows that a lot of very dynamic, funky drummers started playing in church. His comments throughout the main part of this DVD, and in the bonus scenes,…
Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Timesby Jerry Prochnickyand Ralph Hulett
BOOK LEVEL: All $35 Zeppelin fans, you may not have seen all there is to see of your favorite group after all. Whether you learn much from the text of Good Times, Bad Times depends on how much you’ve already…
The Snare Drummer's Toolbox by Chris Crockarell & Chris Brooks
BOOK/DVD LEVEL: BEGINNER $5 You play drumset…but how are your snare drum basics? This educational and entertaining eighty-page method book covers it all in ten comprehensive lessons, from explanations of how to hold the sticks and read music to…
Wicked BeatsFeaturing Gil Sharone
DVD LEVEL: ALL $24.99 Wicked Beats lives up to its name. Gil Sharone’s enthusiasm for Jamaican ska, rocksteady, and reggae is contagious, and he offers ample practical and technical knowledge here. Sharone keeps it all within reach, demonstrating, for…
How to Play Drums in a Big Band by Rich Thompson
BOOK/CD LEVEL: BEGINNER TO ADVANCED $25 Digging for pay dirt, Rich Thompson surpasses the typical “play this groove, then hit this hit” approach to big band chart instruction. Offering insightful commentary on the arrangements, Thompson stresses an awareness of…
Realistic Drum Fills: Replacementsby Carmine Appice
BOOK/CD LEVEL: ALL $15.99 Rock legend Carmine Appice continues his award-winning Realistic instructional series with this seventy-five-page guide to creating more interesting drum fills by developing hand/foot combinations. Famous for this technique, Appice starts with basic 8th-note sticking patterns…
