Gear Guide: New Sticks & Heads For 2017

P L AY B E T T E R FA ST E R

Stanton Moore Road Tested

A&F Royals Drums
Tribute To Toussaint Sabian Artisan
Sit Right Elite Cymbals
Carolina
The Ergonomics Drumworks
Of Drumming Gold Series
Snares
Chops
Workshop Shell Shock
Wood Species
Add Latin Rhythms Explained
To Your Pop

SEPTEMBER 2017

ISSUE 255
 I N T R O D U C I N G
Masterworks Sonic Select Shell Recipes, five distinctly
unique formulas, designed, created and tested to perform
optimally in the environment that bears its name.
studio heritage urban stadium

modern dry

Modern Dry features a 45˚ bearing edge moved inward from the shell’s
outer edge. This unique edge option, combined with a thin blended shell
of Maple and Gumwood, provides a focused yet explosive tone, with short
sustain and added warmth and body. Our minimal contact STL swivel lugs,
combined with our Mastercast hoops and 100% Mahogany reinforcement
rings, help to provide great note articulation and add focus to the tone.
This is the perfect modern sound for the independently minded drummer.

Masterworks Modern Dry shown with a beautiful

Black Limba outer veneer with a Brown Suede finish.
Listen to Modern Dry played by Will Kennedy of the
Yellowjackets at pearldrum.com
COVER STORY
32 Ben Thatcher
In listening to How Did We Get So Dark?, the sophomore release
from bass-and-drums duo Royal Blood, the first question that
came to mind had nothing to do with illumination. Rather, we
had to ask how two people can sound so bloody huge. The
band’s young drummer explains.
  

ISSUE 255, VOL 26 ISSUE 9

SINGLE STROKES VIBE HAND DRUM PRACTICE PAD
12 Dave Simmons 29 Daxx Nielsen 57 Chris Dingman 73 How To Add Latin
Designer of the world’s first Cheap Trick’s rock star Meet one of the most celebrated To Your Pop
functional electronic drum kit. drummer is a completely vibraphonists of his generation. Spice up even the most basic
   different person at home.    backbeats by applying some
   time-tested traditions borrowed
12 What’s Your SOUNDLAB from Latin rhythms.
Drumming I.Q.? FEATURES   
18 2017 Sticks & 60 A&F Drum Co.
Todd Rundgren was notoriously
Heads Gear Guide Royals Kit
picky about his drummers. Do
If steam punk is your bag, this
78 Lessons
you know who they were? All the newest models to dress Glen Sobel ponders the
up your arsenal. definitely is your kit.
   possibilities of one hand and
     
two feet. Danny Gottlieb sings
14 New Blood the praises of Steve Forster’s
    42 Stanton Moore 64 Carolina paradiddle concepts. Gil Sharone
An all-star tribute to the late Drumworks Gold ornaments a reggae hi-hat
14 Money Matters Allen Toussaint featuring the Series Snare Drums
This page + cover: NEIL ZLOZOWER/ATLAS ICONS

pattern.
It’s never too early to begin cream of Crescent City’s crop. Precision and detail define these
   stave-shell beauties.
thinking about retirement.
      EVERYTHING ELSE
51 The Ergonomics 6 Perspective
16 Drum Care Of Drumming 68 Sabian Artist Elite 8 Feedback
Aren’t sure which wood species Either you can stave off future Cymbals 10 Notation Guide
will provide your dream drum health issues by adjusting your Bronze elegance personified in a
sound? Start here. setup today, or pay later. quartet of rides and hi-hats.
81 Meet Your Maker
          82 In Memoriam

4 DRUM! September
DRUM! September 2017
2017 DRUMmagazine.com
DRUMmagazine.com
WHEN WE SAY
BENNY WAS
INVOLVED IN
CREATING
THIS STICK,
WE MEAN IT.
The New
Benny Greb
Signature Stick
Feels like a 5B. Plays like a 5A.

To see Benny tell the story, and for more info

go to vicfirth.com/benny-greb

Photo by Gerhard Kühne

©2017 Vic Firth Company
Just Around The CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
EDITOR IN CHIEF Andy Doerschuk

Corner
MANAGING EDITOR Matt Gallagher
PRODUCTION MANAGER Hugh O'Connor
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ken Babal,
Donn Bennett, Wayne Blanchard, Brad Boynton,
David A. Brensilver, Matt Byrne, Glen Caruba,

I
Dave Constantin, Kurt Dahl, AJ Donahue, Patrick
t was 1981, and I was on tour with the Naughty Sweeties, an Flanary, Chris Fryar, Richie Gajate-Garcia,
L.A. new wave band that gave me my first tastes, both sweet Diane Gershuny, Daniel Glass, Danny Gottlieb,
and sour, of the professional music biz. Our latest album Garrett Haines, Terence Higgins, Taku Hirano,
had been released a couple months earlier and we were David Jarnstrom, Jonathan Joseph, Gregg Juke,
traversing the country in a beat-up green station wagon pulling a Eric Kamm, Robert Lewis, David Libman,
U-Haul trailer filled with our gear and progressively crusty stage Billy Martin, Chris Mattoon, Rob McKinley, P.C.
clothes. Muñoz, Anika Nilles, Andrew Nusca, John Nyman,
Our booking agents had planned the first half of the itinerary Chuck Parker, John Payne, Luga Podesta, j.poet,
perfectly, sending us through the southern states on a big Bobby Rock, Brad Schlueter, Wally Schnalle,
smiley-face sweep that culminated in two nights at the Peppermint Lounge in New Chad Smith, Mike Snyder, Glen Sobel,
York City. We were supposed to receive the itinerary for the second half — a northern Karen Stackpole, Norman Weinberg, David Weiss,
run through New England, the Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest — by the time we hit John Wicks, Jake Wood, and Andy Ziker
the East Coast. VIDEO CONTRIBUTORS Glen Caruba,
But after arriving in New York, we encountered a big problem. The two partners Giovanni Durst, Richie Gajate-Garcia,
who owned our booking agency had been too busy suing each other for embezzlement Libor Hadrava, “Tiger” Bill Meligari,
to book a single show for us beyond the Peppermint Lounge. It’s not as if we were Brad Schlueter, Marc Smith,
getting rich from our gigs, either. Each night’s pay covered barely enough gas and and Charlie Waymire
cheeseburgers to get us to the next stop. Most nights we sought out a compassionate
fan who’d let us crash on his floor. There was no slush fund. CREATIVE SERVICES
So there we were, stuck in New York with only two gigs on the schedule, almost no CREATIVE DIRECTOR Joey Lusterman
money in our pockets, and no way to get home. Meanwhile, back in L.A., our frantic PRODUCTION DESIGNER Doran Shelley
managers called every booking agent in town and begged them to book any gigs they CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
could for us, anywhere, any time, for any amount of money, just to keep us alive. Robert Downs, Paul Haggard, Rick Malkin,
And that started the craziest routing any band has ever seen. One night we were Eddie Malluk, Christopher T. Martin, Bryon Paul
in Chicago. The next night we were in Maine. Then it was back to Atlanta or Tampa McCartney, Lissa Wales, and Neil Zlozower
or Boston. At some point, as we zigzagged across the map, we wound up on top of a CONTRIBUTING ILLUSTRATORS
mountain somewhere, playing at some kind of ramshackle town hall for an audience of Juan Castillo, Rick Eberly
hill folk who didn’t seem to have any idea why we were there. Neither did we.
We eventually wound up in Toronto, camping in a brothel above a club where we SALES & MARKETING
were scheduled to play. We were at the end of our rope. Everything sucked. We decided PUBLISHER Phil Hood
to beg our families for enough money to make it back to L.A., and even began to discuss CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER Lyzy Lusterman
breaking up the band. SALES DIRECTOR Cindi Olwell
Then the phone rang. It was our manager who told us that if we could make ASSOCIATE SALES DIRECTOR Greg Sutton
it to Ypsilanti, Michigan, the next night, we could open for Tom Petty And The SALES MANAGERS Ref Sanchez,
Heartbreakers. “You’d have to blow off one of your Toronto gigs, though,” he said. Amy-Lynn Fischer
We didn’t have to think twice about it. MARKETING SERVICES MANAGER
Twenty-four hours later we were on stage in front tens of thousands of people. By Tanya Gonzalez
the end of our set, the entire Heartbreakers band was standing by the side of the MARKETING DESIGNER Tricia Baxter
stage, egging us on. When we finished our set, they asked us to open for them for the PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER Kelsey Holt
rest of the tour. And that was the beginning of one of the most memorable summers MAGAZINE MARKETING COORDINATOR
I’ve ever had. Lauren Boyd
So remember this story when you’re convinced you’ve hit rock bottom, and don’t SINGLE COPY SALES CONSULTANT
see even a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. It might be the perfect time to hold Tom Ferruggia
fast, dig deep, and summon some hope. Dreams can come true, even — or maybe Distributed to the music trade by American International
especially — when you least expect them. Distribution Corporation (AIDC)

PO Box 2211, Williston, VT 05495-2211

800-765-8737, Orders@aidcvt.com.

Drum articles are indexed in The Music Index and

The Music Article Guide. Except as noted, all contents
Andy Doerschuk    ©2017 String Letter Publishing Inc., David A. Lusterman, Publisher.
No part of the contents may be reproduced, in print or
electronically, without prior written permission.

  

AIDC

6 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 SINCE 1977...

“…SONOR drums have remained my first and only choice as a

high quality instrument for the past 40 years. My sound is the
‘SONOR Sound’. I can’t imagine playing any other drum set.”

STEVE SMITH

u s . s o n o r. c o m
Beater Kits We Loved
Editor’s Note In last month’s Perspective column,
I wrote about how learning to play on a funky
old drum set helped my drumming progress
quicker when I was a kid. This solicited a bunch of
responses from readers who described the beater
kits they got started on. Feel free to join in. Here
are some samples.
I really enjoyed your piece in the August 2017
issue of Drum magazine, “Joy Of A New Toy.” I
totally identified with your concept of motivation
on a new or newer kit.
My first kit was a used pawnshop Ludwig
Acrolite and a 16" Krut crash. I would bash away
for hours to my favorite Kiss records (yes, vinyl)
on my snare and crash while playing all other
parts in the air. I would stomp my foot on a piece
of cardboard laid flat on my carpeted floor to get
a kick sound. When I could play a ride pattern on
my crash, nearly making the sound of a proper
beat, I was in heaven.
My fist real kit and a huge upgrade was a used
wine-red CB 700. I finally had two toms and a
floor to place in the gaps for my epic air fills. A
cheap set of hats completed the outfit I practiced
and performed on through junior high. In high
school, I would trade in this kit for a top-of-the-
line Pearl MLX maple double bass setup with
two concert toms and two massive 18" floors,
all in shiny-new piano black. I’ll never forget
the day it arrived at my house on a freight
truck. If only YouTube had been around for the
unboxing! My playing soared to new heights
as my left foot had a new drum to play. I had
replaced my drumming hero Peter Criss with the
likes of Tommy Aldridge and Alex Van Halen.
Off I went feverishly into double bass nirvana.
I have most of that Pearl kit today and still
play it. I’ve had many other kits over the years
and most recently purchased a Tama Bubinga
Starclassic as my main kit. I’m still amazed
after all these years spent drumming at how
my playing changes and improves when I play
new gear, or how it suffers when playing on
poor backline gear. There’s nothing like the feel
of finally playing on the kit you’ve dreamed of
owning.
Kyle Denney
Richardson, Texas
Further to your Perspective piece on beater
kits, mine was a Beverley Astra passed on
to me by my father. This was a low-end kit
made by a respected UK manufacturer (see
drumarchive.com for details) during the late
1950s and/or early 1960s.
Unfortunately, I started playing in the 1970s,
when the physical demands placed on drums
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8 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
were much higher, so I spent half my time
trying to beef the kit up in various ways. This
led firstly to the cultivation of ingenuity
(for example, I’m convinced I invented both
the memory lock and the sizzle chain long
before the industry came up with them) and
subsequently to appreciating similar ingenuity
on the part of any manufacturer offering new
solutions to the practical problems of drumming,
from the Vector pedal to Zildjian Dip sticks.
I’d certainly agree that starting out on a beater
kit makes you develop workaround performance
skills. In my experience, however, it can also
provide insights into how the kit actually works
and keep players receptive to design innovations.
Your excellent coverage of the latter, such as the
new hardware roundup in the same issue, is one
of the many reasons I enjoy your magazine.
Roger Thomas
Amersham, UK
I remember two kits that were my starters. The
first was a hodgepodge of drums of mixed make.
It had a huge kick, perhaps 26", and three snares.
The pedal was sluggish and nearly unusable.
Ancient hardware. A woodblock and a cowbell
were clamped to the kick hoop. If there were
cymbals, they were completely forgettable. I
didn’t keep it more than a few months. I didn’t
know what I had at the time, but one of the
snares was a brass piccolo with calfskin heads.
It might have been a Slingerland. The drums
probably came from the ’30s.
My second kit was a Black Pearl Crest Deluxe.
Hardware consisted of a snare stand and
kick-mounted cymbal arm that held a brass
cymbal-shaped object of indescribable sound.
The kick pedal did okay, unless it was required
to play more than a couple sixteenth-notes in a
row. No hi-hat. The tom mount in the kick drum
shell was made of two pieces soldered together,
and eventually the wings on the set screw came
loose.
I used a pair of pliers to tighten up the screw
to keep the 13" tom from rotating in the mount,
until I stripped the threads. But the 16" floor never
failed. I bought a Speed King pedal, Slingerland
hi-hat stand (on which I mounted the school’s
pair of orchestra cymbals), and an 18" Paiste 602,
which I used as a crash-ride, and still have.
Eventually the spurs broke through the
shell and I had to reinforce the bass drum with
some metal pieces I found at a hardware store,
repurposed from an electrical box.
That kit played through two years of pep
band at football and basketball games, home and
away. It even did a couple of dances and went to
a jazz band competition in Reno, Nevada.
Glenn Hamilton
Lexington, Ohio
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GUIDE TO DRUM NOTATION By Brad Schlueter

Drum Key

China Splash Cowbell Crash Choked Ride Ride Closed Open Tom Tom Snare Ghost Rim Snare Snare Tom Tom Tom Right Left Hi-Hat Hi-Hat
Crash Bell Hi-Hat Hi-Hat 1 2 Note Click Doubles Buzz 3 4 5 Bass Bass Pedal Splash

Music Staff, Clefs, Measures & Bar Lines Triplets

Music is written on a music staff, a vertical rectangle and is used with key, above. The staff is separated As we go from longer notes down the
which features five parallel horizontal nonpitched percussion instruments. into individual measures (or bars) of list to the shorter notes, the notes
lines. The first thing you’ll see Notes written on different spaces and music, with thin vertical lines, called and rests are halved in length. If you
written on the staff is the clef, which lines indicate that you play a specific bar lines. The number of beats in each want to divide a note into thirds, you’ll
determines the pitch of the notes. instrument: snare drum, bass drum, measure is determined by the need to use a triplet. A quarter-note
The drum/percussion clef looks like or cymbal, according to the drum time signature. naturally divides into two eighths, but
if you want to divide it into thirds, you
Measure Bar Line need to use an eighth-note triplet. An
Drum Time Signature eighth-note triplet is played 50 percent
Clef
faster than normal eighth-notes and
would be equivalent to a twelfth-note
(although there is no such note).
Staff
1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 e & ah 4 e & ah 1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 e & ah 4 e & ah An eighth-note triplet is written as
three eighth-notes beamed together
with a number three above them. Any
Accent of the three notes can be replaced with
3 an eighth rest or two sixteenths, or
any other division of an eighth-note
allowing for more notational flexibility.
Triplets are usually counted “1 & ah 2 &
1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 e & ah 4 e & ah 1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 & ah 4 e & ah ah 3 & ah 4 & ah.” You can also divide
a note into fifths (quintuplet), sixths
A double bar line (sextuplet), sevenths (septuplet),
Crescendo Decrescendo indicates the ending
(gradually louder) (gradually softer) and so on.

Time Signatures Dotted Notes & Rests

Time signatures are written like
fractions. The top number tells you
how many beats are in each measure.
The bottom number indicates the size
of the note that represents the duration
of one beat. For example, in the time
signature of 5/4, there are five beats
in each measure and the quarter-note
lasts for one beat. The time signature is
written at the beginning of the piece of
music and wherever there is a meter
change. Since most music is in 4/4, the
time signature is often abbreviated with
a large letter C, indicating
“common time.”
Sometimes you’ll see a note or a rest
with a small dot written next to it.
This indicates that the note will last 50
percent longer than, or 1.5 times, its
normal length.

Note & Rest Values

Notes and rests come in different
lengths, which represent fractions.
For every size note, there is an
equivalent size rest. The note and rest Whole- Whole Half- Note Half Quarter- Quarter Eighth- Eighth Rest Sixteenth- Sixteenth Thirty- Thirty-
Note Rest Rest Note Rest Note Note Rest Second- Second
values include whole (1/1), half (1/2),
Note Rest
quarter (1/4), eighth (1/8), sixteenth
(1/16), and thirty-second (1/32). of one quarter, so eighth-notes are written by using combinations of different parts of a note: the note
These values represent the durations twice as fast as quarter-notes. These notes and rests, so it is important to head, stem, and flags or beams.
of the notes and rests. For example, relationships define the lengths (and memorize them to quickly identify Recognizing them will help you learn
two eighths fit in the space (or time) speeds) of the notes. Rhythms are and play rhythms. There are several to identify notes.

One-Bar Repeat Two-Bar Repeat Repeat everything

Counting Rhythms Repeat (repeat previous (repeat two previous since the previous
& Playing Repeats Sign measure) measures) repeat sign
The simplest way to figure out rhythms
is to count them with the smallest note
value you have to play. For most drum
music, that means counting sixteenth-
1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 e & ah 4 e & ah
notes. In 4/4, sixteenth-notes are
counted “1 e & ah 2 e & ah 3 e & ah last for one count, an eighth-note or half-note/rest will last for eight, and a piece of music and minimize page turns.
4 e & ah.” Since you are counting rest will last for two counts, a quarter- whole-note/rest will last for sixteen. A few different types of repeat signs are
sixteenths, a sixteenth-note/rest will note/rest will last for four counts, a Repeat signs are used to abbreviate a shown in the example above.

10 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

SATURN TOUR EDITION

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WHITE MARINE (VW) VINTAGE SPARKLE (VS) BLACK PEARL (VN)

CLASSIC LOOKS, MODERN SOUND

The NEW Saturn V Tour Edition is our latest offering featuring the unmistakable sound of Maple/Walnut shells. We've combined classic
looks with modern sound, adding 4 NEW Wrapped Finishes and Shallower Bass Drums. All Saturn V Tour Edition drums are fitted
with chrome hardware and feature the SONIClear™ Bearing Edge, which promote easier tuning and produce a stronger, deeper sound.

#PLAYMORE
WHAT’S
WHAT’S YOUR
DRUMMING IQ?
IQ?
By Wayne Blanchard

ROCKING WITH RUNT

1. Todd Rundgren’s “Once
Burned” featured the
drummer from?
A. Booker T & The MG’s
B. The Band
C. Tin Machine

2. He delivered Who-like
drumming on Nazz Nazz’s
“Under The Ice.”
A. Keith Moon
B. Thom Mooney
C. Tim Mooney

3. Who drummed on the

first three sides of
Something/Anything?
A. N.D. Smart
B. Hal Blaine
C. Todd Rundgren

4. They drummed on the

fourth side of Rundgren’s
Something/Anything?
A. John Siomos
B. Hunt Sales
C. Billy Mundi

5. He played a motorcycle-
inspired drum kit in Utopia. IN THEIR OWN WORDS By AJ Donahue

Dave Simmons
A. John Wilcox
B. Willie Leacox
C. John Wilson

6. This drummer was behind

Todd in The New Cars kicking
up “Candy-O.”
A. David Robinson
B. Prairie Prince
C. John Wilcox
The Death & Rebirth
7. He is not drumming on the
Rundgren-produced hit
Of Simmons Drums
Bat Out of Hell.
A. Max Weinberg Dave Simmons essentially Center. We rang the English keyboard stuff, but there didn’t
B. Hal Blaine created the modern electronic innovator for a quick chat about seem to be anything happening
drum market. His iconic his brand’s history, what brought in drums at the time. So, I made
C. John Wilcox
hexagonal pads were a staple him back, and his goals for the the drummer in the band I was
on kits used by some of the newly relaunched Simmons playing with something that he
8. Rundgren and Frank Zappa
most recognizable pop and rock Drums. could hit to make some noise. It
produced this band and dug
drummers throughout the 1980s was a bit of an accident because
the drummer.
and early ’90s, and still have NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER I couldn’t play the drums then. I
A. The Tubes
a dedicated following today. OF INVENTION still can’t play the drums [laughs].
B. XTC Now, after a nearly 20-year I was working with ARP
C. Grand Funk Railroad hiatus, Simmons is returning to synthesizers and was very AND SO IT BEGINS
the world of e-drums as part of interested in electronics in music. I was working at a company
Turn to page 17 for the answers
an exclusive pairing with Guitar I was messing around with called Musicaid in the late

12 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 ’70s, where I did the SDS III and SDS IV drum
[synths]. It wasn’t until 1980 that I bolted
things together and made a real drum kit. That
was the SDS V. Later, I did my first trade show
at the British Music Fair in London in 1981. I
had three kits there: a heart-shaped kit, a bat-
shaped kit, and the hexagonal kit. The hexagon
was the one that everybody said they would
buy, so that’s what I kind of standardized.
EARLY HURDLES
At first, nobody in the musical instrument
trade seemed to be interested. I don’t think
they saw it as a threat. They just weren’t
interested in electronic instruments yet. In
the end, it was demand from musicians that
got things moving. They wanted something
new, and then, when it got some publicity on
TV, things went wild.
THE TIPPING POINT
Everything really took off very quickly after
that, but it almost didn’t happen because there
was a musician’s union strike on in the UK. We
were quite famous for our strikes at that time.
The band Landscape had a hit called “Einstein
A Go-Go,” and they were going to perform it
on Top Of The Pops. I remember [Landscape
drummer] Richard Burgess phoning me up
and saying, “The program’s being threatened
to be canceled by the union.” Thankfully the
program did end up going out, and we got
probably millions of dollars’ worth of free
publicity on TV because for the next few
months the TV cameras would focus a lot on
this strange looking drum kit.
NOTABLE PLAYERS
The mid-’80s was the height of it. Pretty
much every name drummer was using some
improve your sound,
protect your hoop and
strengthen your foundation.
• safely and securely attaches to the drum
• 6˝ of lateral pedal position adjustment
• recommended for single and double pedals
• available for 20˝ and 22˝ bass drums
heyward wood imboden ilejay
see the video.
of our drums. The pros were using the SDX,
which was a 16-bit, 16-channel, positional,
multisampled drum kit. We had names like
Peter Van Hooke, Phil Collins, Danny Carey,
Roger Taylor, Alex Van Halen; the list goes
on and on. I actually gave Nick Mason SDX
programming and sampling lessons when he
was first getting into his kit. But Bill Bruford was
the best ambassador I think a lot of people know.
He took the drums further than anyone else in
terms of melody and composition.
CHANGING NEEDS
By the mid-’90s, we found ourselves with
a very expensive electronic drum set. We
put keyboard samples in it, and made it a
complex workstation. But at that time, music
was changing, and nobody wanted electronic
instruments anymore. That pretty much
killed us off.
THE RETURN
After I stopped making electronic drums,
I thought I never wanted to see another
one in my life. But around 2006, a friend of
mine called me and said, “Dave, you’ve got
a new drum set?” I told him no and that I
didn’t know anything about it, so he pointed
me to the Guitar Center kit that was being
sold as Simmons. They were being pretty
naughty. I had to think long and hard about
what I would do about that. I suggested in
the nicest possible way that they should
have talked to me first. To give them their
due, they apologized to me for it, and the
people who took my brand and made it a
badge have all left the company. That went a
long way. There’s a guy over there called Jim
Norman who was the main driver in getting
us all around the table to talk about the idea
of working together. Now we’ve got a
development plan that I’m really excited about.
NEW AMBITIONS
I told them I’m not interested in getting
involved in this unless we can really do
something that’s designed well, functions well,
and does something different. Our goal is to
create maximum control for the drummer. I
truly believe that in five years’ time, drummers
will look back at [today’s] electronic drum kits
and say, “Do you mean that if I hit it with a
stick and then I hit it with a beater, it makes
the same sound?” It’s crazy that it does that.
I think the electronic drum should be able to
make all those different sounds, and I think as
the technology improves, it’s only a matter of
time before we get there.
FAMILIAR FORM
The new drums are sort of softened hexagons
because that’s the trademark, really. It’s going
to look like a Simmons kit. Beyond that, you’ll
see tensionable mesh heads, because that
was a brilliant shift in the design of electronic
drums. The cymbal side of things is different.
We’re still working on the ideal surface for
electronic cymbals, and we’re still worried
about the acoustic noise of striking a cymbal
pad versus a metal cymbal.
NEW CHALLENGES
We’re working with a group of really talented
industrial designers, including Robin Slaton,
and a team called Mimima Design. There’s
a guy called Tom Etheridge there who’s
incredible. He’s doing all the solid works and
modeling. We’re so lucky to find a guy like him.
It’s my name on the equipment, but without
this team of people, none of this is happening.
SINGLE STROKES
NEW BLOOD By Waldo The Squid

Shirin Vaezi
Age 30
equipment Premier drums; Meinl,
Paiste, and Sabian cymbals; Remo
heads; Vic Firth sticks
ContACt @shirin.vaezi and @
atriaofficialpage on Instagram
When the music calls, you answer;
Shirin Vaezi did. The Iranian power
player first developed an interest
in drumming around age 20, and
immediately pursued lessons
with a local instructor in Tehran.
Though it wasn’t long before her
career as a civil engineer forced
her to step away, the music
kept calling, and within a few
short years, Vaezi left her job to
start working as a professional
musician. It didn’t take long to find
her voice on the instrument again,
as evidenced by the substantial
workload she’s carving out for
herself. Vaezi is currently playing
with a number of female pop
groups along with a VIP band that
plays traditional music. And
while she enjoys a variety of
genres, she’s a true metalhead
at heart. Check out Vaezi’s
Instagram feed for a few clips her
slamming through some angular
djent tunes with her band AtriA.
The beat is strong with this one.
Tahnoon Murtza
Age 13
equipment Yamaha drums,
Zildjian cymbals, Remo heads,
Ahead sticks
ContACt @tahnoon_murtza on
Instagram
Tahnoon Murtza has music in his
blood. To hear his family tell it, he
was a fan of Beethoven while still
in diapers. That passion eventually
led him to the drum set at age
six, and to again cite his family’s
account, “He hasn’t looked back
since.” Murtza began lessons at
eight years old, and was sitting
in with local blues bands before
he reached his teens. Today, the
New Jersey native is anchoring
alternative metal band Firefight.
The high-energy outfit has
already rocked some of the most
notable venues in the Tri-State
Area, including The Highline
Ballroom and the Javits Center,
and they’re wrapping production
on their first album this year. Give
Murtza’s name a quick search on
YouTube to find several videos of
the 13-year-old deftly navigating
a range of rock tunes with a sense
of pace and dynamics uncommon
to players his age. This guy is
going places.

YOU CAN APPEAR IN NEW BLOOD. Email newblood@stringletter.com or send a CD or DVD of your drumming, a bio with your age, equipment setup, contact information, and a hi-res photo to
Waldo The Squid, c/o New Blood, 75 Covington St., Asheville, NC 28806. No materials will be returned. Please indicate if you want your email contact published.

MONEY MATTERS By Erik Lindsey

What’s Your Time Horizon?

A large part of my practice involves
providing financial advocacy for the
entertainment and music community. I’ve
found that these clients often wait too long
to start planning for their financial futures,
which leads to tons of difficulties and even
hardships that take them away from what
they love about the business.
Usually, just a lack of basic knowledge keeps
folks from taking those first, crucial steps
toward beginning the process of creating basic
financial plans. One of their earliest and biggest
hurdles is in understanding the right type of
financial account or instrument in which to
invest. But these accounts are really just tools
to accomplish a defined goal. Once you identify
the right tool for the job, your choices become
much clearer.
Combining this information with some
basic action will take you a good way toward
meeting your goals. The last stretch is usually
a bit more complicated, and may require some
professional guidance, but even if you just work
on the basic plan, you’ll be leaps and bounds
beyond your peers, and will likely avoid the
major pitfalls into which so many others fall
victim.
With that being said, I’m going to attempt
over the next three articles to give you a basic
level of knowledge about financial account/
instrument choices that will help you take
those first steps on your journey to financial
security.
To begin, we must divide these vehicles into
categories that are easier to understand. It’s a
phrase called time horizon, which represents
the length of time between the start date of
your financial plan and when you intend to accounts most suited to each range and why
pull money or assets from the account. For they work best there.
example, if you’re 40 and don’t plan to touch a I hope to accomplish two things by the
specific retirement account until age 60, end: 1) to give you a basic knowledge of the
your time horizon is 20 years. Time horizon typical financial instruments you will come
will typically be a major factor in deciding across during your life, and 2) to give you some
which tool or instrument is right for your confidence in this subject so you can take the
particular job. important steps needed to start your own
I often divide time horizons into three basic journey into planning for the future.
ranges: 0-2 years, 2-8 years, and 8 years and
beyond. Most financial accounts fall into one ERIK LINDSEY is the cofounder and
financial adviser of Clear Financial
of these categories, sometimes two, but rarely
Strategies (cfsnashville.com).
all three. In future columns, I’ll break down the

14 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

The Ancestor
Of
Dark Sound
SINGLE STROKES
DRUM CARE
Which Wood Is For You?
Wood possesses many characteristics
that make it ideal for use in the construction of
musical instruments. Perhaps most important
are the tiny channels in wood’s internal structure,
which once transferred nutrients throughout
the tree. After a tree is cut down and dried,
those channels become tiny echo chambers
that invest a beautiful and warm sounding tone
into the material.
Since the internal structure of each type of
wood is unique to that species, it causes each
to have its own specific tonal characteristic.
Maple is without a doubt the most popular
wood species for drum building, although,
in recent years, many other wood species
have become readily available on the market.
Mahogany, walnut, bubinga, beech, oak, birch,
cherry, and poplar are a few of the best known
ones. So, as a player, the trick is to figure out
which wood most suits your taste and sound.
As a general rule of thumb, as wood
increases in hardness, it also increases in
16 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
By Rhett Hendrix
weight, making its tonal pitch rise and its
volume, projection, and cut increase. The
inverse is also true: As wood gets softer, it
becomes lighter, its pitch lowers, and it has
less volume, projection, and cut. Drum builders
regularly refer to the “Janka Hardness Scale” to
determine the hardness of a particular species.
As the number gets higher, the wood gets
harder, so, for instance, maple’s Janka rating
is 1,450, cherry’s is 950, and bubinga’s is way
up there at 2,410. a good amount of projection, making it an
Hard maple is a great all-around wood excellent wood for a big-sounding rock setting.
with a medium density, and can be tuned So next time you’re in the market for a
and tweaked to fit into just about any musical new drum kit, do a quick Google search to
situation. Bubinga drums are known for being determine the Janka ratings of the woods
very loud and able to cut through any mix. you’re interested in. You can use their hardness
Cherry drums are often used in their jazz to help determine which kit would best suit
applications due to their warm, woody tone your musical style.
and easily controlled volume. Mahogany sits
RHETT HENDRIX is the owner of Hendrix Drums,
nicely between maple and cherry with a Janka a custom drum company in Dothan, Alabama,
rating of 1,100, giving it superior low end when which specializes in solid stave snare drums
compared with maple, while still maintaining and kits.
 WHAT’S YOUR
DRUMMING IQ?
ANSWERS
Continued from page 12
1. B. Levon Helm and bassist Rick Danko of
The Band, whom Rundgren produced (Stage
Fright), are on the Runt album’s “Once
Burned.” Hunt and Tony Sales, later of Tin
Machine, are on other tracks.

2. B. Thom Mooney was the drummer in

Rundgren’s late-’60s Brit-style rock band
The Nazz, and he is the one flailing with
Keith Moon-style flair on the superb rocker ™
“Under The Ice.”
CHICAGO DRUM...
BECAUSE HISTORY MATTERS ™
3. C. It was Rundgren. He played all the As former Slingerland® employees from 1955
instruments — guitars, bass, keys, sax,
percussion, drums, everything — on the DISCOVER TRUE VINTAGE ™ through 1986, we built some of the finest drums
for the best players in the world.
Now it’s time to experience our versions of a
first three sides including the hit “I Saw
The Light.”
Classic Styling • Legendary Sound timeless classic... from our skilled hands to yours.
Made in the USA We built them back in the day.
We’re building them again.™
4. A., B., C. All three — Siomos on www.chicagodrum.com
the hit “Hello It’s Me” (before success
with Frampton Comes Alive), future Tin
Machine basher Hunt Sales, and Zappa and
Rhinoceros groover Billy Mundi – covered Drum! Ad Perfect Storm 1-17.indd 1 1/14/17 11:33 AM

side four.

5. A. John “Willie” Wilcox’s super-cool

“motorcycle” kit — electronic pads set into
a streamlined cycle-like chassis — was a
one-of-a-kind. Sadly, it was destroyed in
a fire many years ago.

6. B. Though in on The Cars’ reunion, David

Robinson abstained from The New Cars.
That Rundgren-fronted unit featured Prairie
Prince’s drumming. Robinson, who painted
the checkered flag on the Cars’ Panorama
album cover, now operates an art gallery.

7. B. While Clive Davis and Sony were

dissing the Bat Out of Hell project, producer
Rundgren paid for its production, added
guitar (that motorbike roar is him), and with
Weinberg and Wilcox had no need for Mr.
Blaine.

8. C. Rundgren resurrected Grand Funk’s

career, producing We’re An American Band
and Shining On, while Zappa produced Good
Singing, Good Playing. They both really dug
Don Brewer’s drumming.

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 17

 GEAR
NEW GUIDE

Sticks&Heads
By AJ Donahue
F O R 2 0 1 7

ell, this is it folks:

W Our penultimate
Gear Guide. It’s my
last of 2017, as next
1 Ahead's MAXX 5A is designed to be a longer and stronger 5A, thanks to the company's new “Hyper-Form Engineering” process.
month I hand the reins to Drum
managing editor Matt Gallagher,
who will cover all manner of
electronics for drummers. But
for now, we’ll delve into this
year’s crop of new sticks and
heads, and there are a whole lot
of them. Grab an iced tea, put
your feet up, and join us on this 2 CooperGroove states that its GrooveGrip increases a drummer's grip while eliminating slips, drops, cramps, and fatigue.
journey through the world of
freshly hewn timber and hot-
stamped Mylar.
As always, the prices
listed in this article refer to
Manufacturer’s Suggested
Retail Pricing (MSRP) unless 3 Promark's new line of hickory FireGrain drumsticks offer increased durability, which results from the company’s new heat-
otherwise noted, but you’ll tempering process.
most likely find these
products at significantly
lower prices through your
preferred vendor. Onward!
4 Featuring nylon tips, Tama's 16.5" RedZone series drumsticks are tailor-made for power hitters.
STICK IT TO ’EM
Drumstick choice has a
tremendous effect on personal Black and Red GrooveGrip models that wood’s exterior. And the resulting scorched
sound, so we always encourage drummers include a light application of a water-based look is sure to turn some heads. FireGrain
to explore the wealth of available options. latex coating on the handle for an even strikers can be found in Classic 7A, 2B, 5A,
If you feel like you need something fresh, more secure hold. Multiple sizes and tip and 5B; Rebound 5A and 5B; and Forward
check out these new additions from our shapes are available with direct sale prices 5A and 5B models. One price fits all at
favorite (literally everybody we could find; landing at $21.95 for both colors. Looking $22.60.
we don’t play favs here) stick slingers. for something with a little more flash? Hitting shelves this August, the new
1 Offering a longer reach and increased The Blacklight Glow Grip might be exactly Warm-Up Stick from Regal Tip is an
durability over the company’s standard 5A, what you’re after. Using the same formula oversized, 17" by 0.7" hickory stick with
Ahead Drumsticks’ new MAXX 5A is perfect as CooperGroove’s regular GrooveGrip a large oval tip and a slow taper designed
for players who want primo power without models, the Glow Grips have a black light– to really get your fingers, hands, and
sacrificing agility. The 16.5" by 0.54" stick reactive dye that glows electric blue. wrists loose before a demanding session.
has a 0.035" thick wall (compared to the 3 How hot are your chops? If your Available in white or standard clear P.E.F.
5A’s 0.03") designed to deliver longer life regular sticks can’t stand the heat, it finishes, the Warm-Up workout companions
and just a bit more beef behind each note. might be time to check out Promark’s new have an MSRP of $18.
2 CooperGroove sticks feature crosscut FireGrain series. The company’s new heat 4 Tama drumsticks have returned in a
grooves around the handle to create a more treatment process increases the durability big way! In addition to a trio of signature
relaxed grip in hand with less slippage. of its standard hickory models, without models we’ll get to in just a minute, the
For 2017, the Cooper crew rolled out new affecting weight or feel, by hardening the legendary drum maker relaunched its

18 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

5 Vic Firth's MJC2 is slightly thinner than the 5A model and has an extra long taper.
stick division this year with four brand
new lines. First up, the Traditional series
comprises four all-oak sticks designed for
durability, articulation, and classic comfort.
Sizes consist of an acorn-tipped 7A, an
oval-tipped 5A, a combination acorn/oval-
tipped 5B, and an 8A with a small, squared
bead. MSRPs land at $17.70. Similarly, the
Rhythm Mate line includes most of the same
sizes in hickory and maple, but swaps
the 8A out for an oval-tipped 2B. Hickory
Mates come with an MSRP of $11, while
Maple Mates are $8.20.
Power players in search of something
with even more staying power should
check out Tama’s all-oak RedZone series.
All three 16.5" models lean on the heavy
side, and come wearing a deep red finish.
Nylon-tipped 5A and 5B editions come in at
0.55" and 0.59" in diameter, offering plenty
of power and projection. But if that’s not
enough, the 5ARZK features an untapered,
tipless, 0.55"-thick shape for maximum
punch. Snag any for $22.20. And finally, the
company’s new Rhythmic Fire line adds
a spicy touch to its all-oak 5A, 5B, and 7A
sticks with an original tribal flame graphic
printed on the handle. Turn up the heat for
just $19.90.
5 For years, Vic Firth’s R&D team has
been hard at work on a series of artist-
inspired sticks designed to suit and
advance the sounds of cutting-edge jazz.
The resulting Modern Jazz Collection,
crafted with the help of luminaries like
Greg Hutchinson, Lewis Nash, Jeff Ballard,
and Joe McCarthy, consists of a quintet of
6 Aquarian's Reflector
series of snare and
tom heads features
a new 2-ply Hybrid
Film combination that
enhances stick attack
when played at higher
volumes.
versatile, dynamic tools that can handle
swing and a whole lot more.
First up, the MJC1 ($16.25) is a
16.125" by 0.58" hickory dynamo
designed for comfort and
reach. Its 55A shaft is capped
with a medium taper and a
long oval tip for broad, lively
cymbal sounds. The hickory
MJC2 ($16.25) comes in
just under a 5A in diameter
at 0.55", and features a
16"-long build with an
elongated arrow tip perfect
for pulling complex tones
out of thin pies. At 0.54"
wide and 16.3125" long,
the hickory MJC3 ($16.25)
has some extra built-in
reach to go along with a
smooth taper for great
balance and quick response.
Drummers who prefer the
darker, mellower sound of
maple should look no further 7 Dunnett R-Class Res-O-Tone drumheads use Remo
films and are based on the Remo Ambassador model
than the MJC4 ($16.25). Its
blended with Dunnett's proprietary film combination.
0.595" diameter, 16.375" length, and small
barrel tip deliver warm sounds and loads
of dynamic range. And finally, the MJC5 6 Created in conjunction with the
($16.75) measures 16" by 0.54" and sports a incomparable Eric Moore II, Aquarian
medium taper topped by a nylon tip that’s Drumheads’ new Reflector Series skins
ideal for players in search of brighter tones offer a potent combination of deep,
and more clarity. controlled lows and clean, sweet highs.
The 2-ply heads combine a 7mil Classic
HEAD GAMES Clear top with a 10mil Black bottom ply
Lots of exciting new heads hit the market made of denser film. That stiffer bottom
this year, and we dug up the deets on them. layer adds some rigidity to build in added
punch and control, while the thinner clear
ply adds warmth and tone. In addition,
the black base and clear top come
together to form a mirror-like visual that
really pops. Reflector heads are available
in 6" ($25.30) to 18" ($51.70) sizes, 16"
($88) to 28" ($121) bass drum models, and
16" ($94.60) to 28" ($127.60) Super Kick II
editions.
And hot on the heels of the successful
Reflector Series, Aquarian also introduced
13" ($38.50) and 14" ($39.60) Texture
Coated versions of the heads for snare
drums. The TC models come equipped
with a slate grey coating that adds
warmth and focus. They’re also said to
speak with a low and round voice when
played softly, but stiffen up to offer
additional presence in the upper ranges
when played hard.
7 Ronn Dunnett done did it again. In an
effort to tackle every single square inch
of the drum, the percussion community’s
answer to Nikola Tesla went and spun up
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 19
 NEW Sticks & Heads

the modern
jazz collection 8 Evans Drumheads'
UV1 series features the
You’re going to want company’s patented
UV-cured coating,
more than one. which is is designed to
provide durability and
consistency of texture.
UV1 series head sizes
range from 10" to 18".

his own line of drumheads. Developed in durability. The resulting UV1 series of snare
conjunction Remo, Dunnett’s new Res- and tom skins feature a 10mil base of new
O-Tone single-ply (10mil) and Res-O-Two film that produces a fuller, more controlled
2-ply (one 7mil ply plus one 10mil ply) sound than previous models, and have
heads utilize a proprietary film recipe that a UV-cured coating applied only to the
yields a tremendous combination of clarity, playing surface (the collars are untreated).
tuning range, and (expectedly) resonance. That unique application process creates
The unique film blend has a slick, hazy an incredibly even top that isn’t prone to
white look reminiscent of a timpani skin, flaking or chipping, even after many hours
and offers some of the clean attack of a of brush play. UV1 heads are on shelves
clear head balanced by the rounder finish in standard sizes from 10" to 18", with
of a coated model. Currently, Res-O-Tones MSRPs starting at $33.75 and topping out
can be purchased in 8" to 18" standard at $58.50.
sizes with MSRPs running
from $26.70 to $46.60,
and Powerstroke 3 bass
drumheads in standard
sizes ranging between 18"
($71.60) and 26" ($92.50).
Bass drum models are also
available with the new
Felt Tone internal tone-
control treatment ($91.90
to $117.70). Res-O-Two
editions can be found in
the same sizes with tom
head prices starting at
$28.25 and going up to
$48.93.
©2017 Vic Firth Company

8 After years of
experimentation and
exploration in an attempt
to improve the lifespan of
standard coated finishes,
the R&D team at Evans
Drumheads developed a
new finishing process that
offers a remarkable blend 9 Remo's Diplomat Classic Fit Drumheads feature a slightly narrow flesh hoop
of tone, warmth, and and step design to address oversized drums made prior to the mid-1960s.

©2017 Vic Firth Company

20 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 For 2017 When we say Benny
was involved in
creating this stick,
We wouldn’t
normally mention
a “practice pad" in
our new drumheads
we mean it.
guide, but the Black
Hole Practice Pad
System from RTOM Benny Greb
Signature Stick
(creators of Moon
Gel) had to make
the cut. Blending
a tunable mesh head with
11 Switch Kick introduced two new beaters: the Two-
a snap-locking rim, Black Holes can be
Feels like a 5B. Plays like a 5A.
Way Cowbell/Tambourine Kick (top) and Square Felt
Beater (bottom). installed right on top of your drums in
seconds to provide a playing surface that’s
9 For 2017, Remo is putting a fresh up to 80 percent quieter than untreated
spin on those old, oversized tubs with the drums, but still retains some tone. Thicker
introduction of new Classic Fit series skins. impact zones in the center offer clearer
The heads are available in Ambassador articulation and just enough projection

Photo by Gerhard Kühne ©2017 Vic Firth Company

Clear, Ambassador Coated, and Diplomat
Fiberskyn models with traditional thickness
and ply dimensions, but feature a narrower
flesh hoop to better accommodate the often
out-of-round or over-large drums produced
in or before the 1960s. This results in
faster seating, easier tuning, and fuller
tone. All three lines are offered in 12", 13",
14", 16", and 18" sizes with MSRPs ranging
from $33 to $60. Buyers can also pick up
an Ambassador Clear Snare Side head for
about $32.
Remo’s other major initiative this year
is a collaboration with Ronn Dunnett of
Dunnett Classic Drums. To capture the full,
naturally gated sound of a felt strip–tamed
bass drum without the accompanying
seating issues that inevitably come along
with installation, the two forces combined
to create the new Felt Tone series of bass
drumheads. Available in standard sizes
from 18" to 26", Felt Tone heads come
equipped with the Powerstroke internal
tone control ring that’s been modified to
include a felt-lined strip from about the
2:00 o’clock to 5:00 o’clock positions on the
head’s interior. The strip rests against
the head, but is free to flex away from the
playing surface before quickly returning
to place for a smoothly controlled sound.
Powerstroke P3 Hazy Felt Tone heads are
made using the same 10mil film found in
Dunnett’s Res-O-Tone skins (see previous
page), while Powerstroke P3 Fiberskyns
are cut from 7.5mil film with the company’s
propriety fiber treatment on top. MSRPs
run from $91 to $141.
Blending the worlds of visual and sonic
arts even further, Remo’s new ArtBEAT
Artist Skyndeep Suede drumhead ($44.90)
features a 10mil, single-ply head adorned
with the stylish work of Incubus drummer
José Pasillas. The head’s beautiful Candy
Skull piece is a surefire way to set your
snare skins apart from the rest.
to make each stroke audible. Black Holes
are available in 10" ($79.99) through 16"
($98.36) tom and snare drum sizes, along
with 18" ($118.99) through 24" ($142.33)
bass drum models. Additionally, combo
packs are hitting shelves now with 12", 13",
14", 16", and 22"; or 10", 12", 14", 16", and
22" sizes (both $489).
BEAT IT
Your feet need drumsticks too. That’s why
we have bass drum beaters. We love bass
drum beaters, so we scrounged up some
info on the slickest new kickers landing
this year.
10 Denver-based custom shop Low
Boy Custom Beaters is making quite a
splash with its growing array of beautifully
designed, handcrafted wood beaters. The
company rolled out its new Felt Daddy
edition featuring a 1.5" diameter flat felt pad
affixed to the larger striking face. All-maple
Standard ($38) and Lightweight ($36) Felt
Daddys are currently available.
11 Switch Kick’s popular quick-
release bass drum beater series is
10 Each Low Boy two-
way bass drum beater
is built of hard maple
from American forests,
fitted with a polished
stainless steel rod, and
laser engraved with
the company's logo.

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 21


“Offering balance, consisten
ate du rab ilit y. My Vaters
feel and ultim
NEW Sticks & Heads
healthy 65 grams, and provides a sturdy,
punchy feel that maintains rebound.
12 In line with the release of his
signature Pearl snare drum, Eric
Singer is also slapping his name
on a pair of new signature snare
drumheads from Attack. The
2-ply coated batter ($38.25) is
medium in weight and comes
equipped with the Tone
Ridge, a two-tiered crimp
around much of the playing
surface that adds control and
fatness. Singer’s resonant-
side model ($35.95) is also cut
to a medium weight to boost
bottom end at all tunings. And
as an added security measure for
heavy hitters, both of The Catman’s
signature skins come equipped with a
black carbon steel flesh hoop that further
cy, great
solidifies the company’s guarantee that
12 Marina Bozzio's Blast Beat snare side head gives any
its heads will never pull out at the collar.
e of mind.
snare drum a darker sound than is typical of other types

bring me pure joy and peacfound my

of resonant snare heads. As an added bonus, all proceeds go to the
ve Cleveland Veterans Administration Hospital
My search is over... I ha welcoming a pair of new additions in in Cleveland, Ohio.
sticks!!!” the Square Felt and Two-Way Cowbell/ Marina Bozzio is making some serious

Abe Cunningham
Tambourine Kick models. The Square waves overseas with her band Aldious, and
Felt unit ($39.99) produces a firmer, more clearly living up to expectations as heir to
focused sound due to its increased striking the Bozzio throne. To help further define

DEFTONES surface area. Meanwhile, the Two-Way

beater ($59.99) utilizes a slim, clave-esque
shape with two different rubber faces of
varying density to be used with either a
pedal-mounted cowbell or tambourine.
What’s more, all Switch Kick models are
now being offered with the company’s
adaptor shaft as an upgrade.
Vic Firth has introduced a new member
of its popular VicKick family in the VKB4
Cajon Beater ($28.25). The spherical foam
rubber ball is designed to pull potent, low
tones out of cajons with just a bit of punch
on top. You can also throw one in front of a
ABE CUNNINGHAM’S bass drum for a full, focused bump.
her sound, Attack rolled out the new Marina
B. Drum Head System, a trio of snare heads
designed to deliver powerful tones and add
new dimension to the relationship between
snare wires and resonant heads. Bozzio’s
Coated Batter head ($38.25) is a heavy-duty
topper made of 1,000-gauge Mylar S film for
increased durability and sonic punch. On the
other side, her Blast Beat snare side head
($39.75) is a thin skin with a coated strip
where the wires lie, offering darker response.
But if that’s not your speed, the Blast Beat+
snare side head ($42.75) features an inverse
setup with a fully coated surface broken
only by an uncoated strip where the wires

COOL BREEZE SIGNATURE SWAG

L 16 5/8” • 42.23cm
D .600” • 1.52cm VHABECW
A perfect stick choice for when a 5B is too
light and a 2B/Rock model is too heavy. The
slightly enlarged diameter, heavier taper and
little extra length make Abe’s model great
for harder hitting drummers but is also very
suitable for laid back/solid groove playing. The
medium sized acorn tip delivers warm but
articulate tones from around the kit.
#SWITCHTOVATER
We promise — with all of our sincerest
intentions but no legal responsibility — that
you’ll sound just like the drummers below
if you buy their signature gear. It’s just
good science.
Frank Zummo plays a lot of music.
Between Sum 41, Street Drum Corps,
Julien-K, Dead By Sunrise, and Krewella
(phew!), our guy has a lot to handle. He
needs a stick that can handle all those
different styles too, so he linked up with
Ahead to design his own signature model
($36.49). The 0.595" model feels like a 5B
in the grip, but has a long taper stretched
over its luxurious 16.63" frame. With
a 0.035"-thick wall, the FZ weighs in at a
meet the Mylar for a controlled sound and
enhanced wire response.
13 Nashville-based Innovative Percussion
is introducing a pair of new signature stick
models this year developed with the help
of James Gadson and Jimmy DeGrasso.
Legendary stick-slinger James Gadson’s
Groovesicle ($18.25) is a dynamic hickory
hitmaker that comes in just under a
standard 5A in diameter at 0.560". Its deluxe
16.75" length provides plenty of extra
reach, and its medium taper and acorn tip
offer comfort and clarity. Players looking
for something a little heftier should check
out the Jimmy DeGrasso signature model
($23.25). Its 0.595" 5B-sized diameter is
stretched out over a 16.5" body, and a
strong acorn tip caps its medium-short

VATER.COM 22 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 For 2017

13 Innovative Percussion's hickory JG-1 James Gadson Groovesicle model is 16.75" long with a diameter of 560", a medium taper, and acorn bead.

taper. Finally, it features a rubber dipped
handle, which has a slightly tacky surface
to ensure a secure and comfortable grip.
14 Promark’s newest signature models
were created with the help of two New
York-based icons known for playing just
about everything under the sun. The
Kimberly Thompson Signature Stick
($18.90) is a stretched 0.535" by 16.5" 7A
with a long taper and a small ball tip, all
of which combine to form an exceptionally
balanced unit that can go from delicate
to dynamo with ease. Meanwhile, Anton
Fig’s updated ActiveGrip 595 ($21) features
the same 0.595" by 16.75" dimensions as
his original model, but now sports a full
application of the heat-activated coating.
The R&D team over at Regal Tip
partnered with Grammy-winning Tye
Tribbett drummer Tre “TreWay” Lambert
to create the new TreWay Always ONDA1
signature model ($18). It’s a 16.25" by
0.56" hickory hitmaker with a full acorn
tip and a whitewashed finish that really
pops. Custom printed graphics of Lambert’s
brand logo complete the look.
Partnering with three of today’s premier
heavy hitters, Tama is coming in hot with
a trio of plus-sized punchers. Recently
announced new Megadeth drummer Dirk
Verbeuren hammered out a 16" by 0.63"
signature stick ($19.90) that’s definitely
ready for hard work. A broad ball tip
pulls full, powerful sounds out of toms
and cymbals, while the raw, unfinished
exterior provides a comfortable grip.
Gojira drummer Mario Duplantier’s new
monikered model ($22.20) is a 17" by 0.65"
hickory behemoth with a rounded acorn
tip that’s built for precision and projection.
Finally, Jeremy Colson, long-time drummer
for Steve Vai, drew up another whopper of
a signature stick ($22.20). His 16.6" by 0.65"
hickory namesake has a short taper and a
squat acorn tip that delivers fat, full tones
and smooth balance in hand.
15 Alt-rock icon and Deftones drummer
Abe Cunningham has a new signature stick
from the good folks at Vater Percussion.
His new Cool Breeze ($17.99) is an excellent
answer for those drummers in search of a

14 Kimberly Thompson teamed up with Promark to make a 7A drum stick measuring 0.535" in diameter with an extra half-inch in length for a little extra reach.

15 Abe Cunningham’s Cool Breeze stick from Vater is offered as an alternative when a 5B is too light and a 2B/Rock model is too heavy.
NEW Sticks & Heads
stick that rides the line between a 5B and
a 2B. At 16.625" by 0.6", the breezy hickory
model has a deluxe feel with a heavy
taper and an acorn tip for a comfortable
but power-packed feel. Educator Anthony
Michelli’s AM 595 ($17.99) is a hickory
model designed for versatility and fluidity.
Its 16" by 0.595" dimension tapers smoothly
for easy rebound, and culminates at an
acorn tip for clarity.
Benny Greb’s drumming is globally
recognized for its precision, feel, and
remarkable tone, so it should come as
no surprise that the development of his
new SBG Signature Stick ($18.50) from Vic
Firth was an incredibly detailed process.
ONLINE CALL CENTER
INTERSTATEMUSIC.COM 1.800.462.2263
24 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
Thankfully, though, the result is worth
the weight. Greb’s new model features a
5B-style 0.595" shaft and a 16" reach, but
is augmented with a medium taper and a
slightly longer neck that ends in a small
teardrop tip. Those subtle shifts help
create a stick with extraordinary balance,
and uncommonly clear cymbal response
from the diminutive bead.
Vic Firth’s Carter Beauford model stick
($18.50) is now available in a natural grip,
and the Gavin Harrison signature striker
($18.50) is being offered with a new matte
blue paint handle that provides a completely
different feel in hand from other lacquers,
paints, or even Firth’s own Vic Grip.
16 Headhunters' Fat Bastards Monster Hybrid is a small diameter bamboo
dowel bundled into five groups of 15. The O rings are positioned to form five
finger-like splays.
SUPERSTORE
138TH & NATIONAL AVE, MILWAUKEE, WI • 262.789.7600
Additionally, the company is dropping
a limited run of Buddy Rich and Carmine
Appice anniversary signature editions.
Celebrating what would have been Rich’s
100th birthday, the Buddy Rich LTD
Wood Tip ($18.50) and Nylon Tip ($19)
models come emblazoned with a special
logo and façade of the man himself.
Appice’s Limited Edition signature stick
($18.50) marks 50 years in business for
the mustachioed legend, and is dipped in
black paint with a gold foil detail worthy
of his inimitable style.
With a diameter that lands right between
a 5A and a 5B, Thomas Pridgen’s new Artist
Series stick ($17.25) from Zildjian is as

versatile as he is. A short taper at the end
of its 16.125" hickory frame packs plenty of
power into every stroke, while a large oval
tip pulls wide, open tones from toms and
cymbals. Built around a 0.59" shaft that’s
just slightly thicker than a standard 5A, the
new Artist Series model from Twenty-One
Pilots drummer Josh Dun ($17.25) is an
agile stick that can handle plenty of heavy
play. Its 16.5" length and medium taper
deliver easy balance and a comfortable
fulcrum, while a heavy oval tip beefs up
response. Plus, its deep red finish pairs
nicely with the blood on your split knuckles
from rocking so hard.
BRUSHES, BUNDLES & BEYOND
Alternative striking implements can open
up worlds of new sound, and they don’t
cost nearly as much as a new snare or
cymbal. Expand your sonic portfolio with
some of the sweet strikers detailed below.
16 Dave Rundle of Headhunters is really
doing yeoman’s work in his Burlington,
Ontario shop, creating an incredible
catalog of unorthodox striking implements.
Take this year’s selection of new brushes,
for example. Using black polypropylene
bristles in a tight fan, Bear Claws ($50)
treads new ground by incorporating a
90-degree bend in the brush spread for
a variety of raking sounds depending on
orientation. Headhunters also released
black polypropylene versions of its popular
Rhino and Dreamcatcher models in the
Black Rhino ($58) and the Sandman ($58),
respectively.
Headhunters’ Finger Snaps ($45) use the
stacked combo of three flat flaps found in
the company’s Rap Slappers flat sticks, but
feature much smaller strips to offer tighter,
finger-snapping sounds. Rap Slappers
($60) have also been upgraded to include
textured outer flaps that are more flexible
and lighter to create an even wider array
of sample-inspired sounds.
Mr. Rundle sure was busy this year.
Brand new Blunts ($41) use the same
construction as the company’s Doobies,
but sheath the 0.4375" maple, double-cut
dowel core with eight thin bamboo slats
for a fatter, deeper sound. Similarly, Bing
Bongs ($41) have the same specs, but swap
out those bamboo slats for alternating black
and white polypropylene rods. Tough Guys
($36) are built using concentric squares of
long, flat bamboo slats, and are stepped
down from the outside-in at the tip to create
a full, punching response with plenty of
built-in bounce.
Yet another interesting new model from
Headhunters, the HipSquares concept
For 2017
kind of splits the difference between a
brush and a bundle by grouping four or
five flat bamboo slats into mini-bundles
that combine to form a larger bundle
like Voltron. A single o-ring is used to
adjust spread of the inner groups, and
an additional eight slats on the outside
offer more dimension, giving players the
option of playing each model as a firm,
tight bundle, or as a wide, fan-shaped
spread. HipSquares ($41) use four inner
groups of five slats, while HipSquares
Mini have four groups of four. As a further
extension of the concept, HipSquares
Cajon ($41) are built with four groups of
five slats surrounded by an extra 12 slats
outside the o-ring. Plus, the end of each
Cajon model is equipped with an Orb-X
mallet head for greater textural variety.
And finally, rounding out Headhunters’
new selection is a trio of mash-ups designed
to deliver broad, explosive sounds. Fat
Bastards ($55) are made up of 75 small
bamboo dowels that are bundled into five
“fingers” of 15, with o-rings on each finger
for spread control. Super Cubes ($55) are
constructed in much the same way, but
feature seven groups of five bamboo slats for
more articulate tones. And the new Sporran
($55) model adds some cutting presence to
the classic broom concept by utilizing two

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DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 25

NEW Sticks & Heads For 2017

17 Vater's Woody Wire Retractable Brush with a standard wire gauge

has a wood handle to lend the brush more of a drumstick feel.

bundles of sorghum straw material standard retractable brush, but comes with favorite
with a polypropylene rod bundle between the added bonus of a 0.605" wood handle among players
them. For extra presence, one rod in the poly for cross-sticking and a warmer take on in need of a dynamic
bundle is fitted with an adjustable nylon bead other handle-strike sounds. implement with a comfortable
to pull a more pointed sound out of cymbals And don’t miss Vic Firth’s new Cajon grip. The company is also introducing
and drums. Bru-llet ($54.95). Anchored by a 0.65" Classic 7A, 5A, and 5B sticks (all $18.90)
We were a little surprised to see the hickory handle, the Cajon Bru-llet (we with the heat-activated ActiveGrip
country’s oldest drum company crack into prefer to pronounce it like crème brûlée) application. Finally, new Select Balance
the stick and implement market this year, blends a 3.25" spread of stiff, red plastic Rebound 5A and 5B Long models (both
but it should come as no surprise that the bristles with a 1.5" XLPE foam mallet head. $16.80) come equipped with an extra
product looks pretty interesting. Noble 0.5" of length in the handle for more
& Cooley’s Twist Rods put a new spin on ODDS & ENDS comfortable reach.
the classic bundle by twisting the all-birch Okay, let’s put a bow on this sucker with Vater introduced its 5A, Power 5A,
dowels to create a stronger, firmer striker quick looks at the new additions to your and Power 5B models with acorn tips for
with increased rebound. Three models yield favorite drumstick lines. full and articulate sounds (all $15.99). And
a variety of sounds in the Jazz Twist with its Ahead is now offering Medium and Long to wrap it all up, Zildjian expanded its
19 thin dowels, the Jazz Lite Twist with its 14 Taper Covers in a slick silver finish with Gauge series to include a 0.563" diameter
thin dowels, and the Rock Twist with its an MSRP of $3.65. Promark is bringing 9 Gauge model ($15.50). The 16"-long stick
seven thick dowels. back its popular Classic Maple SD2 stick has a feel similar to a 5B, and features the
17 Vater’s new Woody Wire Retractable ($16.80). The all-maple unit’s thick 0.63" Fusion tip for clear, articulate response.
Brush ($49.95) offers the same feel as a handle and small bead tip made it a Whew! See you next year!

PLAY BETTER FASTER.

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Gear Guide: New Sticks & Heads For 2017

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26 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 BASS DRUMHEAD

TRADITION MEETS
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 Daxx
JUST ANOTHER DUDE
FROM ROCKFORD

Nielsen
By Bob Doerschuk
Photograph: TED ROSENTHAL/IZMADDY STUDIOS

A
nywhere on Earth except
for Rockford, Illinois, rock
and rollers envy the life
of Daxx Nielsen. After all,
he plays arena shows all over the
world with one of the greatest
bands ever. His dad is Rick Nielsen
of Cheap Trick — how cool is that?

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 29

 Daxx Nielsen
But back home in Rockford? “People here
don’t care about any of that,” Nielsen says.
“Just last night, I hung out with some of the
guys I went to high school with. Yeah, I’ve
followed my passion and been successful
with it. But I don’t look at it like I’ve done
anything special. I mean, if walked around
town thinking I was better than anyone else
because I’m in a rock band, they’d probably
punch me in the stomach.”
Maybe every celebrity needs a Rockford,
a place where they can go to shake off the
gold dust of superstardom and remember
who they really are. Sadly, most aren’t so
lucky. “When I come home I’m changing
diapers on my son Iver, who’s one year

Photograph: EDWARD ROSENTHAL

old, and hanging around the house in my
pajamas,” Nielsen explains. “Then on Friday
I put on my rock star clothes and go back
to that world.”
In a way it was kind of inevitable. Self-
taught on drums, though with valuable
guidance from his father, he put a band
together with his brother Miles called
Harmony Riley. They played mainly local
gigs, plus occasional opening spots in
arenas for Cheap Trick. In 2001, when “IF IT WAS UP TO RICK, THERE’D BE A DRUM FILL
founding drummer Bun E. Carlos began
developing back pain before a show in
Phoenix, he persuaded Nielsen to sub for
EVERY TWO BARS. HE WANTS BOMBAST. HE WANTS
him on the encore five or six nights in
a row. When his discomfort worsened, KEITH MOON MEETS CHARLIE WATTS.”
Carlos asked Nielsen to sub for him
throughout the rest of the summer tour. he formed with singer/songwriter Alison maybe it feels like I’m not trying as much to
Each night, then, Nielsen would play 45 Sudol. Still, he knew that this opportunity be him.”
minutes with Harmony Riley, take a half- required some tact. Carlos’s style was He points to his fondness for ghost
hour break, and then charge into a intrinsic to Cheap Trick’s success, which notes as one difference in his and Carlos’
90-minute set with Cheap Trick. meant that Nielsen had to ease into his role, approaches. “That comes from playing
In 2010, when Carlos stopped performing, delivering what fans wanted while allowing with Alison,” he notes. “For me, it’s about
Nielsen got the call to take over the drum time for his own approach to evolve. the feel. Instead of going 1-2-3-4, I’m
chair full-time. He’d strengthened his “Bun E. had a signature feel and sound,” going 1-e-&-ah-2-e-&-ah. That helps
chops backing surf guitar icon Dick Dale he says. “So I didn’t completely change any when I’m playing a slow blues. Those
and expanded his range in working with of his parts. But it’s been seven years now ghost notes are how I keep in the pocket,
Brandi Carlisle and in A Fine Frenzy, a group and I’ve gotten so comfortable with it that even if you can’t hear them.”

QUICK LICKS Transcription by Andy Ziker

“You Got It Going On”
“You Got It Going On” q = 151
Daxx Nielsen has been a member of 0:16
y y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
ã 44 ‰ œj œ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ
Cheap Trick for more than seven years
now, so his inspiring performance on
their new record, We’re All Alright!,
may not come as much of a surprise.
Growing up with the band as guitarist y Yœ Y Yœ Y Yœ Y Yœ Yœ œ Yœ œ y y
Rick Nielsen’s son has allowed him to 㜠œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‘
soak up Bun E. Carlos’ style, but Nielson
puts his own stamp on the 13-song
y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
ã œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ }œ œ }
œ œ œ œ œ œ}
œ œ œ}
effort, which is strong from start to
finish. This excerpt from “You Got It œœœœœœœœœ
Going On” features call and response in
two-bar phrases and an adventurous
fill in the last two measures.

30 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 So in concerts and on the new Cheap Nashville’s Blackbird Studio. He asked the As they’ve been doing for more than 40
Trick album, We’re All Alright!, what you instrument rental company Drum Paradise years, Cheap Trick is supporting their new
get is 100 percent Daxx Nielsen. Most of to deliver a selection of kits, snares, and release with dates booked throughout the US,
the time, that means no nonsense, no frills, cymbals, from which he, the band, and their Canada, Mexico, and Europe into November.
just a mean and monstrous groove stripped coproducer Julian Raymond chose what to Somewhere beyond that, the road leads back
down to its high-impact essentials. That’s use on each cut. He’d play, they’d listen to Rockford, where Nielsen‘s life will settle
fine with Nielsen, although he also finds it from the booth, and together they’d make back into a more restorative routine. Maybe
kind of amusing that his dad is more open their decision. he’ll check in on Shear Renewal, a salon
to stretching out beyond the backbeat now For example, on the album’s one ballad where his wife Heather oversees day-to-day
and then. “If it was up to Rick, there’d be “Floating Down,” Nielsen reports how “we business. There’ll be more diapers to change,
a drum fill every two bars,” he says. “He chose a deeper, less taut snare. We tuned more beers to sip with high school friends
wants bombast. He wants Keith Moon meets the head down so it was like a tom feel with who’ve stayed behind.
Charlie Watts.” snares on it. It was like that old-school Jim “I really am living a dual life,” he admits.
The opening track, “You’ve Got It Going Keltner feel, so it wasn’t cracky or slappy, He thinks about that for a second before
On,” offers the clearest example of Nielsen but it bounced and swung.” adding, “And actually? It’s really great!”
taking a few liberties as he backs Robin
Zander’s vocals by himself. “We recorded
this one with the singing, so it was like,
‘Every time there’s a vocal break, go nuts!’
Hopefully I didn’t overstep the lyrics, but
that was definitely one spot where the LESSONS. GEAR. NEWS.
band felt it needed drums all over the place
rather than just keeping time.” DRUMMAGAZINE.COM
The fact is, Nielsen insists, “it’s harder
not to do a drum fill. To just sit there and
play a straight beat, it’s like, ‘I gotta do a
fill! I gotta do it.’ It made me realize that
it’s at least as difficult as playing as fast as
possible and doing as many fills as you can.
It took years of doing studio work to get
that I don’t need that extra kick pattern. I
don’t need to go the ride — just stay on the
hi-hat during that guitar solo. That actually
makes it more powerful.”
The simpler the part, the more important
the sound when cutting drum tracks.
This cued Nielsen to put a lot of work
into preproduction before tracking at

VITALS
 Cheap Trick

  We’re All Alright!

 daxxnielsen.com

 36

 Rockford, Illinois

 Ringo Starr, John Bonham,

Phil Rudd, Bun E. Carlos, Matt Abts,
Joe Morello

GEAR
 Ludwig

 Zildjian

 Promark

 Evans

 Ludwig

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 31

 BEN THATCHER
So much for sophomore
slumps. The newest lo-fi duo
to grasp the imagination of
today’s indie rock lovers has
just delivered an even more
impressive follow-up to its
self-titled 2014 debut album,
which is nothing less than
the latest step as …

ROYAL
BLOOD
GOES
FOR THE
JUGULAR
By John Payne | Photography By Neil Zlozower/Atlas Icons
32 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 33
BEN THATCHER
B
ass and drums duo Royal Blood made a huge splash with
their eponymous 2014 debut album, which hit #1 in the UK
charts and Top 20 in 12 countries, to date selling over a
million copies and copping several awards, including a BRIT
for Best British Band in 2015. With an amazingly full-spectrum blast
that’s supremely melodic and very, very heavy at the same time, the
band’s follow-up, How Did We Get So Dark?, now comes roaring out
on Warner Bros. Records, again showcasing the tunefully thunderous
sound of bassist-vocalist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher.
TWO PEAS IN A POD
Straight out of Brighton, which is about 50 minutes south of London,
Thatcher and Kerr first met and started playing together in school
bands and wedding combos. “We met during college at a gig, started
making music together pretty much straight away,” Thatcher says.
“We were together in various bands, experimenting with different
styles, and then created Royal Blood in about 2013. And it just took
off from there.”
For his part, the self-taught, exclusively matched-grip Thatcher
didn’t have much in the way of a musical clan (“Neither of my parents
were into music”), though his brother-in-law was a drummer and
Thatcher used to watch him play. “I’ve played drums most of my life,”
he says. “Other instruments I didn’t really care for too much. Drums
was always the thing I played and the only thing I really wanted to do.
I started around six months old, getting the pots and pans out and
crawling ’round, banging.”
He got his first real drum kit (’80s Ludwig) from a family friend
when he was six years old. Later, playing with a series of local bands
led up to his and Kerr’s steady employment in wedding bands in the
Brighton area. “He used to play keys and I used to drum,” he says.
“We cut our teeth on that stuff, but it wasn’t what we wanted to do.”
Thatcher and Kerr’s decision to try the duo format came about for
reasons both artistic and practical. “We had been in many bands with
many different people, and when it came to writing original material
with Mike, we realized that Mike had this massive bass sound, and
our energy together just complemented each other. So we said, ‘You
know what? We don’t actually need anything else right now. This is
way more interesting and more fun if we just do it together.’ So we
decided that that is what we were going to do.”
Somewhat augmented with Mike’s array of effects on his bass and
Ben’s small collection of triggers/samplers — though basically arising
from the explosive dynamic the pair generate when up close to each

Ben Thatcher's
KIT
G

4 J

B D
A

E
J
2

3 1

J H
5

K F

DRUMS Gretsch USA Maple (Black Glass finish) CYMBALS Zildjian PERCUSSION LP
1. 24" x 16" Bass Drum A. 15" K Light Hi-Hats G. Cyclops Tambourine
2. 14" x 8" Full Range “Swamp Dawg” Snare Drum B. 18" K EFX H. Black Beauty Cowbell
C. 19" Kerope
Infographic: JUAN CASTILLO

3. 13" x 6" Hammered Chrome-Over-Brass Snare Drum

4. 13" x 9" Tom D. 22" K Ride ELECTRONICS Roland
5. 16" x 16" Floor Tom E. 20" Kerope I. SPD SX
6. 18" x 16" Floor Tom F. 20" Oriental Crash of Doom J. BT-1 Bar Trigger Bars
K. KT-10 Kick Trigger Pedal

Ben Thatcher also uses Promark 5B sticks, a Porter & Davies BC2 throne, and Evans heads (Toms: Coated G2 batter/Coated G2 resonant; Snare: Coated G2 batter/Hazy 300
resonant; Bass drum: EMAD 2 batter/Custom Printed Evans resonant).

34 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com


other — the duo’s sound can take the casual listener quite aback.
It’s almost strangely fully fleshy-bodied. Their pairing was the first
time either of them had tried a duo format, and they hit a bloody
goldmine.
“It was the first time we ever did that,” says Thatcher. “But then,
Royal Blood was the first band we decided to do for fun, really. We
had been in so many other bands, trying to make it, and then we kind
of gave up on doing that and decided to just do what we wanted to
do, and that was when it all kind of happened for us.”
A NEW MUSICAL DEMOCRACY
The band’s decision to forego all instruments but two invariably
presented some big advantages, plus a few minor drawbacks. For
one thing, with a duo there’s a lot less personal and musical politics
involved.
“It has its ups and it has its downs, but the disadvantages are
actually our advantages as well,” says Thatcher. “Obviously, band
practice was easier, because it was only getting the two of us
together. But other things, like trying to write music, wasn’t as
simple. You know, we have less elements to use, but then that
pushed us with our creativity: Well, we haven’t got a guitar, so we’re
not going to do a guitar solo here. What are we going to do, then?
“We obviously only have two sets of hands and we can only do so
much, though of course when it comes to recording you can do a lot
of overdubbing and really go to town there that way. But our whole
thing is playing live — that’s what we want to do primarily, and we
want to project all our sounds playing live. So when it gets to the
studio, there’s bits we need to think about: How we going to do that
live? What’s a way around that?”
As evidenced by the sheer hugeness of their live sound and the
glorious How Did We Get So Dark?, what these two guys manage
to pull off with merely a bass and drums must have required the
Mike Kerr
The Other Half Of The Story
M
ike Kerr and Ben Thatcher gigged together long before
either thought about forming Royal Blood. Their
bass-and-drum dynamic lay in the future. Initially, in
someone else’s band, Thatcher was the guitarist and Kerr
performed on keyboards.
”Then one day their bassist was unavailable, so they asked me if I
could play bass,” Kerr recalls. “At the time, I couldn’t. I mean, I really
couldn’t! But of course I said yeah. That show is a bit of a blur for me
now, but I do remember falling off the stage and landing on the back of
the bass, snapping its neck. I also remember feeling that night like I’d
found my true instrument.”
A while after that, Kerr left to spend some time in Australia. When he
returned, Thatcher met him at the airport. As they drove back to town
they talked about starting a band. “It was never our intention to be just
a two-piece,” Kerr says. “But as we started rehearsing some songs
I’d written, we found out quite quickly that we didn’t need anybody
else. We could do better without the outside stresses of having other
Photograph: CONNOR PANAYI
members. Besides, I have a ton of pedals and effects, so with a lot of
experimentation I stumbled across this sound that’s so full on its own
that we didn’t need a guitarist. It was like a shining-light moment when
we realized that, okay, this could work.”
Of course, this decision required some compromise. At the same
time, it challenged them to rewire the connections that drummers and
FOR
ROYAL BLOOD,
IT’S THE
BIG DRUMS,
BIG CYMBALS,
BIG SOUND.
acquisition of playing skills above and beyond those needed in a
larger band. “We both have room for each other, we don’t have to
complement anyone else, and with that freedom we can go into
spontaneous riffs live and just work off each other instead of
trying to work off four other people or whatever. Things like that
are really good dynamically for us.”
Unsurprisingly, as many of their live sets are built on what
technically could be called spontaneous composition, Royal Blood
conceives much of their new material onstage. “Oh yeah, every show
has something different that pops up,” says Thatcher. “The last ten
minutes usually is anything kinda goes, and every single time it’s
different. There’ll be like little licks that we do to throw each other
off, then we just play around with each other a bit. It’s a lot of fun
throwing things at each other that we can both try and carve into a
song. The things that are really good that we do improvisationally are
the things that we can then do again — ‘That was really cool when
you did that, let’s do that again tonight’ — and then it becomes
more of a fixed thing.”
Whether they’re playing live or in the studio, the duo’s limited
instrumentation allows them to play a bit more busily than they
bass players traditionally make. For Royal Blood, that meant balancing
raw power and musical intricacy. As a result, while allowing themselves
some room to stretch out onstage, they spend much of their shows
playing parts verbatim. And for Kerr, this means listening differently.
“I kind of slip in and out of paying attention to what Ben is doing,”
he says. “Mainly I focus on what I have to do because the parts are
so defined and I have a lot of work to do with the pedals. But because
Ben is always on the mark, that’s a real weight off my mind. The most
important thing for us both is to just have fun, and with Ben there’s
never a dull moment. I’m incredibly lucky to be in a band and tour the
world with my best friend.” —Bob Doerschuk
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 35
BEN THATCHER
might in a larger group, though they’ve learned to be judicious about
all that. “There’re definitely parts where I can do whatever I want
and play quite busy,” Thatcher says, “but there are also parts where
I really like to play the most minimalistic thing I can think of, because
sometimes that brings so much room and power to the songs.”
SOUL STRETCHERS
With Kerr doing the lyric writing and both guys composing the
music together, Royal Blood’s approach to songwriting is nearly
as elastic as their live performances. Inspiration can come from
literally any direction.
“All of our songs come from very different places,” says Thatcher.
“For example, we’ve tried starting tracks from drums up, then
sometimes it’s the lyric that might start something off. But how they
all come together is with Mike and I together in a room — we notice
if we both like what we’re hearing, and we’re both laughing or it’s
putting a smile on our faces.”
Thatcher’s super-badass, heavy-duty thwack derives from inspired
encounters with a wide array of drummers modern and fabled. “The
first drummer I really loved was Dave Grohl,” he says. “When I heard
Nirvana, just the way he played, it was hard as nails. It was rock,
you know? It was a big, big, thumping, out-there sound.” Eventually
people like Jon Theodore, Chad Smith, and Taylor Hawkins made
huge impacts on Thatcher, along with Darren King of Mutemath,
whom he calls “an absolutely phenomenal drummer.” Yet towering
above these giants was John Bonham, Thatcher’s favorite drummer
of all time.
“Bonham had the feel of both a rock and a jazz drummer,” he says.
“He could do the technical stuff, but then he’d come up with these,
like, triplet fills that just filled the whole room — it was so big. And
hearing him, I think it was the first time that, recordingwise, I really
loved a drum sound. Early on, Bonham came up with this massive
backbeat, and it was something I could feel more than anything.”
The very essence of Bonham’s sound resides in Thatcher’s own
caveman-clubbing rhythmic architecture. It owes a lot to his favored
super-flat-toned drumhead tuning, which he finds is accommodated
well within the duo’s relatively airy double-dude orchestration. “I’ll
use different drums depending on the band, as well,” he says. “For
Royal Blood I use quite big drums, which really suit the music, and
they’re tuned quite dead. I use Moongels on them to make them
really thumpy and thuddy, a really tubby kind of sound, so they’re
all quite low in tuning. For Royal Blood, it’s the big drums, big
cymbals, big sound.”
SOUND SURROUNDS
On the road and in the studio, Thatcher’s big-sound kit of choice
currently is a USA Custom Gretsch kit. “I used that kit on the
recording of the new album, and it just sounds fat and brilliant.
Actually we were in a studio with so many drum kits and so many
snare drums to use; I tried a Ludwig Vistalite kit and various other

B E N T H AT C H E R
DISCOGRAPHY

2013
Out Of The Black
 

2014
Back To The Start
 

2014
Royal Blood
 

2017
How Did We Get
So Dark?
 

36 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 100% MAPLE

SUPERSTAR
CLASSIC

Superstar Classic’s clear projection,

warm tone, and impressive resonance more than
lives up to the Tama legacy of great sound.
New 5pc Shell Kit Configuration:
16" x 20" BD, 7" x 10" TT, 8" x 12" TT, 14" x 14" FT, 5" x 14" SD
BEN THATCHER
smaller drums, but for the Royal Blood sound that Gretsch USA
Custom was just perfect.”
The bulk of How Did We Get So Dark? was recorded at a studio in
Brussels with producer Jolyon Thomas, with some tracking done
in Brighton, Los Angeles, and Nashville, and a couple of tracks laid
down in London with the band’s previous producer, Tom Dalgety,
who had produced their eponymous first full-length album in 2014.
Dalgety knew the sound Thatcher favored quite well, and did the
mixing for the entire new album.
“On this new record,” says Thatcher, “the drum sound is a lot more
live and authentic. It took just one or two takes for me to get the
parts down — which doesn’t mean we worked fast, exactly. Actually,
it was quite a long process, just sorting out the mikes for the drum
sound, setting the kit up in different places in the room, putting
different mikes on; that was the grueling bit. But I let the engineer
and producer deal with that, and for the London sessions, Tom
Dalgety knew exactly what to do.”
In Brussels, the sessions were recorded with Kerr and Thatcher
playing together, albeit in separate, glassed-off rooms “because we
wanted to get a really clean drum sound, with absolutely no spill
from his bass. But we could see each other, and that was important.”
Thatcher’s boomtastic drum presence on the album must tip a
hat to the exacting microphone placement in the recording studio.
Eschewing ambient miking for the most part, the team favored a wide
selection of mikes jammed up close and personal on the drums. “We
Tom Dalgety
It’s In The Mix
B
ritish producer Tom Dalgety worked with Ben Thatcher on
some of the drummer’s pre–Royal Blood bands, and right
from the start he realized that he was dealing with a world-
class sticksman. “Ben was always annoyingly good,” Dalgety
says with a laugh. “He’d give me a proper performance even when I
was just getting mike sounds. It’s one of the things that appealed to
me about producing Royal Blood. When I heard Ben was involved, I
said, ‘Count me in.’”
Dalgety produced Royal Blood’s self-titled debut album, and he
returned to work with the guys on a couple of new songs after they
recorded the bulk of their follow-up, How Did We Get So Dark? with
Jolyon Thomas. With an eye toward expanding Thatcher’s drum sound
without changing it completely, Dalgety added subtle splashes of
electronic percussion, along with utilizing some drum loops that Ben
programmed on Logic. The song “She’s Creeping” features finger-snap
samples triggered from the snare, and the kick is dispatching a big Roland
TR-808 bass drum sample. “That made for more of a hip-hop sound
from an acoustic kit,” Dalgety notes. “Overall, we tried to inject a bit of
a synthetic approach while maintaining the sound of a real drum set.”
Tracking sessions took place at London’s RAK Studios, where Dalgety
and the band recorded several songs for the debut album. While Thatcher
laid down his drum parts in the spacious live room, bassist-vocalist Mike
Kerr thundered along in the control room. “They always had a clear line
of sight between them for tracking,” Dalgety says, “although the
truth is, those two guys could play well together a mile apart.”
In the past, a good portion of Thatcher’s cymbals and select drum
fills were punched in, but this time the emphasis was on all-live takes
played straight through. “Ben did a lot of great work in preproduction,”
Dalgety observes. “He had all of his parts written out, and he just
blazed. There wasn’t any need to rethink what he was doing.”
38 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
used a few of the room mikes on some of the songs,” he says, “but
to be honest with you, what I wanted, to get my true sound, was
with the closer mikes. And I found that close mikes, when you crank
them up and get a real good tone on a drum, well, it’s as simple as
that. Even so, we basically put on way too many mikes for what we
wanted, so we could pick and choose the sounds in the mix.”
For just a couple of fellas slinging bass and wacking tubs, the Royal
Blood sound is freakishly expansive. That fully zoomed-out sound is
easily achieved in the studio with post-production effects and mixing.
For their live sets, however, the pair has had to figure out how to
re-create that colossal studio sound in real time. Kerr’s solution has
been to augment his bass with an array of digital effects to fill out the
harmonic field, while Thatcher fattens the band’s sound by triggering
samples from behind his rig.
“When we come to play it live now, there are elements that Mike
can’t do on his own,” he says. “We’re very strong with what we do
live, and we don’t want to have any rules about what we do. So, live,
we don’t play to prerecorded tracks — and on the records, too, you
can hear there’s a lot of vocal backing parts. I can’t personally do
a five-part harmony, so how do we do this? So I have four triggers:
one’s on my auxiliary snare drum, one is on my rack tom, and one’s
on my floor tom, and then I have a foot pedal next to my hi-hat stand,
which does the stuff that I can’t physically do with my hands.”
Their fully, authentically rocking live-band sound might be
explained by the fact that Royal Blood refuses to play to a click; thus
Dalgety’s bass drum microphone setup consisted of a Neumann U47
FET just outside the front head and an Audix D6 placed halfway inside
the shell. His top snare mike was an Audix i5 and underneath he ran a
Beyerdynamic M 201 TG. For toms, he used Audix D2s, and overhead
he positioned a pair of Neumann KM84s in the “Glyn Johns formation”
(one microphone pointed down toward the snare, the other pointed
down toward Thatcher’s right shoulder). “You can really make a lot
of the kit’s width with this setup,” Dalgety says. “The snare is in the
middle of the stereo image.” Two more KM84s were utilized, one as a
hi-hat spot and the other close-miking the ride.
Capping things off were a pair of Coles 4038 ribbon mikes for the
Photograph: CHRIS WADE
room, placed “not too close, but not too far,” Dalgety says. “I try not
to get full-on Zeppelin with them. Some guys take room miking to
the extreme, but I try to go for a more accurate depiction of what I’m
hearing. And with Ben behind the kit, it always sounds great.”
—Joe Bosso
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BEN THATCHER
the precision of their aural attack is all the more impressive, and, coupled
with Thatcher’s intricate triggering, is a bigger hassle than Thatcher and Kerr
have been credited with.
“Not playing with a click, it’s a bit of a task, really,” he says with a laugh. “If
you’re playing slowly or too fast, then you’re going to absolutely mess up, but
without that click, when you’re playing live to a lot of people, it’s like you get
that adrenaline rushing so you’ve really got to zone in on what you’re doing. And
audiences watching me play don’t really notice what my feet are doing a lot
of the time, so when you hear those vocal harmonies coming in you’re like,
what’s going on here? Well, it’s quite clever little tricks, is what it is.”

TRIGGERING MADE NOT SO EZ

Mastering emerging technology is pretty much a required skill for today’s
professional rock drummers. Thatcher feels that by embracing high-tech,
he has also significantly expanded his playing skills. “I’ve really had to
learn to play drums in a different way again — which has been a lot of fun.”
Meanwhile, his playing continues to evolve. When he feels he’s getting into a
rut, he turns to a number of remedies to pull himself out of it.
“I really try and force myself to learn new things and play things differently,
for one by using different techniques to do things, such as mastering the
acrobatics of playing and hitting triggers simultaneously. And I like to put
myself in a different musical headspace genre-wise: The music Royal Blood is
playing is rock music, but there are definitely some hip-hop groove elements
in it, and it is really fun to play both genres almost together — which is
kind of like Bonham with the swinging thing. And my music taste is very
schizophrenic. I’ve been listening to some rock bands, yeah, but I’m into
hip-hop and R&B, and I’m into old Nancy Sinatra, Jeff Buckley, a lot of
different stuff. I get inspiration from all angles.”
As Royal Blood’s tour schedule has been jam-packed since day one, and
doesn’t look to let up for at least another year, Thatcher doesn’t have a
practice regimen as such, and doesn’t feel he needs one. “I’m just focusing
on the shows and putting all my energies into doing that,” he says. “I’ll play
a little bit in sound check, but I want to have enough energy to hit the drums
hard and really put on a good performance for the shows. And I don’t have
a warmup routine; I just do a few stretching bits before I go on. I should
mention that my thumb at the moment has got three blisters on it. But the
more you play, the more your hands toughen up, and the more you get used
to it. But in the initial stages, yeah, you suffer sometimes.”
One thing this affable, easygoing drummer does not suffer gladly,
however, is a mediocre stage sound, for himself or his audiences. For
accuracy in his stage mix (and to extend the life of his hearing into a ripe
old age), he wears in-ear monitors and uses an electronic low-frequency
thumper in his drum throne, which aids his overall balance and timekeeping
by direct-injecting sub-bass tones. “Then I have my in-ears for everything
else. What’s really good with in-ears is that you hear everything very clearly.
It’s quite reliable — the sound is the same every show, wherever you play.”
On tour, with the help of the band’s ace monitor engineer, Thatcher relies
on a finely tuned sound mix to keep him on track. “It’s quite a neutral mix,
very balanced, with the drums a little bit higher in the mix,” he says. “And
I like it all panned correctly, so it’s just how I’d hear it if I was in the crowd. I
don’t actually like hearing the overheads, so I normally have them off. The
vocal mikes normally pick up a lot of the high end anyway, and I hit the
cymbals very, very hard, so I can hear that frequency quite easily.”

A ROYAL FEAST
If we haven’t yet made it clear enough, let us officially state that Ben
Thatcher is having the time of his life, and that’s something you’ll see
when you witness his joyful pummeling at a Royal Blood show, coming
soon to a town near you.
“It’s been a great experience, and a privilege,” says Thatcher, “and
something I don’t take for granted. When this band is performing, it’s a well-
oiled machine, and we and our crew have such a good time with each other.
We love playing music to any number of people, from small clubs to huge
arenas, and we love having people enjoy it with us and party with us.”

40 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 “Brotherhood Of The Snake”

GROOVE ANALYSIS By Andy Ziker

Crank It Up
"How Did
“How DidWe
WeGet
GetSoSo Dark"
Dark”
q = 134
j verse
A Notch 2 2
1:05
4 y Yyy yyyy y yyy yyyY
ã 4 œ y œ œy œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ « «
AFTER A RELATIVELY QUICK RISE in
Y œy y y y y y y œ œ œ œ œ œ y
ãy œ œ œ œ
popularity, Royal Blood could easily have
gone through the motions on their second œ y œ œ œ œ œ
release. Instead, singer/bassist Mike Kerr and
drummer Ben Thatcher upped their game
j tambourine > >
with a refined sound. On How Did We Get So
Y œy z y y œy Y Y œy z y y œy Y Y œy z y y œy y y y œy y y y œy Y
Dark?, Thatcher takes more liberties, but his
ability to play just what the songs needs is
㉠œ y œ œ œ y œ y œ œ œ y œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
the engine behind this power duo. A punchy
drum sound, syncopated hits, thematic
Y y z y y y
groove patterns, and articulate, meaningful
ã y œ œy œ œ œy Yœ ‘ ‘
Y Œ œ œ
fills mesh perfectly with Kerr’s distorted
y œ y
> > > > > > >
bass and Matt Belamy-esque (Muse) vocal

2
melodies.
pre-chorus
jy y y y y y y y y y y yj y
“How Did We Get So Dark”
Thatcher’s parts flow so well from section
㉠œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ
œ «
to section in “How Did We Get So Dark”
that it was necessary to transcribe all the
> > > > > > > > > > > >
yy y y y y y y y y y yj y yy y y y y y y y y y
‰ j jœ
ã œ œ œœœœ œœ œœ œ ‰
œ œ œ œ œœœœ
way through the form (verse, prechorus,
chorus, and instrumental interlude). In the œ œœ œ œ œ œ
> > > > >
verse, off-beat open hi-hat bumps on the
(1) & and (4) & give the listener something
chorus
y y y y y œ y y y œœœ œœœ y
ã ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ jœ
to latch onto, an eighth/sixteenth fill down
y y y y y y y y y y y y y y œ y y y y y y y y y y y y y y œ y y y
the drums in measure eight smoothly leads
into an anticipation (hit on the & of 4), and a
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
> > > > > >
strategically placed tambourine on the & of
2 perks up our ears.
y y
ã ‰ œj œ œ œ œ œ jœ y y y y y y y œ y y y y y y y œ y y y y y y y œ
yyy yy yy y yy yy yyœyyy yy yyœ
Thatcher continues the bass drum pattern
in the prechorus (and the chorus for that œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
matter), but switches the right hand texture

y Yj y
to accented crash. A power flam played interlude
y y y
j y y j y y j y y
ã ‰ œ œ œœœœœœ œ ‰ œ œ œœ œœœ œ ‰ œ œ œœ œœœœœœ œ ‰ œ œœ œ ≈œœœœœ œ
every other measure on beat 4 is a nice
touch. In the chorus, Thatcher again changes
œ j
the texture and increases the intensity by
switching to two-handed sixteenths on

“Brotherhood Of The Snake”

closed hi-hat. Notice how the hi-hat accent
y y œ œ œ œ œ œ y ‰ j œy y œ œ œ œ œ y ‰ Y}œ œ œ œ œ}œ œ œ}œ
‰ j œ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ}œ
œ œ} œ œœœœœœœ
ã œ œ
placed on 1 and 3 creates a floating sensation.
In the interlude, Thatcher plays short, catchy œ œ œ œ œ y
fills while still keeping the groove going.
Finishing off this section is a two-measure
fill reminiscent of founding Cheap Trick "LightsOut”
“Lights Out"
drummer Bun E Carlos.
q = 92

“Lights Out” 0:04

4 y y œy yy y œy y y y œy yy y œy y y y y yy y œ
ã 4 œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œœ
Another example of his ability to compose
memorable but tasteful drum parts, in
“Lights Out” Thatcher uses a repetitive
John Bonham-ish pattern in the first eight
y y y y yy y y y y y yy y
œ Œ ‰. œ œ œ
bars. He then cuts that phrase in half in
the next six measures, while adding a cool ã œ œ œœ œœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœ œœ ‘ ‘ ‘
sixteenth-note lick on the & of 2. After a
refreshing stop, Thatcher plays a challenging,
y y j y y 2
œ œ œ y œy y y y œy y
syncopated combination right from a power
flam into off-beat crashes. œ
œ
j
≈
ã œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ ≈ ≈ œ
œ œœ œ «
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 41
 ST ANTO N
MOOR E
Just try to keep up as this New Orleans mainstay
changes identity from jam band funk to thrash
metal to straight jazz in the blink of an eye, then
swerves off on an entirely new tangent with a
set of tunes featuring his trio, a few ringers, and
deep respect for a recently deceased legend.

TRIBUTE TO
TOUSSAINT
By Bob Doerschuk | Photography By Robert Downs

42 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 43
STANTON MOORE
D
uring a five-hour layover in the Delta Sky Lounge at JFK
Airport, Stanton Moore had plenty of time to reflect on a
project he and his trio had just completed — an album
dedicated to Allen Toussaint, whose work and personal
example touched countless lives in and beyond the hometown they
shared.
Toussaint’s contributions were deep, but more important was their
breadth. The greatest performers in New Orleans redefined the art
of performance on their instruments — Louis Armstrong with his
trumpet, Professor Longhair with his piano. Had he confined himself
to playing piano, Toussaint would stand in that company. That he
excelled as well in songwriting, arranging, and production makes him
unique even among these peers.
“It was said that he literally wrote the soundtrack to New Orleans,”
Moore muses. “He was involved with so much great music there
from the mid ’60s to the late ’70s, everything from Lee Dorsey to The
Meters to Dr. John and, later, The Pointer Sisters. He even arranged
horns for The Band on Rock Of Ages. The fact is, if you’re born in
New Orleans, you can’t grow up without hearing something that Allen
helped create. He’s probably the most pervasive persona in New
Orleans history.
B
3
F
A 4
1
Stanton Moore also uses DW hardware, a DW 7000 hi-hat, DW 9000 bass drum pedal, LP percussion, Vic Firth Stanton Moore signature sticks, and Remo drumheads (Snare:
Ambassador Coated batter/Ambassador Clear Snare Side; Toms: Ambassador Coated batter/Ambassador Clear resonant; Bass Drum: Powerstroke 3 batter/Fiberskyn resonant).
44 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
“That especially hit you whenever you saw him play live,” Moore
continues. “You’d see him do a tune that he wrote maybe 40 years
ago. Then he’d go into another tune and you’d say, ‘Wait a minute!
He wrote that one, too?’ Then he’d follow it up with another tune and
you’d have the same reaction. He’d fill his set with songs that maybe
he didn’t sing originally but he had a hand in producing or writing.
“When you saw him live, that’s when you realized that he was
involved in literally the majority of the New Orleans soundtrack.”
ELEGANCE & ORNAMENTATION
As for his personal history with Toussaint, Moore suggests, “It’s
impossible for me to recall when I first heard him. It was probably
in the canned music in the delivery room when I was born!”
Sometime after that, their paths did cross a few times. They met
around 1994 shortly after Moore’s band Galactic had begun work
on its debut album, Coolin’ Off, in Toussaint’s Sea-Saint Studios.
Galactic’s rhythm section had just formed a separate group
dedicated to performing instrumental versions of songs by The
Meters. As a nod toward the Ivanhoe Lounge on Bourbon Street,
where The Meters played in their early days, they called themselves
The Ivanhoes.
C
STANTON ’S
SNAZZY
SET
DRUMS Gretsch USA Custom Ruby Red Pearl Finish
1. 18" x 14" Bass Drum
2. 14" x 4.5" Dunnett Stanton Moore Spirit Of New Orleans
Titanium or Solid Shell Birdseye Maple Snare
3. 12" x 8" Tom
4. 14" x 14" Floor Tom
CYMBALS Crescent
A. 15" Fat Hats
B. 20" Prototype Side Ride with three rivets
C. 22" Wide Ride
D. 20" Trash Crash with three rivets
Infographic: JUAN CASTILLO
PERCUSSION LP
E. 12" Stanton Moore Pandeiro
F. ES-7 Cowbell
 Pictured in the tracking room at The Parlor Recording Studio after a session for With You In Mind are, from left: Stanton Moore, Cyril Neville, Trombone Shorty, and David Torkanowsky.
After a while The Ivanhoes landed a steady gig at Benny’s Blues
Bar in the 13th Ward, where members of The Meters and the Neville
Brothers grew up. “One night,” Moore relates, “this character who
had worked on and off with Allen through the years came up to us
there and said, ‘Man, I love what you’re doing! I want to introduce
y’all to Allen Toussaint!’ He took us back to Sea-Saint, where we
recorded a couple of Meters tunes.”
He also set up their first meeting with Toussaint, in his office on
the studio’s second floor. Moore remembers his first impression of the
man. “Allen Toussaint had a way of commanding respect without
demanding it. When he walked into a room, the energy changed.
Everybody paid attention. Everybody wanted to be around him or
talk to him. He didn’t need to come to you; he drew you in. You can
hear that same quality in his playing as well.”
Their meeting turned out to be briefer than Moore had hoped.
“He said he liked what he heard. He talked about the possibility of
working with us. We said, ‘Well, Mr. Toussaint, we actually came in
a few months ago and recorded an album of original material. Our
producer is going to start a label and put the record out.’ ‘Oh!’ he
said. ‘Well, it sounds like you guys are on your way. It was nice to
meet y’all.’ And that was that.”
They stayed in touch, though. “He invited us to Dooky Chase’s,
a famous soul food restaurant in Tremé, one of the only places
where African American people could have a nice meal in the days
of segregation,” Moore says. “Allen sat at the head of the table in
a private room. His daughter Alison and his son Reggie were at his
side, taking notes. He talked about the possibility of writing some
Galactic songs with us. We didn’t get the chance to work with him
as much as we wanted to, but a few years later we came up with
two songs with him, ‘Bacchus’ and ‘Muss The Hair.’”
They had more opportunities to appear together onstage.
“We occasionally had him open for us on solo piano and then
sit in with us,” Moore says. “He wouldn’t just spin out a rote
arrangement for us; he’d mold the arrangement based off the
strengths or weaknesses of what he was hearing from the
ensemble. Each time we’d make a pass on the tune, he would add to
the arrangement. He was never on autopilot or phoning anything in.”
As for finding the right approach to locking in with Toussaint’s
groove, Moore explains, “His thing was to sit on top. I don’t mean like
push or be on top of the beat. I mean he would play almost delicately
on top of the music and allow the rhythm section to provide the
foundation for what was going on. I don’t want to say he played a
decorative role; it was more that he ornamented what was going on.”
In this respect, Toussaint stood out from the line of great
New Orleans pianists who had preceded him, from Jelly Roll
Morton and Champion Jack Dupree to the more modern lineage
of Professor Longhair, James Booker, and Dr. John. “Guys like
Fess [Professor Longhair] were the foundation. I was talking with
Johnny Vidacovich about playing with him. The way he put it was,
you either had to get on that train or get run over. A lot of the
pianos Fess played on a regular basis had a hole in the footboard
where he’d kick the beat, like that hole Willie Nelson’s thumbnail
wore into his guitar right above the pick guard.
“That’s how it is when I play with [Meters guitarist] Leo
Nocentelli,” Moore adds. “He is the time. He is the band. As a
drummer, I’m there to ornament his time. If you’re not playing his
time, then you’re wrong. You’d better be exactly in sync with Leo.
Otherwise his head will snap around and look right at you.”
Moore laughs. “Allen was different. He wasn’t going to kick any
holes into the pedestal of the grand pianos he played. He’d let the
rhythm section be the foundation. But at the same time, he usually
wrote out every note he wanted them to play. Talk with some of
the bass players from some of his sessions and they’ll tell you, ‘You
know those tasty little bass fills you loved on that record we did?
He wrote every one of them out.’”
This brings a story to mind that Moore says is well known among
New Orleans musicians. “Allen wrote out the drum part for [Lee
Dorsey’s 1970 recording of] ‘River Boat.’ He wrote it to sound like
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 45
STANTON MOORE
the mechanization of a riverboat, like the turning of a paddle wheel.
It was kind of a linear concept. He called in a few drummers but
nobody did it the way he wanted it done. So finally he called James
Black. Now, James might be the baddest drummer ever to come out
of New Orleans, but he wasn’t always the most reliable.”
So what happened? Moore smiles. “James came in, laid it down in
one pass and said, ‘Got anything else?’”
POETIC GROOVES
It seemed inevitable that Moore would channel his admiration for
Toussaint into a thematic project of some sort. Sadly, that decision
was made for him toward the end of 2015, as Moore’s trio with
pianist David Torkanowsky and bassist James Singleton was getting
ready to cut their next album.
“We’d been rehearsing tunes and we had studio time booked,”
he recalls. “But when we got word that Allen had passed, we knew
we would be remiss if we did not pay some kind of a tribute to
him. But what should we do? One tune? Two tunes? So we started
thinking that maybe we should do an entire album.”
Over the next few weeks, while gigging in Japan, they talked
about which songs to choose and how to arrange them. “We didn’t
want them to be overly obvious — or if they were obvious choices,
do them in a totally different way,” Moore says. “So I came up with
the idea of doing ‘Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky’ in five. Tork was
skeptical, like, ‘How’s that gonna work?’ So I was like …”
Here Moore recites the lyric as breezily as if it were written to be
in five. Case closed. So when Singleton proposed doing Toussaint’s
“Life” in seven, no one expressed any objection.
The trio soon realized that for With You In Mind to truly reflect
Toussaint’s importance, they should ask some of the city’s other
luminaries to join them. That led first to idea of bringing in Cyril
Neville. “He’s still the first-call guy,” Moore says. “He agreed to come
in on two tunes. He was so great on them that a few days later we
invited him to come in and do a couple more.”
One of them was hardly a typical Cyril Neville vocal. “Tork had an
idea,” Moore remembers. “Allen wrote a book of poetry [Have Some:
Poems By Allen Toussaint, The Southern Knight]. We got it, maybe
from his son Reggie, and started reading through it. A lot of it was
lyrics to songs, but we found this one that had a beat to it. So we
came up with something to play behind Cyril as he recited it.”
This inspired another idea. “We did ‘Southern Nights’ with
[trumpeter] Nicholas Payton one night. He asked if he could play
organ as we laid it down. Tork kept saying, ‘That’s really cool, but,
uh …’ And Nicholas said, ‘Don’t worry, brah. I’m gonna play trumpet
over it.’ Then Tork said, ‘You know, that spoken-word thing worked so
well with Cyril. Why don’t we get [actor] Wendell Pierce to do spoken
word with the lyrics of ‘Southern Nights’ before the song starts?’”
This time it was Moore’s turn to be doubtful. “I was like, ‘Brah,
are you having a flashback from the ’70s or something?’ I wasn’t
skeptical about Wendell Pierce. I just wondered whether it was a
good idea to speak the lyrics of such a well-known tune. But Tork
was like, ‘Trust me, brah. It’s gonna be cool.’ I think he probably got
the idea from seeing Allen do ‘Southern Nights’ live, when he would
sometimes tell a story at the top about all these characters he’d
encountered while growing up in the country. It turned out to be a
great track to end the record.”

A S E L E C T E D S TA N T O N M O O R E D I S C O G R A P H Y

1996 1996 1997 1998 1998

Coolin’ Off Manichalfwitz The Big Kibosh Crazyhorse Mongoose All Kooked Out!
Galactic New OrleaNs Klezmer allstars New OrleaNs Klezmer allstars Galactic GaraGe Á trOis

2001 2002 2003 2003 2003

The Houseman Cometh Flyin’ The Koop Vintage Reserve Emphasizer Ruckus
theryl “hOusemaN” De’clOuet staNtON mOOre Galactic GaraGe Á trOis Galactic

2006 2006 2006 2007 2007

Coalition Of The Willing After The Rain III Bringing It Home It’s Life
BOBBy Previte irma thOmas staNtON mOOre BONerama GeOrGe POrter Jr.

2009 2010 2010 2011 2012

Power Patriot Ya-Ka-May Groove Alchemy Always Be Happy, But Stay Evil Carnivale Electricos
GaraGe Á trOis Galactic staNtON mOOre GaraGe Á trOis Galactic

46 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 ”
I’m not afraid to take something “Southern Nights” intro. “I wanted to state a super simple rhythmic

you would never think to mix motif and build from there,” Moore says. “What I played was an
amalgamation of stuff I’d checked out with voodoo drumming,

with New Orleans but then play Haitian drumming, West African drumming, and Mardi Gras
Indian drumming. I tried to come up with something that wasn’t

it with a New Orleans beat.
The tempo Payton wanted for the body of the song was
extremely slow, so Moore felt he needed to lay down a slightly
faster clip to accompany Pierce during the intro. He recorded
this part alone, using brushes and following a scratch track
of Torkanowsky reading the lyrics. Without a song structure
to reference, Moore concentrated on atmosphere rather than
groove. Later, when Pierce came to the studio, Moore listened
in via speakerphone as the actor did his reading. It proved a
perfect fit, with voice and drums coincidentally hitting certain
cadences together as if they were tracking live.
“Really, it was mainly educated guesswork. You’ve got to trust
your gut, use some imagination, try to create a vibe, and throw
caution to the wind. But,” he adds with a smile, “if the verses don’t
line up, we can always move things around. Although I don’t like to
use Pro Tools too much, knowing we could still edit gave me some
courage.”
Moore followed a different approach on another recitation, for
“The Beat,” which he cut live with Cyril Neville in the studio. As
the title suggests, groove was more important here than on the
pretentious or overly thought-out, just going from the gut.
“That comes from years of shedding and exploring,” he continues.
“I threw in some stickings, right-right-left combinations, while
adding Swiss triplets like Dave Garibaldi would do to make it sound
like multiple-layered textured rhythms. I call it ‘Garibaldizing.’ Then
Mike Dillon added some percussion on top to make it sound like it’s
more than just two guys.”
Moore drew again from multiple sources to create an intriguing
drum intro to “Here Come The Girls.” On top of a repeated kick drum
motif he laid down a scampering snare beat. The effect was to
evoke the percussion section of a New Orleans marching band. “I’m
playing a cross-stick with my left hand and then playing on top of
that stick with my right,” he says. “I picked that up from Herman
Ernest III on [saxophonist] Maceo Parker’s version of The Meters’
‘Keep On Marching’ on the record Southern Exposure. I’m not playing
Herman’s rhythm, but that’s where I got that technique. I used it to
approximate a snare drum march intro. I didn’t want to just copy it,
so I used the stick-on-stick.
“I’m not afraid to take something you would never think to mix
with New Orleans but then play it with a New Orleans beat,” Moore
adds. “That’s how I keep coming up with new stuff. As long as the
accent structure lines up with either a backbeat or a clave, you can
modify it and make it work.”

1998 2000 2000 2001 2001

Mysteryfunk EP Late For The Future Money Shot We Love ’Em Tonight: Live At Tipitina’s Made In Medina
     ’ 20    

2005 2005 2005 2006 2006

In The Arms Of God Outre Mer Super Heavy Organ Change In The Weather Live In New York
          

2007 2007 2008 2008 2008

Lumiere Dans Le Noir From The Corner To The Block Emphasis! (On Parenthesis) Blue Plate Special Take It To The Street
        (The Music)
 

2012 2014 2015 2015 2017

Black Eye Galaxy Conversations Into The Deep Fast Forward With You In Mind
        

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 47

STANTON MOORE
SWEET & SLOW
For Moore, With You In Mind marks a major step ahead in an area
he hadn’t explored too deeply until now. “To be honest with you,
ballads scared the living daylights out of me in my formative years.
If you do two hits on hi-hat and one is louder than the next, which
is easy to do, or if your brushes get caught on a rough spot on the
head, it leaves you so exposed.”
About seven years ago, after writing his method book Groove
Alchemy, he decided to do something about it. “I started going
through every brush book and every video I could find,” he says.
“But I also sought out friends, acquaintances, peers, and older guys
who had devoted a lot of time to brushes.”
For example, while in Japan, Moore discovered that Steve Smith
was staying in his hotel. “So I called him up, we met for coffee,
and then went up to one of our rooms,” he says. “We pulled out
the ironing board and put our pads on it. So now I’ve got videos of
Steve Smith playing brushes on an ironing board!”
He spent time with John Riley, Russ Miller, Jason Sutter, Gil
Sharone, and, eventually, the ballad drummer nonpareil, Jeff
Hamilton. “When he’s at home, Jeff likes to open up a bottle of
wine and watch the sun go down,” Moore says. “After that, I said,
‘Hey, Jeff, can I show you a couple of things I’m working on with
the brushes?’ I sat at his drums, picked up his brushes, and started
playing. He’s sitting in his armchair, holding a glass of wine, just
grinning at me, like, ‘Uh-huh. I see you, young blood. That’s cool
but why don’t you try getting more of a lift in your right hand and
more snap in your left hand?’ So I stood up, handed the brushes to
him, and said, ‘Well, why don’t you show me?’ He laughed and said,
‘Oh, it’s gonna be like that, huh?’ And I said, ‘It’s gonna be exactly
like that!’”
He’s available! Call Steve at 630-865-6849.
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48 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
Hamilton spent a good amount of time with Moore, culminating
in a two-kit brush duet on “A Night In Tunisia” at the Las Vegas
Academy Of The Arts. Perhaps the most important lesson Moore
learned was to switch his focus from filling to leaving spaces. “On
a funk thing I might listen to where I can play a fill or react to the
soloist,” he points out. “With a ballad, I make sure I leave enough
space for the singer to phrase and get the lyrics out. I don’t want
to just jump in because I feel like I want to be heard. It’s more
about being invited into the conversation.”
As you can tell by his work on “All These Things,” “River Boat,”
and “With You In Mind,” his efforts paid off. “I’m nowhere near where
I want to be. I’m hardly the world’s greatest ballad player — that’s Jeff
Hamilton. But I’m at a completely different level now. It’s not just
about practicing and shedding. It’s not even about the notes.
I mean, Elvin [Jones] was a master of ballad playing. But if you
write out what he played on a ballad and had some college kid
play it note for note, it would sound bombastic. You can’t take
something really profound, like something the Dalai Lama says,
and have a teenager read it back; it’s not going to have the same
impact. It’s not about the words. It’s about who’s saying them
and how they say it.
“It’s also about seeking out information from the masters,”
Moore continues. “Going through every single brush book and
DVD is like reading only the introduction to War And Peace: It
barely scratches the surface. But when you talk with, say, John
Riley, he’ll tell you, ‘Well, I saw Philly Jo [Jones] at the Vanguard
many, many times. This is how he did this.’ You piece all this
information together and your understanding will only get
deeper.”
Sounds like something Allen Toussaint would say.
GROOVE ANALYSIS By Andy Ziker
“Life”
Five-Tool
“Life”
q = 94 staccato

>. >. >. >. >. >. >. >. >.

rimshot buzz
slightly swung sixteenths

Drummer
0:00
7
ã 8 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ( œ œ) œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ ( œ) œ œ œz œz œz œz
j j j j
z z z z
œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ
BORROWING A BASEBALL > >. >. >. >. >. > >.
œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ }œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œz œz
œ ( œ) œœ
EXPRESSION, Stanton Moore is a five-tool j j
drummer: 1) He’s a drum historian, and 㜠œ œ œ œ
œ
œ œ œ
can tell you where just about every groove
and lick comes from. 2) He’s a profoundly
> >. >. >. >.
}
œ ( œ œ ) œ ( œœ ) œ œ ( œ) œœ œ ( œœ ) œ
gifted teacher, known not only as private
j j j j
㜠œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
z z z z
œ œ œ œ
instructor, but also for teaching camps,
masterclasses, and clinics around the world.
œ
>. >. >. >. > >. >. >.
3) He’s an accomplished author. 4) He’s also

!œ œ œ œ ( œ œ) œ ( œ œ) œ }œ
great on camera. 5) As we mentioned in our

㜠œ œ }œ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ ≈ œ œ
œ œ œœ
May 2014 issue, Moore is a top-ten drumming
chameleon. He performs and records with his œ œ œ y
own jazz trio, plays funk with Galactic, and >.
even metal with Corrosion Of Conformity. His
y y y }œ
œ œ œ }œ œ }œ
y y œ œy y y y œ y }œ
㜠œ œ œ œ œ
most recent effort, With You In Mind, again
demonstrates his versatility, by showing us œ
>
how it’s done in a pop setting, as he pays
homage to one of his favorite songwriters,
Y y y y y }œ œ ( œ œ) Y }œy œ œy y œ y }œ y œ y }œ
ã œ }œy œ œ
New Orleans R&B icon Allen Toussaint.
œ œ y œ
“Life”
“Life,” a New Orleans second-line in seven,

Y }œy œ œy }œ y œ y }œ y œ ( œ œ) Yœ }œy Yœ y œ Yœ y y }
is a lesson in how dynamics/articulations
can really make your playing come to life:
Moore uses buzz strokes, power flams,
㜠y y y œ y œ œ
> > >
accents, rimshots, drags, and ghosted notes.
The staccato buzzes found in the second
Y }œy }œ œ Y ( œ œ) y }œ œ œ y Y œy œy } œ y yœ œ œ œ }œ
㜠y œ œ }y œ
measure (starting on the & of 5) are one of
his signature licks. Moore brings his sticks œ y œ œ œ
up high and then proceeds to bury the tips
into the head when making contact. The
result produces accented, short-duration
buzz strokes. Notice how Moore changes
“NightPeople”
“Night People”
texture from only snare/bass drum in the
q = 94
> > > > > > > >
introduction to adding closed and open slightly swung sixteenths
hi-hat in the verse. This creates a wider 0:00

ã 44 œ
frequency spread and shines a spotlight on y y y y y y y Y Y œ y y y y y y y y y y y œ œ
Cyril Neville’s exceptional vocals. œ œ œ y œ œ œ œ
“Night People” > > > > > > > > > >
y y y y y y y Y Y œ y y y y y y œ œ }œ œ œ y
y
Moore builds a hypnotic beat with four on
the floor and accents on the hi-hat and 㜠œ œ œ y œ œ œ œ
snare, which provide a three-dimensional
vibe. Each phrase is organized in 1.5 + 0.5
measures: in other words, six beats of
groove plus two beats of fill.
“Riverboat”
“River Boat”
q = 63
“River Boat”
Using a repeating five-note melody (bass 0:00 > > >
4 œ œ œ œz œ œ œ œz œ œ œ
œ œ œz œ œ œ œz œ œ
ã4 œ Y
drum, middle tom, high tom, middle tom,
snare buzz) and hi-hat foot splashes,
Moore mesmerizes us again. Each measure
Yœ Y Y œ Y Yœ Y œ Y
is divided into 6 + 6 + 4 (subdividing by
> >
sixteenths), giving it a polyrhythmic feel.
œ œ œ œz œ œ œ œz œ œ œ œ œ œz œ œ œ œz œ œ œ
㜠Y Yœ Y Y œ Y Yœ Y œ Y

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 49

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DR
U IC
M M
SE
T E RG O N
Set Up
Your Kit
For Comfort
And Efficiency
T
oday’s technology has produced a number of terms that are
hybrids of words used in science, industry, academics, and
so on. Among those that I find most interesting is the word
“ergonomics.” Simply put, ergonomics is the relationship
of the human body to work. This includes the physics of motion,
mechanics, and the design of physical objects, like tools and
equipment.
Over the years I’ve given a lot of thought to the relationship
between a drummer’s body and his or her drum set. I’ve had
occasion to speak to some highly expert medical people on the
subject. And I’ve received correspondence from drummers all over
the world describing physical problems that they were having. After
S
O
By Rick Van Horn
adding some past experiences of my own to this mix, I’ve come
to the inescapable conclusion that drummers need to be more
concerned with ergonomics than do any other instrumentalists.
Let’s face it: The drum set is the most personal instrument in
the musical pantheon. A keyboardist can sit down at any piano
and play it. Likewise a guitar player can pick up any six-string and
strum a chord. But a drum set must literally be constructed around
the person playing it. And if that construction isn’t a “perfect fit,” the
result can be impaired playing ability, reduced comfort, and even
physical injury. So let’s take a moment to evaluate the relationship of
a drummer’s body to a drum kit, and examine a few points that you
might not have considered when creating your current setup.
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 51
DRUM SET ERGONOMICS
Physiology & Seat Height
Ergonomics are of the greatest importance to a drummer when it
comes to the question of seat height. Of course, “correct” seat height
is determined by many factors, all of which vary with the individual
player. For years drummers have argued over whether one achieves FIG.
more power by sitting high or low. Questions regarding speed and 1
control also become part of this issue. But there are certain physical
factors that should be taken into account when you’re in the process
of determining what seat height is best for you. (And even if you’ve
been playing for years, it’s a good idea to take a fresh look at this
critical element of your setup.)
In addition to the considerations mentioned above, think about
your body’s need for unrestricted circulation. The edge of a seat
positioned too high can cut into the undersides of the thighs,
pinching major blood vessels and causing numbness in the lower
limbs. A seat that is too high can also cause upper and middle back
strain (due to the legendary “drummer’s slouch” that it promotes),
while a seat that is too low can cause lower back problems from
putting most of the upper body’s weight on the lower spine. Finally,
a seat that’s too high or too low can cause the body to move in
unnatural ways in an attempt to remain balanced.
While I can’t recommend one specific height for everybody, I can
suggest an exercise that may help you to understand how seat height
relates to your playing. Sit on a standard dining-room chair. Pull your
feet back as far as possible under the seat, keeping them flat on the
floor. Now try to play an imaginary bass drum pedal. It’s virtually
impossible, right? This is an extreme example of the knee-ankle-foot FIG.
angles that are created when you sit very low. Next, put your feet out 2
in front of you as far as they’ll go — again keeping them flat on the
floor — and play your imaginary pedal. The extensive range of motion
you now have reflects the angles that are created when you sit higher.
With all of the above in mind, I suggest that you sit at your drum
kit and objectively evaluate whether you might benefit from a change
in seat height. Just remember to make any such changes in small
increments at a time, and mark your starting point so you can return
to it if you’re not happy with those changes.

Anatomy & Bass Drum Position

Next, let’s look at the relationship of a drummer’s body to the
position of his or her bass drum, which is usually the starting point
for any drum kit setup. We’ve all been brought up on photos of
drummers sitting proudly behind their kits, with their bass drums
facing straight forward so that the illustration on the front head
(be it a company logo, the drummer’s initials, or the band’s name)
is clearly visible. The drummers themselves are also faced directly
forward so we can see their smiling faces. What’s wrong with this
picture?
Most drummers see nothing wrong with it, and that’s the way they
set up: drums and drummer both facing straight ahead. But if the
bass drum is facing straight ahead, that means that the bass drum
FIG.
pedal is pointing straight back. This creates a need for what I believe
3
is an unnatural “turning in” of the bass drum foot.
The human body is designed to operate in a very limited number
of ways. It has remarkable flexibility within those parameters, but
cannot endure extended abuse without some reaction — usually in
the form of injury or impaired performance. And when it comes to
your thigh, knee, calf, ankle, and foot, they all work together best
in a straight line. Twists and turns cause problems (Fig. 1).
Illustrations: JUAN CASTILLO

Some drummers try to get around the nonaligned foot-to-pedal

situation by setting the bass drum facing straight forward, but letting
their foot angle naturally across the pedal plate instead of turning it
at the ankle to correspond to the pedal. While this may reduce the
risk of problems for their bodies, it likely will increase the risk of
damage to the hinges and linkages of their pedals, which were not
designed to withstand “sideways” stresses (Fig. 2).

52 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

 Set Up Your Kit For Comfort And Efficiency
Take a moment to do another exercise: Sit in a reasonably high,
straight-backed chair (or on your drum stool if it’s handy). Close
your eyes, relax completely, and imagine that you have a snare
drum on a stand in front of you. Lift your legs so that your feet
are off the ground a couple of inches. Now, while remaining totally
relaxed, let your feet drop to the floor. You should notice that your
feet will land with the toes slightly turned out — usually at close to
a 45-degree angle.
It’s my contention that in order to maximize strength, speed,
and stamina (and to minimize potential injury to your knee, calf
muscles, and ankle), the angle of the bass drum pedal should
conform to the angle of the foot — not the other way around. This
means that if you wish to face straight forward, the pedal should
angle slightly to the outside of your body (left or right, depending
on which foot you use). The bass drum itself should be offset
accordingly. Just visualize how a bass drum would be placed in
a double-bass setup, and you’ll get the picture (Fig. 3).
Obviously, if your rack toms are mounted on your bass drum,
offsetting that drum is going to move the toms over as well. But this
needn’t be a problem. There’s an abundant variety of drum hardware
available to help you put the toms exactly where you want them. For
example, assuming you have two toms, you could mount them on a
double-tom floor stand directly in front of your snare. Or you could
keep one on the bass drum and put the other on a snare stand, or
fly it off of a cymbal stand. Or you could splurge and keep both of
the toms where they were on the bass drum, and add a third tom in
front of you. You have plenty of options that will allow you to play the
toms and your bass drum comfortably.
If you still want the bass drum to face straight forward (perhaps
for visual reasons), you should consider angling your body slightly
to one side or the other in order to maintain a natural foot-to-pedal
relationship. The hi-hat should be positioned in the same manner
for the other foot.
Gravity Versus Cymbals
Here’s a simple but undeniable fact: You can’t fight gravity and win.
Not for long, anyway. The earth is a lot bigger and stronger than you
are, and consequently it can exert a lot more force than you can.
The oldest principle of physics is that “what goes up must come
down,” and any effort to contradict this principle is going to take a
great deal of energy to accomplish. This principle applies to drum
kits primarily when it comes to the position of cymbals.
The higher and farther away your cymbals are from you, the
more energy it takes to overcome gravity in order to reach up and
hit them. Conversely, the lower and closer your cymbals are, the
less energy it takes to play them.
This equation is most important when it comes to ride cymbals
and hi-hats (including remote hats). Sustaining a complicated or
fast ride pattern is hard enough without having to do it on a cymbal
that’s shoulder-high or higher. You should make every effort (no
pun intended) to keep your ride cymbal and/or hi-hat at a level that
minimizes tension or strain in your arm. Under most circumstances,
the human arm works best for this purpose when held comfortably
at the side of the body, with a more or less 90-degree bend at the
elbow. I realize that the location of drums on the kit may make
this precise position impossible, but the closer you can come to
it, the more endurance you will have. This, in turn, will help you
maintain solid time and a better groove over the course of a long
performance. (By the way, this applies to the height of your snare
drum as well as your ride cymbal.)
In addition to height, cymbal angle is also important. Ideally,
your drumstick should be able to strike the cymbal from as close

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DRUM SET ERGONOMICS
to a parallel plane as possible. That means that if the
cymbal is absolutely horizontal, you should be able to
"SWEET SPOT"
comfortably hold the stick horizontally above it. If the
POINT OF OPTIMUM
cymbal is angled, you should be able to angle the stick to
IMPACT POWER
the same degree just as comfortably.
Crash cymbals aren’t played as often as rides and hi-
hats, but they generally must be struck with more force.
So it’s very important to keep them within a comfortable
reach. They should also be angled in such a way that
your wrist doesn’t have to go into unnatural contortions
to connect the shoulder of the stick with the edge of the
cymbal. Acute angles are generally good only if you want
to minimize stick impact (such as on a very soft jazz gig),
since it becomes almost impossible to do anything but
glance off the cymbal with a stick tip.

The Snow Globe Concept

With all of the foregoing in mind, there’s an easy way
to determine the optimum placement of drums and
cymbals on your kit. I call it the “snow globe” concept.
Start by sitting on your drum stool in an open space.
Put your arms out straight to your sides, and then raise
and lower them until you’ve outlined a circle. Next, spin
around on your stool, doing the same thing over and
over again.
Now you’ve created an imaginary “sphere” around FIG.
you — as if you were sitting on the inside of a giant snow 4
globe. It’s my contention that everything on your kit
should be positioned as though it were on the surface
of this imaginary sphere. In that way, you should never
have to lean or stretch to reach anything.

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 Set Up Your Kit For Comfort And Efficiency
When it comes to rack tom placement, there are both musical
and physical factors to consider. Let’s start with the physical
factors. In sports like baseball, tennis, and golf, there’s something
called a “sweet spot.” This is the point in every player’s swing
where the bat, racket, or club impacts the ball with the most FIG.
power. Hit the ball before that spot and that power isn’t fully 5
developed; hit it after that spot and the power is already
diminished.
There’s also a sweet spot in every drummer’s stroke. It’s pretty
easy to find; just “air drum” with a stick in your hand and you
can usually feel exactly where you’re generating the most impact
force. Ideally that’s the point at which you want the tip of your
stick to connect with the drumhead (Fig. 4).
Now let’s combine that with an important musical factor, which
is that a drumhead responds best when it’s struck at 90 degrees to
its surface. That is, straight down into the head, as opposed to a
glancing blow (Fig. 5).
To achieve this striking angle, the drumstick should approach
the head as parallel as possible to its surface. This allows the tip
of the stick to come straight down into the head. As with a ride
cymbal, if the drum is flat, the stick should be flat above it; if the
drum is tilted, the stick should match that tilt (Fig. 6).
So, putting this all together, here’s how to determine the
optimum placement for your rack toms: Sit behind your snare DRUMHEAD RESPONDS BEST WHEN
and bass drum. Holding your sticks as you normally do, raise STRUCK AT 90˚TO SURFACE HEAD
your arms up and forward naturally. Note the height and angle
of your sticks as you reach a point where the sweet spot of your
stroke puts the tips of your sticks where they can strike a tom at
90 degrees to the head. That’s the height and angle at which the
rack toms should be positioned. FIG.
To position your crash cymbals, simply continue raising your 6
arms up (still holding your sticks), and extend them out a bit
to either side of the kit. This gives you an idea of the optimum
height and angle for your crashes, as well as any other items that
you might want to place on your kit.
The Snow Globe concept is especially useful on large setups,
where there might be a temptation to place things out of optimum
reach just to get them on the kit. But the concept is every bit as
applicable to smaller kits. The idea is to achieve optimum playing
efficiency and comfort, which should be your goal no matter what
size kit you play.

Conclusion
The object of raising all of these points is not to try to tell you
how you should set up your drum kit, or why you should change
your concept to suit mine. The truth is, there is no right or wrong
way to set up a kit.
Consider the setups of great drummers like Billy Cobham,
Simon Phillips, and Carter Beauford, who play open-handed to
avoid crossing their hands to play hi-hat patterns, and who put
their rides on the left side as well. Then there’s Mike Mangini’s
mirror-image tom arrangement, which serves physical as well as
musical purposes for him. And finally there’s Bill Bruford, who
uses a symmetrical setup with toms on his left and right and his
hi-hat directly in front of him in the middle of his kit!
While these “alternative” setups certainly do address some
ergonomic issues, I’d only recommend exploring them after
you’ve gotten used to the traditional approach, and you feel the
Illustrations: JUAN CASTILLO

need to refine your setup a bit more.

My hope is that the suggestions presented in this article
will get you thinking about the critical relationship that exists
between your body and your instrument — and the work that
the two do together that ultimately comes out as “drumming.” An
awareness of the ergonomics of drumming should help you keep
that relationship harmonious for many years to come.

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 55

Chris Dingman
By Bob Doerschuk | Photography By Zachary Maxwell Stertz
A
side from small rodents and pesky siblings, anything you hit
with a mallet is a percussion instrument, right? That means
vibraphones indisputably fit into this category. Yet
for many reasons, “percussive” doesn’t always reflect
the instrument’s true nature or how its chief practitioners see it.
“I’ve talked about this a lot with other vibraphone players,” says
Chris Dingman. “Is it like a piano? Is it more like a guitar? People think
of it as a substitute for those things with maybe a different color. Will
anyone ever say someday, ‘I want a vibraphone to accompany me
because it does things those other ones can’t do?’
“I guess,” he concludes, “I’m trying to find ways it can just be itself.”
He’s well on his way to doing just that, judging from his catalog
as leader and sideman. In 2011, his debut album as a leader, Waking
Dreams, focused on his composing, with the vibes generally playing
parts and sharing improvisational space with the other instruments.
Four years later, he dug more into the instrument’s resources on The
Subliminal And The Sublime; the opening track, “Tectonic Plates,”
begins with a deep, slow tremolo, whose glassy, vibrato-free throb
eventually takes on an organic quality. By the end, it feels more like
Heed
The Call
Of The
Mallets
some huge beast breathing rather than as it did at the top, like a
migraine coming on.
More recently, on the album Sounds From The Deep Field by Bryan
And The Aardvarks, he found a less abstract application for that tremolo
to add dimension to the chords that kick off “Soon I’ll Be Leaving This
World.” Another track, “Tiny Skull Sized Kingdom,” utilizes the vibes
for an ostinato within a work that veers between 7/8 and 8/8, with
Dingman’s nuanced sustain mixing pointed articulation and background
texture. And on two tracks from The Endless Field’s self-titled debut,
released June 23, he recedes into the duo’s dreamy, new-agey sound,
glistening atop melodies like sunlight on dew.
Despite these fascinations, Dingman did take his first musical steps
toward the nonmelodic, harmonically indifferent world of drums.
That’s what he played throughout high school in San Jose, California,
with groups whose specialties stretched from ska to jazz. He even
kicked double bass with a metal band. At the same time, though, he
enjoyed listening to his parents’ records, with an emphasis on opera,
classical, and jazz, and took piano lessons. Rhythm and tonality played
equal, parallel roles as he absorbed and personalized what he heard.
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 57
 Still, Dingman’s first encounter with a
vibraphone wasn’t a life-changing event.
“One day when I was playing percussion in
high school band someone wheeled out this
really rickety vibraphone. The frame was
totally homemade. The pedal was a piece
of wood attached to two strings; it worked
backwards from the way most vibraphones
do. I didn’t get too deep into it. It was just a
side thing, something I didn’t ever think I could
do seriously.”
That changed once he began his freshman
year at Wesleyan University in Middletown,
Connecticut. Although enrolled in the College
Of Social Studies, with a curriculum based on
classical Western social theory, economics,
philosophy, and history, Dingman wanted to
play jazz too. When his faculty adviser heard
this, he sent the young student to meet with
jazz vibraphonist and Wesleyan professor of
music Jay Hoggard.
“Jay asked me, ‘Did you ever play vibes?’”
Dingman recalls. “I was like, ‘Well, I played a
little bit in high school.’ And he looked at me
and said, ‘You’re … gonna … play … vibes!’”
With that, Dingman’s odyssey began. In
addition to working with Hoggard, he studied
at Wesleyan with drummer Pheeroan akLaff
and multi-reed visionary Anthony Braxton.
Lessons with saxophonist/composer Steve
Lehman helped expand his grasp of post-bop
improvisational structure as well.
“Pheeroan was a big influence,” he says.
“Once I started switching from drums to vibes,
I’d just play vibes with him playing drums in our
lessons. A lot of it involved getting performance
experience and developing different ideas for
improvisation. Pheeroan thinks in terms of
color and shapes; he hipped me to a lot of stuff
like that. With Braxton, I was mainly taking
classes and playing in his large ensemble.”
Soon, Dingman began reconsidering whether
drums really were his instrument of destiny.
“Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Wayne
Shorter, Herbie Hancock — I remember listening
to things they played and realizing that I could
play those specific harmonic progressions I was
learning. It made a little bit more sense than the
experiences I’d had as a drummer. So I was like,
‘Well, this is how I relate to music in general.
This is how I think. Maybe I should be going with
my strengths.’”
Dingman didn’t so much plunge as ease into
that world. There was one moment, though,
where a personal misfortune persuaded him to
make the transition. “A good childhood friend
of mine passed when I was in my sophomore
year,” he recalls. “I was in South India, studying
mridangam, when I heard about it. That was
the moment when I knew I had to stop messing
around and do what I really want to do with my
life. I want to play vibes.”
With hindsight, Dingman is pretty clear
about what lured him to vibraphone. “First
of all, there’s that general thing of being able
to play melodic lines but with a percussive
technique,” he notes. “That matched my skill
set. Sonically, there’s some mystery about it.
There are otherworldly aspects to the sound,
which to me are very attractive. Even as
a budding vibraphonist, I realized that this
seemed like unexplored territory. I mean, lots
of great vibraphonists came before me and
explored a lot. But it’s a fairly young instrument
and a lot can still be done with it in terms of
sustain and sound.”
He knew this well, having listened carefully
to what his predecessors had achieved. “In
terms of having a real voice on the vibraphone,
Bobby Hutcherson has always been my biggest
influence,” he says. “His music always spoke to
me really deeply. He channeled himself through
the instrument. That especially blew me away
once I saw him play live. It made me think of
him like, ‘Wow! He’s a wizard!’ Milt Jackson
was also important to me because he was
so important to Bobby,” Dingman continues.
“He played so beautifully and lyrically. And, of
course, Lionel Hampton was the grandfather.
So those are the big three.”
He tuned in to more contemporary players
too. “I heard Dave Holland’s band with the
vibraphonist Steve Nelson. Between that and
some Gary Burton records, those were the first
times I heard the vibes explored in terms of
chordal playing. Gary, of course, is probably the
most prodigious vibraphonist of all. He came
up with all kinds of techniques to get around
the instrument’s limitations and do things like a
piano player or a guitar player would.”
After graduating from Wesleyan, Dingman
was accepted at the University Of Southern
California’s Thelonious Monk Institute. “That’s
where I really began studying composition,”
he notes. “My teacher was Vince Mendoza,
who writes a lot of large-ensemble music. I
also studied a lot with [trumpeter] Terence
Blanchard. That was more philosophical: He
tries to find exercises to help you tap into the
compositional voice you already have inside of
you. A lot of that was to determine what my
motive was for wanting to compose at all.”
Dingman was mainly writing jazz tunes
when he went to USC. But thanks to Mendoza
and Blanchard, and to his investigations into
Steve Reich’s minimalist works, the free-
floating rhythm of Morton Feldman, and other
contemporary compositions, he decided to set
his self-imposed limitations aside.
“That’s when it became more global for me,”
he explains. “I was like, I don’t have to just
write jazz tunes. I can write my own music and
it can be influenced by anything. I was listening
then to African music, Indian music, electronic
music, contemporary hip-hop, DJs — all kinds
of things. It all became music for me, not just
genre. That was kind of a revelation. I was
being refreshed and invigorated by these other
systems of music that I’d never heard before.

A SELEC TED CHRIS DINGMAN DISCOGR APHY

2004 2007 2008 2008 2009

ArtificialLight On Meaning Thought Forms Prelude To Cora Canada Day
steve lehman steve lehman Quintet GO: OrGaniC OrChestra ambrOse akinmusire harris eisenstadt

2009 2009 2011 2014 2015

Travail, Transformation Bossa Beleza Waking Dreams Mise en Abîme The Subliminal And
And Flow Gabriela anders Chris dinGman steve lehman OCtet The Sublime
steve lehman OCtet Chris dinGman

58 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com


It was like living your whole life in a small
town. Then all of a sudden you move to some
other place where there are way more things
you could do. Up to that point I had thought
of Western music as it and everything else
was a foreign language. I came to realize that
everything out there can be a part of what
I do. It’s all equally valid. It all feeds into the
work I do.”
Post-academia, Dingman has formed a
conviction that the external world can and
should play a role in his work. The notion
came to him almost inadvertently as he was
working on “Manhattan Bridge,” which he
would include on his first album. “I wrote it
entirely on the subway as I was commuting
to and from a day job I had in New York,” he
Chris Dingman
says. “I didn’t set out to do that on purpose; Dingman didn’t have the budget for that.
that’s just when I could find the time to write. “So I started with just one vibraphone and one
But without even thinking about it I tapped guitar. I also used a lot of bass bows and rolling
into the spirit of being there on that train mallets on the vibes, doubled with the guitar
with all these other people, going over the playing really ambient chords. The bows give
Manhattan Bridge. It was like, ‘Whoa, there’s you a chance to vary the attack, so it sounds
something going more like breath.”
on here.’” It takes imagination, then, to overcome
To explore the limitations of the instrument. “I guess at
the idea further, times I feel like that is a boundary,” Dingman
Dingman applied admits. “But as a composer I can always
for and received a draw on a variety of instruments. Even
grant that paid for though I don’t write music in quarter-tones,
a trip out into the I can convey that influence to a saxophone
Pinnacles National or trumpet player so they can have it in their
Park in California, head while they’re interpreting something I
with the aim wrote.”
of tapping the Besides, who’s to say Dingman won’t
spirit of its caves, try some different tunings? In fact, when
volcanic rock performing with the Steve Williams Octet, he
formations, and attaches a set of bars to his vibes that include
vistas into his three notes within each octave pitched a
process. This in quarter-tone sharp. And when trumpeter Amir
turn moved him to ElSaffar called him for some gigs, he supplied
pursue the same Dingman with bars tuned to specific Iraqi
goal on other maqam scales.
expeditions, one of However, he adds, “A lot of what draws
which led directly me in the music I’m listening to now involves
to that compelling, different layers of rhythm and how they
organic opening on “Tectonic Plates.” overlap but vary slightly. In terms of concept
“That came from a hike in Massachusetts,” and how I approach the instrument, I used to
he remembers. “I was looking over this try to forget that percussive aspect and think
landscape, all the its ripples and hills. For in terms of the melodic sounds I’m creating.
millions of years, these things have been But I’m not doing that as much anymore, I
moving, very slowly. It’s hard to wrap your suppose because I enjoy exploring the raw
head around that scale and size, but out of that groove aspect of the vibes. Yeah, it’s like
I wrote this chorale with a feeling of massive playing a drum with a lot of sounds. Every
movement.” bar is a drum.”
But how could he most directly translate that Ah. Chris Dingman is a percussionist at heart
impression into sound? Maybe with a choir, but after all.
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 59

A&F Drum
Company
By Brad Schlueter
R
amy Antoun is a
successful touring and
studio drummer who
wanted to re-create
the look, sound, and aesthetic
of vintage drums he’d collected
over the years. Working with local
craftsman Steve Furcinitti, Antoun
created a limited-edition raw
brass snare drum that captured
all the qualities he envisioned.
Ever since then, he’s been
committed to crafting drums
that were out of the ordinary.
A&F is different from other
boutique drum makers. Rather
than developing cutting-edge
drums that seem to bring the
future into the present, it has
taken the opposite approach,
building drums with design
elements that could be from the
turn of the century. And I don’t
mean the most recent one.
It’s almost as if scientists
discovered drum builders from
the 1800s frozen in a block of
ice, and reanimated them just
so they could get back to work.
A&F’s approach seems to eschew
modernity while making every
60 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
design element as minimalist as
possible.
A&F bills itself as a “luxury"
drum brand, so its drums aren’t
for bargain hunters. If you’ve
heard of the brand, you may be
acquainted with its wide range
of peculiar snare drums. These
include very shallow Pancake
drums that are just 1.5" deep and
have a crisp “white noise" sound.
More unique still is their Gun Shot
snare, which is 18" x 4" (that’s
not a typo), has wood hoops, and
four floor tom legs and brackets
attached to support it.
A&F’s drum lines offer some
unique options. There are more
traditional ones, like having your
hoops or metal shells engraved by
the master artist John Aldridge.
Then there are more esoteric
options, like those found on their
Whiskey Maple line, which gives
buyers the choice of blending
scotch, bourbon, or other
whiskies into the finish. You’ll find
a video on the company’s site that
shows the chief craftsman adding
two fingers worth of a 12-year-
old Macallan to the dark oil rub
SOMETHING OLD
IS NEW AGAIN
finish A&F uses. It’s too bad Drum
didn’t specify my preference for a
30-year-old Bruichladdich before
we set up this review.
DESIGN &
CONFIGURATION
My review kit was from A&F’s
premier Royals line. The most
remarkable thing about this series
is that the entire kit has brass
shells. Yes, all brass.
For this kit, Antoun worked
with A&F’s Tabber Millard and
Nikki Spencer, experimenting
with different brass thicknesses
and welding methods, trying
to achieve the ideal balance of
sound, weight, and durability.
My kit included a shallow
22" x 12" bass drum, 14" x 6.5"
snare, a 13" x 8" rack tom, and
a 16" x 14" Snom. No, that’s not a
typo. I’ll get to what a Snom
is in a few paragraphs, but in
the meantime, just think of it
as a floor tom. All shells are
undersized by about 0.25". My
bass drum came with walnut
hoops. You can also upgrade to
the pricier Royal Elite kit, which
Royals
adds wood hoops and engraved
logos on all the drums.
A&F doesn’t offer hardware, so
their kits come a la carte. There’s
no rack tom mount, so you’ll need
a second snare stand. Other than
floor tom legs and bass drum
spurs, we received no additional
hardware for our kit.
FINISH & FEATURES
This company is a marketer’s
dream. A&F Drums are meant to
stand apart from the competition
and look different. Every aspect
of the drums contributes to the
brand’s steam punk aesthetic.
My review kit had a raw brass
finish that will likely change over
time. Random variations in the
metal almost make them look
rusty, but don’t worry — you
won’t need a tetanus booster.
Those rusty-looking patches are
the result of an acid wash, used
to create an oxidized, antique
look. Brass hoops match the shell
finish, while the patinas of the
clips, center mount brass lug,
and threaded rods are slightly
different from the shells.

14" x 16" Snom
with snares
Direct
contact
wing
screws Thin 100-percent
brass shells
Sanded and oxidized
pre-aged brass patina
on shells and hardware
CONTACT
anfdrumco.com
ramy@anfdrumco.com
Each drum shell is made from
thin 0.036" brass, which is
about 1mm thick. Unlike many
metal snares that bend the top
and bottom edges of the shell
inward to create bearing edges,
A&F shells are straight thin brass
sheets rolled into a cylinder and
welded, without a formed bearing
edge. The welds are sanded to
remove rough edges, but are
still slightly raised and visible. I
presume this extra material adds
strength at the seams.
A&F claims that its drums have
45-degree bearing edges, but
since the metal shells are so thin
(like rubbing your finger along the
blade of a butter knife) it seems
Welded seams
Flip down
vintage style
throw-off
Remo heads
Single
center mount
brass lugs
22" x 12"
bass drum
Bass drum spikes
unlikely that they can do much
more than file burrs from their
edges. That slim design makes
these drums feel much lighter
than many wood ones.
Flanged hoops evolved to
strengthen and add rigidity to the
rim. Our rolled brass hoops don’t
have flanges, and are held in
place using small clips with metal
washers underneath. My snare
drum’s top brass hoop isn’t
perfectly round, and instead is
about 0.125" wider at the seam
than it is midway to the opposite
side. I don’t know whether
this was a shipping or quality
control issue, but fortunately,
A&F offers a lifetime warranty
Unique brass and
leather badges
Butt plate with
14" x 6.5" snare
fine-tuning mechanism
20-strand
chrome snares
Small rim clips
Walnut bass drum hoops
on manufacturing problems. The
company quickly offered to repair
any problems I found.
The drums arrived with coated
Remo Ambassador heads over
clear resonant Ambassadors,
though my bass drum has a
clear Powerstroke 3 batter head
and a coated, ported Ambassador
resonant head.
A&F snare drums employ
a humble lever to engage or
disengage the snare wires. It
couldn’t be simpler, but seems
sturdy and operates smoothly
and quietly. A mechanism with
the fine-tuning knob is on the
opposite side of the drum, where
most drums have a butt plate.
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017
Rolled flange-less
brass hoops
13" x 8" tom
45-degree
bearing edges
DIRECT SALE PRICE: $5,750
It includes indents to hold your
tension, but doesn’t turn as
smoothly as many newer high-
tech designs, so I might not
tweak it in the middle of a song.
My drum’s wires are chromed
and look downright modern
compared to the rest of the drum.
Rather than using a typical
badge, A&F cuts its logo through
thin pieces of brass and sets them
on slightly larger oval pieces of
leather. These are screwed into
the shells, which gives the badge
a 3D quality.
While most drum makers
print their logo on the front bass
drumhead, A&F instead screws its
brass-and-leather badge through
DRUM! 61
the film. Washers on the inside
of the head receive the nuts and
keep them from pulling through
or damaging the film. Our bass
drum includes a dog-bone
shaped muffling pillow, which I
removed, since the logo badge
seems to dampen the resonant
head all on its own.
Nothing is high-tech on
these drums. No clever throw-
offs, triple-flanged or die-cast
hoops, suspension tom mounts,
retractable bass drum spurs,
and so on. Bass drum spurs are
simply metal spikes bent 90
degrees and fit into brackets
on the shell. While these spikes
work on my carpet, they won’t
prevent your kit from sliding
or damaging tile or hardwood
flooring. There are no markings or
indents for angles, so you’ll just
have to eyeball the spurs during
set up. Antiqued wing screws
pass through the brackets and
press directly against the spike,
as drums of yesteryear did.
This kit is so unadorned it
could have been designed for
Amish drummers. Air vents are
just holes drilled in the shell,
and aren’t made fancier with a
functionless grommet. Instead
of rubber gaskets between the
brass hardware and shells, A&F
uses small leather disks. Bass
drum claws are unlined. The sole
indication that this kit isn’t an
antique from the Smithsonian
Institute is the presence of air-
cushioned rubber feet on the
floor tom legs.
SOUND
I was a little surprised by the
sound of my brass kit. Overall,
it has a rich, warm sound that
tunes up easily and, somewhat
surprisingly, doesn’t ring very
much.
The snare is quite nice and
can take a variety of tunings. It
has a rich tone, with controlled
rimshots and clear rim-clicks.
The ring isn’t excessive, so the
drum needs no muffling, even
if you pound rimshots all night.
It probably wouldn’t be my first
choice for reggae, where you
want a thinner, brighter tone, but
A&F makes several other drums
that fit that bill. Otherwise, I love
62 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
the sound of this drum for most
typical applications.
These toms also sound great.
Both the mounted tom and
floor tom have defined pitches,
ample warmth, and good attack.
Like the snare, they require no
muffling, dying out with just
the right amount of decay. I like
them more every time I hit them,
and, contrary to what you might
expect, their sound isn’t metallic.
These are simply articulate toms
that speak deeply.
Remember earlier in the review
when I wrote that you could think
of the 16" x 14" drum as a floor tom?
Well, that’s essentially what it is;
however, my kit came with A&F’s
novel Snom feature, which lets
buyers order any tom with a snare
bed, snare strainer, and fine-tuning
mechanism. Snare + tom = Snom.
The sound is something akin
to playing a Colonial era drum
with gut snares (even though our
drum has coiled wires). This effect
sound could be cool in a recording
session. It’s deep and tubby, and
playing a solo like “The 3 Camps"
certainly gave my chops a good
workout. I couldn’t get a crisp
snare sound on the floor tom,
because the wires continued to
rattle after I dropped the lever if
they were too tight.
The bass drum has good
attack and snap, and a slightly
muted low end. It helped when
I removed the pillow for more
bottom, but generally, shallow
12"-deep bass drums have
trouble producing the low end
I typically want, so I’d opt for
the deeper 14" model.
A&F describes its drums as
being very “microphone friendly,"
and I’d agree, since they need no
muffling or tweaking to produce a
studio-ready sound.
VERDICT
A&F Drums made a unique kit that
eschews modern conveniences
for a warm retro sound and
vintage appearance. They also say
something about the drummers
who play them, much like an
antique car does about its driver.
A&F Royals aren’t for everyone,
but if you’re well heeled and have
a love of vintage drums, these
drums have it all.
 STAY UP-TO-DATE
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NEWSLETTER

Carolina
Drumworks
By AJ Donahue
C
arolina Drumworks is
a one-man operation
specializing in finely
crafted solid and plywood
drums. Working directly with
each customer, owner-operator
Jeff Hankin makes most of those
drums to order, so there aren’t a
lot of stock models or even repeat
builds in the Carolina catalog.
The Blue Ridge Mountains-based
crafter does offer a couple
different lines, however, in the
Gold (solid wood) and Silver
(plywood) series.
The Gold Series previously
comprised mostly steam-bent
single-ply drums, but the big
news for this year (and a little
bit of last year) is the addition of
house-made stave shells. Hankin
cuts and crafts every drum by
hand, and uses a variety of
wood types based on buyer
request and board availability.
I took a quick drive up to
Carolina headquarters and
picked out three Gold Series snare
drums for review. Here’s what I
discovered once I got home.
COMMON THREADS
Even though most Carolina snare
drums are custom built, they
64 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
Gold Series Snare Drums
are offered with a selection of
standard features that can be
adjusted or changed outright if
preferred. Those default details
include a 45-degree inside
bearing edge cut with a truncated
roundover on the batter-side,
a single 45-degree cut with a
1mm outside countercut on the
resonant side, a glossy polished
polyurethane-over-oil-blend
exterior finish, and an oil blend
sealer on the inside. Evans
heads, Puresound wires, Trick
throw-offs, die-cast hoops,
laser-engraved brass badges, and
proprietary tube lugs with brass
or stainless steel components
round out the picture. There’s
no shortage of options here, but
there is a particular aesthetic at
the heart of every Carolina drum.
Small appointments also add
value. Gaskets under each lug
post offer improved isolation and
protect the wood, while stacked
metal and synthetic washers help
maintain rod tension. On both
the throw-off and butt-plate,
grosgrain ribbon makes secure
wire tensioning a breeze. After
a thorough inspection, it’s clear
that every aspect of these drums
is thoughtfully considered, and
A NEW GOLD
STANDARD
the results speak for themselves.
Let’s break it down starting with
the staves.
STAVE SPECS
Unlike many other barrel-type
bangers, these stave shells are
only 0.25" thick through most
of the vertical space. They’re
built with reinforcement rings
for structural strength, but those
rings aren’t separate pieces of
wood. Instead, each stave is
milled to include an additional
0.25"-thick section on top and
bottom to create fully integrated
rings all the way around. I think
that design makes a big impact
on the range and resonance of
these drums.
Stave drums can, in many
cases, have lower fundamental
pitches than single and multi-
ply alternatives, because there’s
no standing stress on the wood
fibers. Here, the thinner shell
wall really helps bring up those
inherent lows. Both of these stave
snares are also exceptionally
resonant, which I have to assume
is because there’s just less mass
than in those drums cut to a
uniform (usually 0.5") thickness.
This is a different sound than
what I’m used to hearing in
conventional stave builds.
CRACKING BUBINGA
Bubinga is a very hard tonewood
known for its rare combination of
both enhanced highs and lows. I
admit that I normally find bubinga
drums to be overly harsh from the
player’s perspective. Out front,
they sound excellent, but when
my ears are right on top of one,
that boosted high-end crack can
sometimes make me wince.
Thankfully, that isn’t the case
with Carolina’s model. The 14" x
5.5" drum turned out to be a
real surprise sonically, but I’d be
remiss if I didn’t first mention
how pretty it is. The staves are
bookmatched beautifully — so
much so that they don’t look like
separate pieces unless you’re
very close. The proprietary gloss
finish adds a lot of depth, and
the bubinga’s dark brown hue is
exaggerated further by almost
entirely black-plated shell
hardware. The included die-cast
hoops, rods, throw-off, butt-
plate, and lug tubes are all finished
in a beautiful shiny black, and
classed up with brass posts. It’s a
real looker.
 Die-cast
chrome hoops

14" x 5.5" steam-bent

cherry snare drum, $975

0.25" single-ply
cherry shell with 0.25"
walnut reinforcement rings

Stainless steel
tube lugs with
brass posts

45-degree inner bearing edge cut with a

Chrome Trick throw-off
truncated roundover on the batter-side
and butt combo

Evans Coated G1 batter and Die-cast

Snare Side 300 resonant heads black nickel
hoops

14" x 5.5" stave

bubinga snare drum, $900

Black Trick throw-off

and butt combo

14" x 6.5" stave birdseye 20 0.25"-thick staves

maple snare drum, $855 with 0.25" integrated Single 45-degree with 1mm
reinforcement rings outside countercut on
Black nickel tube lugs
with brass posts resonant-side bearing edge

20 strand
Puresound wires

2.3mm triple-flanged steel hoops

20 0.25"-thick staves
with 0.25" integrated
reinforcement rings
Stainless steel tube lugs

Outer polyurethane
gloss over oil blend sealer
natural finish, interior
oil blend sealer finish

ALL PRICES DIRECT SALE

Chrome Trick CONTACT

throw-off 301-471-8364
and butt info@carolinadrumworks.com
combo carolinadrumworks.com

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 65

 14" x 5.5" steam-bent cherry snare drum
Like most other bubinga snare
drums I’ve played, this one has
a lot of attack up front. Even the
softest ghost notes kind of pop
off the head. It reminds me a little
bit of an aluminum snare with the
added benefit of a woody bottom.
I wouldn’t call it the fattest sound
in the world, but there’s definitely
some midrange meat there, and
rimshot-supported backbeats
really bang. It’s incredibly
articulate at all levels, and I was
never able to choke the drum,
no matter how hard I hit it.
Tuned up high, it tiptoes into
the pingy range, but not enough
to be obnoxious. It cranks out
a quick, biting sound that sits
on top of an even, woody bed.
It struggles a bit down low, but
still puts out a long, satisfying
doo note with some good punch
up top. It’s surprisingly resonant
even with the head barely above
wrinkle-loose.
I liked the bubinga drum
enough at home, but it really
shined at a band rehearsal. With
the surrounding noise of other
instruments swallowing some of
those juiced-up highs, I was able
to hear a lot of the wood’s built-
in bottom. Plus, I think those
integrated reinforcement rings
added some control around the
edges to further focus the attack.
This would be an excellent main
drum for funk, pop, or jazz, but I
wouldn’t limit it to those genres.
There’s a lot of range in this one.
MULTIFACETED MAPLE
This 14" x 6.5" birdseye maple
stave snare is simultaneously full
66 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
14" x 5.5" stave bubinga snare drum
and focused with a throaty bottom
and surprisingly present attack.
Really, it kind of hits the whole
spectrum at once. The 6.5" depth
helps keep the low-end present,
while those 45-degree interior
edges maintain a cutting presence
up top. And I think a big part of
the woody, resonant fundamental
note comes from that thin-wall
stave construction. There’s real
tone at every volume level. It’s
just a gorgeous, wonderfully
well-rounded instrument. The
figuring on the birdseye maple is
out-of-control beautiful, and the
all-chrome appointments keep
the grain in focus.
Bringing the drum up high
pulls out more of that woody
sweetness, especially when it’s
played around the edges. The
sound is crisp and sensitive with
lots of snappy wire response
right under the attack, which is
boosted by the snare’s 2.3mm
triple-flanged steel hoops.
Despite that openness, though,
the drum is rarely burdened by
excessive overtones.
Finally, as comfortable as the
birdseye snare is at medium and
high tensions, it loves to live
down low. At a half-turn past
finger-tight, it lets out a super-
fat boof that’s right in line with
the modern Nashville sound. I
brought it to a rangy country/
rock gig with it tuned pretty
low, and I was blown away by
how consistently full that gushy
splat was at every volume. From
light taps in the center to heavy
rimshots, it always gave me what
I wanted.
14" x 6.5" stave birdseye maple snare drum
The one issue I’ve run into with
this drum is that it kind of flattens
out when you really lay into
it. It doesn’t totally choke, but
some of that resonant low-end
disappears. It’s still a big note, but
just not as big as the sound I hear
under less forceful hits.
VERSATILE CHERRY
As mentioned above, single-ply,
steam-bent shells have long been
a cornerstone of the Carolina
brand, so I wanted to make sure
we included one in this review.
The piece I picked up is a 14" x
5.5" cherry unit with a 0.25"
shell and 0.25" single-ply walnut
reinforcement rings. The natural
reddish, light-brown color of the
cherry is balanced beautifully
by stainless steel tube lugs with
brass posts. A hand-installed
inlay around the center of the
exterior makes this one a real
showstopper.
Sonically, the drum is a
delight. I don’t have a ton of
experience with cherry, but in
this instance, it has a slightly
softer-than-maple sound with
a fat middle and upper low-end
presence — maybe somewhere
between maple and mahogany.
Because it’s a single-ply shell, it
has a healthy crack in the upper
range that combines with the
hefty middle and strong bottom
to produce a kind of warm splat
when struck dead center.
The drum has a very woody
character at all volume levels,
and is incredibly tone-rich. Tuned
medium-high, it reminds me
of the softened, organic crack
heard on a lot of modern jazz
records. The response is broad
and resonating with a controlled
overtone set that I’m sure is
influenced by the increased head
contact of the batter-side bearing
edge and the darkness of those
walnut rings.
Down low, the cherry snare
lets out a great, long doom that’s
augmented by a surprisingly
sharp splack on top. It’s just
enough to keep the drum
sounding fat and gushy without
sacrificing too much presence,
especially with a gel muffler
near the edges. Surprisingly
though, the cherry tub retains
a ton of tone when cranked up
high. It’s cracking and cutting,
but balanced by a sweet center
that adds a lot of dimension.
This is a great go-anywhere,
do-anything snare for players
that like the low warmth of
vintage drums, but don’t want
to sacrifice attack.
VERDICT
The three Gold Series snares
Carolina Drumworks submitted
for this review are, simply put,
incredible instruments. The
build quality is exceptional
across the board. Shells are
almost clinically round, edges
and beds are flawlessly cut, and
every joint is perfectly smooth.
While each drum has particular
strengths sonically, I think they’re
all versatile enough to handle
whatever you throw at them.
And with direct sale prices
coming in under $1,000, there’s
some real value here.
 COME WITH US TO

JANUARY 6-13, 2018

We invite you to experience the music and
culture of Cuba in a way few have before.

From Havana to Cienfuegos to Trinidad...

Trip highlights include:

Spend the evening at Private performance and

Café Madrigal lecture on Cuban Music

Discussion and performance City tour of Cienfuegos

with La Reina y la Real

Behind the scenes art tour Rum and cigar tasting

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Sabian
By John Nyman
A
bout a decade ago,
Sabian won much
acclaim for the complex
and beauteous tone
of their Artisan line of rides and
crashes. The pies were also very
expensive, and to that end, they
were each hand-signed by the
cymbalsmith and wrapped in
a fancy padded bag. This year
brought out the Artisan Elite
series, just a few so far, with
only two rides (20" and 22")
and two pairs of hi-hats (14" and
16"). They are a further trip into
cymbal craft and artistry, with
dark, complex tones and a dry
voice that threatens to put them
at odds with modern music, like
a fine Steinway piano on Jimi
Hendrix Karaoke Night. They’re
very beautiful. You may want to
quit JH Karaoke.
ARTISAN ELITE 22"
It was late when I opened the
UPS box and the 22" Artisan Elite
was the first out. I put it right up,
anxious to hear it, even though
nighttime drumming in the house
is usually a no-no for me. To
mitigate, I picked up some bundled
rods. I own all the bundled rods.
They are the tool and the torture
of low-volume gigs. Braced for
torture I struck the cymbal with the
bundle and received redemption.
It sounded wonderful.
Like its cousin the Artisan Vault
medium 22", the Artisan Elite 22"
68 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com
Artisan Elite Rides & Hi-Hats
keeps the stick attack floating,
like a bobbing cork on water,
above the complex wash. But
the Elite is quite dark, very dry,
and the waters of its resonance
are not clear but muddy and
oily. There was a collection, a
chorus of undertones that sang
along with my beat in the night.
Even under the bundled rods,
this cymbal had tremendous
nuance and sensitivity. It sang
and danced. Most cymbals only
squeak out a portion of their
sound under bundled rods. This
was gold. Nighttime be damned,
I went for the sticks!
With regular drumsticks,
The Elite 22" is a roar of low
frequencies, a beautifully trashed
bed of dark undertones. The bell,
noticeably small, maintained the
same volume with a crisper voice.
I found consistent sensitivity on
the entire face of the cymbal
from the center out to the
last half inch of its diameter.
Different bead types produced
noticeable changes in presence
and liveliness, but the darkness
remained. I struck a crashing
blow to it and it answered with
a stodgy pushback of lows, an
echoing door slam from a distant
room. Not a useful crash but a
beautiful sound nonetheless. Two
thoughts crowded my mind: 1) I
must have this cymbal. 2) What
the heck am I going to do with it?
DARKLY ELITE
TRAGIC MAGIC
ARTISAN ELITE 20"
In the morning I flailed, jazz-like,
at the Artisan Elite 20", and my
predicament compounded. The
20" is quite a bit brighter than the
22", but still full of complex lows,
still with a dry, crisply articulated
ping that doesn’t suffer lazy
listeners. I liked it even more than
the 22", and thought it would
be more useful to me. It has a
reasonable crash, though rather
short and dry. I could envision
this cymbal on my kit, on my
gigs. From its dirty appearance
to its voice it is a thing of beauty,
a worn-handled sable brush of
artistic nuance. But no one has
asked me for nuance for a couple
of years now.
I play in a local big band,
and the main tool for keeping
15 semi-retired people in line is
a loud, pingy ride. Sometimes I
do gigs with a neo-swing band,
nothing more than a three-piece
rockabilly band with big amps,
and an added array of horn
players when we can afford
them. No nuance there, either,
just old guys drinking whiskey
and revisiting the past. Could real
life handle the artistic overload
of this artsy cymbal? Or maybe I
should just keep it at home as a
semi-religious talisman?
Maybe I could put these on my
wall. After all, they look cool as
hell. I don’t know how they make
them, but based on appearances
I’d say they hand-make a Turkish
style cymbal with a small bell
and a low profile and then bury
it for, say, three or four decades.
The aged cymbal, blackened with
patina, is then lightly lathed, the
blade or laser or ray gun revealing
clean, shiny bronze as it makes
its wobbly circles. Somewhere in
those decades some maniac goes
at each cymbal with a hammer
and beats the tar out of it. Then
the maker signs each cymbal and
puts it in a fancy fleeced bag,
which is what fancy shizzle like
this deserves.
ARTISAN ELITE 14"
HI-HATS
Economic salvation came with
the Elite 14s. See, it’s hard to
come up with money for more
gear I don’t need, and good
arguments for purchase are
hard-won. The Sabian Elite
14" hi-hats sound classic to
me. I believe you could play
anything on these. They sound
to me like crisp, classic Turkish
hi-hats from the ’70s, with
just enough hours on them to
have a mellowness underfoot
and a familiar pocket with each
closing. They are crisp but not
crunchy, meaty but not stodgy.
They are neither dark nor dry
as the Elite rides, and they
have, atop a complex tone, a
brightness of timbre that hi-
hats require. Terrific hats, really
 20" ride, $839

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DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 69


terrific. Anyone could justify these as classic
tools of the trade.
ARTISAN ELITE 16" HI-HATS
The 16" Elites are big, really big, and thin, really
thin. Their pitch was surprisingly high — then I
realized it was pitch-bend induced by my foot!
These are so responsive that foot pressure on
the hi-hat easily changes their pitch. Foot-
chick is large, wide, and soft. I usually think
of giant hi-hat cymbals as a more aggressive
tool, but these Elites are surprisingly mellow.
14" hi-hats, $1,020
16" hi-hats, $1,228
VERDICT
Goodness gracious, these are beautiful
instruments, and they thrive in lower-volume,
acoustic musical environs. The 14" hi-hats are
versatile, and performed handily everywhere
I took them. The 16" hi-hats are supple and
strong, but the softened foot chick was too timid
(shock!) for big band night. The rides are each
dark, woody, complex, and dry, with the brighter
tone of the 20" capturing my ear a bit more than
the oh-so-dark 22". The 20", under bundled
rods, easily pushed the neo-swing beat during
Extensive multi-peen
and high-density hammering
rehearsals. Once things got loud and drunk,
I wished for a bigger, crisper hammer. The 22",
so dark and dry, sounded weird to me on the big
band. But it’s a community band, and I’m not the
only drummer, so I listened from out front and
that low, dry tone came through just fine. I prefer
a higher ping, but I’m pushy that way. Granted, if
I’m just pounding out a hundred dollars worth of
covers at someone’s wedding, these may be too
fancy, too artistic. But on the quiet gigs, these
Sabian Artisan Elite cymbals can connect me
to real art. And there’s no price tag on that.
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DRUMmagazine.com September
February 2017 DRUM! 71
 GET TO KNOW THE MUSIC, MUSICIANS,
AND INSTRUMENTS THAT MATTER.

Gear Guide: New Sticks & Heads For 2017

P L AY B ET T E R FAST E R

Stanton Moore Road Tested

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DRUMMING FOR FANATICS

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ROAD TESTED
Add Latin Rhythms
CINDY
LUDWIG
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Don’t miss a single story. Get Drum today.
SERIES
PAISTE 900
MAPLE DRUMS DrumMagazineStore.com/Subscribe
To Your Pop
EVOLUTION
LUDWIG Add Latin Rhythms Explained
ROAD TESTED
Workshop Wood Species
Shell Shock
Chops
S A F R E T T E B YA L P

Snares
Of Drumming Gold Series
The Ergonomics Drumworks

BEYOND THE BACKBEAT
HOW TO ADD LATIN
TO YOUR POP
O
ne of the perks of teaching young
students is that I get to stay abreast of
current radio pop. Though not necessarily
my favorite genre to listen to, it’s hard to
question the production quality and songwriting
acumen of many of these songs. Pop, a genre
always desperately searching for that fresh
sound, has recently seen an influx in Latin
rhythms. If you’ve heard any Justin Bieber, Katy
Perry, Pink, Taylor Swift, One Direction, Coldplay,
Maroon 5, and Foo Fighters lately, instead of rock
and hip-hop beats dominating the rhythmic
backbone, artists are now leaning towards Latin.
This has not only affected drum parts, but
also the rhythms used by harmonic and melodic
instruments (including vocals). In some case,
the once almighty backbeat (snare on beats
2 and 4) has completely disappeared, replaced
by assorted Latin syncopation. While this
might seem contrary to the idea of giving the
masses an easily felt pulse to make them snap
their fingers, clave is just as easy for listeners
to digest, as it has now become completely
entrenched into our culture. Skeptical? Find a
nearby three-year-old, play them a 3:2 clave,
and have them clap it back. You’ll discover
that clave will be easier for them for them to
comprehend than 2 and 4.
Please note that in this article, the term Latin
is an ambiguous, catch-all expression reflecting
a number of rich musical traditions, including
Spanish and Portuguese-speaking areas of the
world — also including Caribbean — drawing
upon African tribal music. This term is in no way
meant to be culturally insensitive.
Pop music tends to cycle through grooves
(such as the twist beat immortalized in the late
’50s and early ’60s). A songwriter/composer
takes an innovative approach to an existing
pattern, the beat enthralls fans (and in the
past became associated with a dance craze),
and then it turns into an established formula
happily replicated by savvy artists and record
companies. Throughout the years, people have
gravitated towards cycles of Latin-influenced
pop, including music by Xavier Cugat, Duke
Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Bo Diddley,
Antônio Carlos Jobim, Carlos Santana, Paul
Simon, Steely Dan, The Grateful Dead, Talking
Heads, and many others.
Latin rhythms are inherently infectious, lift
our mood, and make us want to get up and
dance. You can layer these rhythms on top of
each other and they always seem to sound
great in any combination. Latin jazz drumming
giant Danis Prieto backs this up in his book A
World Of Rhythmic Possibilities, when he talks
about students accidentally layering the clave
on the wrong side of the cascara: “This didn’t
sound as jarring as I would have imagined. In
fact, I can even say that is started sounding
very interesting to my ears.”
Traditional Latin music is often played by
groups of percussionists playing a variety of
instruments. Each member of these ensembles
takes a critical role in producing a full sound.
DRUMmagazine.com September 2017
WORKSHOP
By Andy Ziker
However, the versatility of the drum kit allows
one musician to reproduce these disparate
parts, but often fails to capture the organic vibe
of people working together. Therefore, keep in
mind that the following examples under each
category have at least one degree of separation
from their authentic-sounding neighbors
(except for the songo), and won’t necessarily
fit in an authentic Latin setting. Each pattern
reflects what has been played in the past, but
will hopefully provide you with new ways to
add Latin to your pop.
As you begin to master these exercises, take
it one step further and make them your own.
This is always an important piece in the creative
puzzle. Also, to get the most out of these
grooves — and the unique feels associated with
each — do a little research: Enter the category
titles into a Google search, read corresponding
Wikipedia articles, and follow up with YouTube
visits.
It’s time to dig in. Clear away some time each
day. You might find some of these patterns to be
challenging, but don’t get frustrated. Use your
metronome to determine baseline tempos, and
gradually speed them up. String short groupings
of notes together — or even one note at a
time — until you have the whole pattern down.
Remember, when you practice something for
the first time, it rarely sounds like a finished
product. And when you someday use one of
these ideas to create a big radio hit, remember
the little people!
DRUM! 73
3:2 SON CLAVE Ex.
Ex. 11
Ex.1
4 y }œ y }œ
œyy }
Ex. 1
1 y y œy y y y œyy y œy y œ y œ y
yy } œyy }œ yy }œ ..
ã 44
Ex.
When it comes to clave, 3:2 refers to three
œyy yy œ œyy œyy yy œyy œœy yy }œ œyy }œ yy œ œyy } } œy œœy }œ y }œ .
notes (the three side) emphasized in the front
ãã 44 œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œœœ }œ œœ }œ œœ œ œœ }
œ
œ }œœ œœy œœœ }œ }œ ..
half of the measure and two (the two side) 3 side
3 side 2 side
2 side
in the last half (Exs. 1 and 4). It can also be 3 side
3 side
2 side
2 side
conceived as a two-bar phrase: three notes 3 side
3 side 2 side
2 side
in the first measure and two in the second Ex.
Ex. 2
Ex. 22 3 side 2 side
y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y
3 side 2 side

ã 444 ..
measure (Exs. 2 and 3). Son alludes to the exact Ex.
Ex. 22
œyy yœy yœy œyy yœy yœy œy yœy yœy yœy œy yœy œy yœy yœy yœy
ãã 444 œœy œœy ...
position of these notes: In an eighth-note flow y
over two bars the son rhythm is 1, (2) &, 4, 2, 3. œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ
In Ex. 1, the clave is played by the bass
Ex. 33 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
drum in a funk context. The bass drum and Ex. 33 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4 y }œ yy yy }œ3 yy œyy }œ3 yy yy }œ3 yy yy }œ3 yy yy }œ y œyy }œ y y }œ33 y .

yy yy }œ yy ..
33 3 3 3 3 3 3

ã 44
snare overlap on beat 4, an example of how Ex.
Ex. 3
Ex. 33 3 3
Latin rhythms allow for easy layering. In Ex. 2,
4
ãã 44
œyy }œœ y y }
} }
}œœ œy œœy } œ }œ y y }œ y œy
œœ y œœy }œ }œ }
}œœ
yy œy }
}œœ }œ ..
the snare plays the clave, the bass drum fills œœ œœ œœ œœœ
in the remaining eighths, and the ride plays
Ex.
Ex. 44
4 œ œœ ..
continuously. The bass drum again plays the
Ex.
Ex. 4
ã 44
4
œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œ œœœ œ œœ œ y œœœ œ œœ œ œœœ
œœ œ ...
son clave in Ex. 3, but this time as part of a Ex. 4

ãã 44 y
œœœyy œœ yy œœœœ œœy œœœ œœy œœy œœ œœœy œœ œœœœ œœyyy œœœ œœyy œœœy
half-time shuffle. In Ex. 4, the left foot plays
the clave underneath a driving tribal groove. y yy yy œœyy yy yy y œyy
It’s important to note that clave patterns are
reversible. In other words, grooves using clave
can start on the two or three side with equal Ex. 55
4
Ex.
Ex.5
y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y .
ããã 4444
Ex. 5
yœy yy yy yœy yy yy yœy yy yy yœy yy yy yy yy yyœ yy yy yyœ yy yy yyœ yy yyœ yy yy yy ...
effectiveness. (3:2 then becomes 2:3.) Since
œ œ œ œ œ œ
œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ
Ex. 5
..
each of the styles used in this article are based
in some way on clave, experiment with flipping
ã4 œœy y y œœy œ y y œœy y y œœy y œ y y y œœy y y œœy œ y y œœy y œ œœy y œ y y œ
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
>
>>
these around (start in the second measure or
Ex. 66
Ex.
>œœ
second half of the first measure) and find out
4 y yy y }œœ yyy
œ ) yy } y yy y œ ) yy }}œ yy ( œ .
≈≈≈ œœœ œœ yyy (((œœœ yy (((œœœ
Ex.
Ex.66
‰ œ)
ããã 444 yœy œœ)) yy } ‰‰
yyœ œœ yy ≈≈≈ œœœ œœ œœ )) yy }
œœ yy (( œœ œœ)) œœ ...
how it feels/sounds to you. Ex. 6
œœ yy œ œ
3:2 RUMBA CLAVE ã4 œœy
œ
œ
œ ≈ œ œœ ( œ œ ) }œ y œ ‰ œœy
œ
œ ≈ œ œ
œ œ
y (œ œ ) }œ ( œ œ) œ
œ ..
The only difference between son and rumba is
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
Ex. 77 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

4
Ex.
y }œ yy yy }œœ } } }œœ yyy yyy }}œ yy yœy } }œœ yyy } œ yy .
where the third note on the three side of the
y œyy œ yy yy } œ yy y y
ããã 444
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

yy } } } } }œœ yy ... 10
Ex.
Ex.77
yy yy yy
œœœy } œ y y } œœyy }
œ}œ yy yy } œœ œœyyœ }œ y œœyœ }œœ yy œœœyyœ } }
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
clave is positioned. A short pause or stutter Ex. 7
}œœ y y œ
}œ œœœy }œ y }œ }
œ
} y y }œ .. 10
ã4 œ œ œ œ œ œ
(one eighth-note, if the clave is notated over
œ œ œ
> >> > >> >> > > > > >
two measures) produces a surprising impact.
> >> >>Y y >> y y >> y >>Y >>Y
10 10
Ex. 8 > > >Y >Y ! !! ! !!
Ex. 5 is an alternating sixteenth-note funk beat Ex. 8
488 >YY } œ yy >œ yy >œœ >Y >Y ! >YY } } y > y y > y >Y >YY œœœ!!! œœœ!! ...
Ex. 8
} y y
Ex.4 yœy yy œœ YYœœœ YYœœœ œœœ!! œœœ!!
with the rumba clave played by the bass drum.

ããã 444 YYœœœ }œ}œyy yy œœ yy œYœ }œœœy yy œœœ yy œœ œyyœ œœœ yy œœ YYœœ
Ex.
œ œ ...
A closed hi-hat plays the clave in Ex. 6, while
œ œ Yœœœ
three levels of snare dynamics give the groove
ã 4 œ œyy œ œœ œœy œ y œ œ œ œ œ œ }œyy œ œ œ œ œ œ
some shape. Ex. 6 is similar to Ex. 3, while in œ œ œ œ y œ œ œ œ œ
Ex. 7 the clave is orchestrated over a number
of sound sources: open hi-hat/bass drum,

y y y y y œ y y! y! y! y!
snare accent, and open hi-hat/snare. Ex.
Ex.99
4 y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y œ y Y ..
ã4}
Ex. 9
œy y y œy y ! ! ! ! œy y y œy y y y y y y y Y
yy yy yy yy yy œœ yy yy! yy! yy! yy!
HOLES IN THE CLAVE
4
Ex. 9
4 .
..
ã4 } y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y œœ y Y
ã
Clave is a skeletal outline that helps musicians
œy œœ
after

œœ œœ
}
œ 1st time
Ex. 10 y
play parts together. Is it acceptable to take
after

ã 4410
y y y œy y Y y y y y y y Y œ y y y œy y œy y y .
away a note or two of that clave, but keep after
1st time

œY y y y œ y y œy .
1st time
the remainder the same? Yes, because our Ex. 10
10 œ
Ex. œ œ
4 yy yy yy œœyy yy YY œœy yy yy yy œœyy yy œœyy yy yy ..
Ex.
yy
ãã 44 œœ
imaginations are able to compensate for
Y y y œœ y y y
any missing notes. Exs. 9–11 use either son
or rumba clave. See if you can discover the œœ yy œœ œœ yy œœ .
Ex. 11
y Y œy Y œy Y œy
ã 4411 ..
locations of the missing notes.
y y œy Y œ Y œy y œy
11 œ
11 œ œ œ œ yy YYœ œyy YYœ œyy YYœ œyy
Ex.

ãã 444 œœœy y œœy YY œœy YY œœyy yy œœyy .

Ex.
y y y
..
THE THREE SIDE Ex.

œœ yy œœ yy œœ œyy
œ œ
Each of following examples uses the three side
of the son clave over and over again. In Ex. 12,
œœ yy œœ yy œ 10
10
the bass drum performs the clave, the snare 10
hits beat 2, and ghosted snares provide patches 10

y. y.
Ex. 12

ã 44 œ ( œ œ) œ œ
of sixteenth flow. Swiss triplets are played as Ex. 12
y y y }œ }œ y ( œ œ) œy y }œ ..
œ. œ œ.
consecutive sixteenth-notes between high and
floor tom, while the bass drum and hi-hat chick œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
74 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.comEx. 13 L
>R R L L
>R R L L
>R >R L R L L
>R R L L
>R L
>R R L L
>R R L L
>R >R L R L
>
L R

4 œ
j
œ œj œ œj œ
j
œ œj œ œj œ
j
œ œj œ œj œ
j
œ œj œ .
 y. y Addy Latiny .To Your
Ex. 12

ã 44 œy ( œ œ) œ œy œ œy .. œ y }œ œ }œ œy ( œ œ) œ œy œ œy .. œ y œ }œ ..
y y y y Pop
Ex. 12
Ex. 4
ã 44 œy R( œ R œL) œ Rœy R Lœ R œy . R R œL y R}œR œL }œ R œy ( œR œR) Lœ œyR R œL Rœy . R œR Ly œR }œ ..
12

13 œ >(
ã 413 œ œ) œ >œ œ > œ > œ >}œ œ }œ > œ ( œ> œ) œ œ> œ >œ > œ }
œ> œ ..
. .
L L L L L L L L L L L
pound out four on the floor (Ex. 13). The bass Ex.
Ex.

Ex. 4
jR R L jR R L jR jR R L jR R L jR jR R L jR R L jR jR R L jR
ã 413 j >œœRy œR L j >œR œœRy L j >œR j >œœRy Rœ L j >Rœ Rœœy L j >Rœ j >Rœœy Rœ L j >Rœ Rœœy L j >Rœ j >Rœœy Rœ L œ œj >Rœy ..
drum fills between three-side accents played Lœ œœ L œœ œ L œœ L œœ œ L œœ œœ œ L œ L L L L L

Ex. 413 œ > > > > > > > > > >
ã 44 œj œœy œ œ œj œ œœy œ œj œ œj œœy œ œ œj œ œœy œ œj œ œj œœy œ œ œj œ œœy œ œj œ œj œœy œ œ œ œj >œy ..
by hi-hat and snare (Ex. 14). In Ex. 15, the bell L
œœ L
œœ œ L
œœ L
œœ œ
L
œœ œœ œ L
œ L L L L L

ã 414 > œœy œ > œ œœy > œ> œœy œ > œ œœy> œ> œœy œ> œ >œœy >œ œœy œ > œ œ œy ..
of the ride plays the three side, until we break
away from the pattern starting on 3 of the
Ex.

ã 441414 >>œy œ œy >>œ y œ >>œy œ >>œy œ œy >>œ y œ >>œy œ >>œy œ œy >>œ y œ >>œy œ >>œy œ œy œ >>œy œ œy œ ..
second measure. Next, try creating some beats
using the three side of the rumba clave. y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y
Ex.
Ex. 4
Ex.

ã 44 œy œ œy œ y œ œy œ œy œ œy œ y œ œy œ œy œ œy œ y œ œy œ œy œ œy œ œy œ œy œ ..
14

ã 415 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ..
BRAZILIAN CLAVE
The term Brazilian clave is a bit of a misnomer, Ex.

ã 4415 œyt y t œœy yt œyt y t œœy yt œyt y t œœy yt œy œ yt t œœy t y ..

since Brazilian percussionists don’t really t t t t t t t t t t t t
consider this rhythm as all-encompassing, but Ex.
Ex.4
ã 4415 œyt y t œœy ty œyt y t œœy ty œty y t œœy ty œy œ ty t œœy t y ..
rather just one of the many patterns in their Ex. 15

ã 4 œy y œœy y œy y œœy y œy y œœy y œy œ y œœy y ..

toolkit. Similar to a son clave with the last note
(the fifth note) pushed over one spot, it has
become the most recognizable clave in the
world, having spread from Rio all the way to
India.
In Ex. 16, the right hand follows the Brazilian Ex. 16

ã 44 œœ ..
Ex. 16
clave and creates a melody using high, middle, Ex. 16 œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ
œœ
ã 4416 œ œœy œœy œœy œœy ..
and floor toms, while the remaining notes are Ex. 16
œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ
Ex. 4 œ œ œ œ œ ..
filled in by the left hand on the snare. Ex. 17 is
ã 417 œ œ œ œœy
œ œ œ œœ œ œ œœy œ œ œœ œ œ œœy œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œœy œ œ œ
ã 441717 œyz
a reggae pattern with the clave superimposed
Ex. œ œ œy œ œœyy œ œ œœy œ œy œ œœyy œ œy œ œ œy œ œœyy œ œ œœy œ œ œœyy œy œ ..
Ex. 4
over it, which can be played with swung or
œyz œy œy œyz œ ..
ã 417 y y yz yz y
straight eighths. Using a LRR sticking between Ex.
œy œy
ã 4417 yzz ..
the snare and ride cymbal and trailing bass Ex. y y
yz y yz y y y yz y yz y y
Ex. 4 y yzy œy y yz y y y yz y œy yz y y ..
ã 418 y
drum (the bass drum hits immediately after

Ex. 4
œy œy
y yzy y y y y y y y yz y y ..
the snare) gives this groove a New Orleans
second-line feel, and can also be played
ã 418 œz
Ex. 4
y y y y y yœ y y yz y y y y yz y y yœ y y y œ œy y ..
straight, swung, or slightly swung (Ex. 18). In ã 41818 y
Ex. 4
œy œ œy œ œy y œ œy y œ œy œ œy œ œy œ œy y œ œy y œy
ã 418 œœy
Ex. y œ yy œ y œ œ y œy y œ y œ y œ œ œyy .. 10
Ex. 4
Ex. 19, the right hand moves from ride cymbal
to floor tom, the left hand plays the clave on
ã4
œy
œy
y œ œyy
œy œ œy yy
œy y
y œ œy yy
œy y œ œy
œy
y œy œy
œy
y œ œyy
œy
y œ œy yy
œy y
y œ œy yy
œy y œœ œy
œy .. 10
ã 4419 œyyz .
Ex. 19 y y y y y y y y y œ œy
... 10
rim-click, and the bass drum plays a typical
œ œ œy œ œ œy œ œyz y œ œ yœy œ œ œy œ œœ y œ œ yy œ
ã 419 œy zœ z z
samba ostinato.
Ex.
Ex. 4 œ œ œy œ œ œ
MAKE UP YOUR OWN ã 4419 œyzz
y z
œœ
yz yz
œœ z y ..
ã 419 œy
Ex. y œz œœ yyz œ œy yz œ
œœ z yy œ ..
y œz œ œy œ œ
ã 44 œz
For a piece of music to have a Latin feel, you Ex.
don’t necessarily have to stick with authentic
œœ
yz yz
œœ z y ..
patterns that have evolved over centuries. After y œ y œ œ y œ y œ
all, rules are made to be broken, aren’t they?
By changing things up a little bit, you can come
up with some fascinating creations. The bass
Ex. 20

ã 444 œy ..
drum in Ex. 20 plays a combination of rumba
y y œy y y y œyy yy y œ y œy y y y œy y œ
Ex. 20
Ex. 20
and Brazilian clave. Ex. 21 is most easily played
y œ œy y œ y œy œ œœ œy œ y œ œy y œ y œœ œy œy œœ y œ ..
ã 44 œy
open-handed with the left hand on the hi-hat Ex. 20
y œ œy y œ y œy œy œ y œy œ y œ œy y œ y œ œy œy œ y œ ..
ã4 œ
and right hand traveling between the toms and
the snare. Starting on the & of 1, this series Ex. 21
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
Ex. 4 ..
Ex. 21 y œy y y y y y œy y œy y œy y y y y
of on- and off-beat hits produces a nicely
ã 4421 œy œy œy y œœœy y œy œy œy œy œy œy œy y œœy y
..
21
balanced clave. The snare accent pattern
ã 44 œy
Ex.
œy œy y œœy œy œy œy œy œœy y
y œy œy œy y ..
in Ex. 22 is displaced by one sixteenth and
ã4 œ œ œ œ œ> >œ >
œœ
>œ >
outlines three-note groupings, except the
> > > > >
>
œ œœ >œ œ œ >œœ œ œ œ >>œœ œ œ >œ œ œ >œ œ
four-note grouping starting on beat 2. Ex. 22
Ex. 4 >œ œ œ >œ œ œ œ >œœ >œ œ œ >œ .. 10
ã 42222 œœœ œœ
22
CASCARA Ex. 4 >œ œ œ >œœy œ œ œ >œ >œ œœy œ >œ œ œœ œ œ œ >œy >œ œœy œ >œ œ ..
ã4 œ œœ œœœ œœ œ
Ex.

ã 44 œœ œ œ œ œœœy œ œ œ œœ œ œœœy œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ
Spanish for “shell, husk,” cascara refers to the
œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œy œ œœy œ œ œ .. 10
syncopated rhythm played by timbale players
y œ y œ œy œ œy 10
on the side of the drum shell. This rhythm — a
big part of salsa music — is designed to meld 10
perfectly with son or rumba clave. In Ex. 23, the
cascara is played on a cowbell, although any Ex. 23

ã 44 œy
t t t œ t t t t œt t t t t t œ t t t t œt t t ..
Ex. 23
sound source would do, while the rest of the
kit plays straightforward rock/funk. The hi-hat
plays the cascara in Ex. 24, while the snare and y œy y œy œ y œ y œ y œ
Ex. 24 DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 75
4 y }œ y y œ y }œ y y }œ y }œ y y }œ y y }œ y y œ y }œ y y }œ y }œ y y }œ y .
.
ã4
 Ex. 23
Ex. 23
4 t t t œ t t t t œt t t t t t œ t t t t œt t t ..
ã 4 œy y œy y œy œ y œ y œ y œ
Ex.
Ex. 24
24
4
Ex. 24
bass drum complete the sixteenth flow. Ex. 25
y}y y y y y y y y y y}y y y y y y y y y
is a variation on the cascara, fashioned as a
ã4 œœ œ }œ œ œ }œ }œ }œ œ œ œ œ œ }œ œ œ }œ œ }œ œ }œ œ ..
linear funk groove.

BO DIDDLEY BEAT Ex. 25

Ex. 25
y y œ y y y œ y y .
ã 44 œ
Ex. 25
Ironically, this groove is credited to the
y y œ y y y y œ y y
guitarist Bo Diddley and not a drummer
œ œ œ œ œ œ .
(check the self-titled song from 1955). The
groove is really a 3:2 son clave, but most

> > > > > > > > > >
probably was an extension of the hambone

>>œ œ œ >>œ œ œ >>œ œ œ œ >>œ œ >>œ œ

Ex. 26
>>œ œ >>œ œœ œ >>œ œ œœ œ >>œ œ >>œœ œ œ œ
ã 444
œ œ ..
tradition from the 19th century. Slaves from Ex. 26
Ex. 26
Ex. 26
the Kingdom Of Kongo came up with the
ãã 4 œœ œ
œœyy œœ œœ œœ œœyy œœ œœ œœ œœyy œœ œœ œœ œœyy œœ œœ œ œy œ œœ œ œy œ œœ œ œy œ œœ œ œœy œœ ..
dance — which uses stomping, clapping, and
œœ œœ
y œ y œ y œ y œœ œ œyy œ œœ œ œyy œ œœ œ œyy œ œœ œ yy .
Ex. 27 > > > > > > > >
patting — after traditional African percussion

27 > >>œ œ >> œ œ >> œ >> j >> œ >>œ œ >> œ œ >> œ >>
instruments were banned due to fear of slaves
27 >
ã 444 œœœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ >œ œj œ œœ œœ œy œœ œ œœ œœy œœ œ œœ œœy œœ >œœ œ œ .
Ex.
œ
œœy œœ ...
hiding secret codes in the drumming. This is a Ex. 27
Ex.
œœ
ãã 4 œœ œœyy œ œœ œ œœœyy œ œœ œ œœœyy œ œœœ œœj œœy
reminder about how African music has had an
impact on so much of the musical traditions of
y œy œy œ yy œœœ œœyy œœ œœœyy œœ œœœyy œœœ yy .
today, including Latin.
Similar to the beat played on the original Bo Ex. 28

ã 444 œyy yy yy œœœ yy yy œyy yy yy yy œyy yy YYœ YY œœœy yy œyy yy yy œœœ yy yy œyy yy yy yy YYœ YY œœœy yy yy ....
Diddley hit, accented sixteenths delineate the Ex. 28
Ex. 28
Ex. 28
y y y y y y y y y y y YY y y y y y y y y y y YY y y
ãã 4 .
clave in Ex. 26, as off-beat hi-hat chicks create
nice contrast. In Ex. 27, the accent pattern œœ œ œœ œœ œœ yy œœ œ œœ œœ œyy
is fortified with bass drum, and a power flam is
added on beat 4 in the first measure. (Check
out “Desire” by U2.) The pattern is then re-
Ex. 29

ã 44
Y œ }œ y y Y y œ }œ y y }œ Y œ }œ y y Y y œy Y y ..
Ex. 29
y œ
œyy }
orchestrated to hi-hat and snare in Ex. 28. Ex. 29
Y œ œ }œ y œ œy Y œy œ }œ y œ œy }œ Y œ œ }œ y œ œy Y œy œy Y œy ..
œy }
Ex. 29
ã4
Ex. 29 œ
} YY œ œy }œ yy œ œyy YY y œyy œ }œ yy œ œyy }œ YY œ œy }œ yy œ œyy YY y œyy œyy YY y œyy ...
ãã 44 œœ œœ
} œœ œœyy }œ œœ œœ y œ œ }œ œ œ }œ œ œy }œ œ œ y œ œ y œ
SAMBA
An authentic samba such as “Acontece Que Eu
y> yy œ œ> œ œ œ >œyy œ œ yy œ yy œ .
Sou Baiano” by Dorival Caymmi inspires both Ex. 30
> > > >
ã 44
y œ œ >>YYœ yy œ yy œ yy œ >>œyy œ yy œ œ >>YYœ yy œ yy œ yy œ œjj >>œœ .
Ex. 30

...
Ex. 30
relaxation and excitement. The flow of the Ex. 30 œ y
ã4
Ex. 30 œ œ œ Yœ y œ y œ y œ œy y œ y œ œ Yœ y œ y œ y œ œj >œœ y
yy ...
eighths or sixteenths has a unique sounding
lope that can be acquired only though listening
ãã 44 œœ œœ œ Yœ y œœ y œœ y œ œy y œœ y œœ œ Yœ y œœ y œœ y œ œj œœ y
œ œ .
or experience (look on YouTube for “Caixa œ œ yy œ œ yy œ œ yy >œ œ> yy
Y œy Y y œ Y œy Y y œ Y >œ y >>œ Y >
Ex. 31

ã 44
Patterns On Samba”). By learning more about
y Y œy Y y ..
Ex. 31
how the individual parts/instruments fit
œyy œ Y œ œy Y œ œy Y œ œy Y œ œy œ Y œ œy Y œ œy œ Y >œ œy >œ Y œ .
....
Ex. 31
ã4 œ
YY œœ œœyy YY œœ œœyy YY œœ œœyy YY œœ œœyy œœ YY œœ œœyy YY œœ œœyy œœ YY œœ œœyy œœ YY œœ
Ex. 31
Ex. 31
together in a samba percussion section you
ãã 44 œ
can be better prepared to fuse these feelings œœy œœ œ œyy œ œ œ œyy œ œ œ œyy œ œ œ œyy œ .
into pop. In Ex. 29, the open and closed hi-hat
Ex. 32

ã 44 ..
Ex. 32
and ghosted snare simulate the feeling of
œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ
Ex. 32 œœ œ œy œœ œ œ œœy œ œœœ œœ œ
..
ã4 œœy œ œ œœy œ
the small, handheld drums with jingles, the

....
Ex. 32
œœ œœ œy œœ œ œœ œy œ œœ
ãã 44 œœœœyy œ œ œœœy œ
pandeiro, and the Brazilian snare, the caixa. Ex. 32
The typical samba bass pattern shown here is œœœœ y œ œ
œy œ œ
y œ œ
œy œ œœ
y œ œ œyy œ
a simplification of what the surdo plays. Ex.
30 uses a variation on the surdo pattern and
borrows aspects of the partido alto style.
R
>LL RR3 LL RR LL3
L R L R R
R >
R L R L R R L R L R
> y3 >L Ry3 L RY
(For more on that style, check out “Roda de
Ex. 33 R
Ex. 33 L3 R L 3
3
R
R L R 3
R L R 3

ã 44 }œyy œœ y œœ y y œœ y œœ y œœ œ œy œœ y œœ y y œœ y œœ Y ..
Samba — Na Palma da Mão DVD — Partido Ex. 33 y 3
y y
3
y y 3
y 3
y y
3
y
..
Alto” on YouTube.) Ex. 31 combines samba
with a half-funk feel, while in Ex. 32, the floor ã 4 }œy œ œ
tom and high tom play the partido alto. after 1st time
after 1st time

NANIGO R L
>LL RR3 LL RR LL3 LL RR LL3 RR LL RR3 RR >LL RR3 LL RR LL3 LL
R L R R
> œ3
Ex. 34 R
>œ œ3 œ œ œ3 œ .
L R L R R
4
3 3
Also known as Afro-Cuban 6/8 or 12/8, Ex. 34

œ œœy œ œ œœœy œ œ œœy œ œ œœy œ œ œœy œ œ ...

Ex. 34
ã 4 œœy œ œ œy œ œ œy
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
3 3 3 3 3
the nanigo is expressed easily on the drum
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
kit through a basic rudiment: the double ã 4 œy œy œy y y y y y
paradiddle. By distributing the rudiment on
two surfaces, the groove comes to life. In Ex.
33, the right hand is placed on the ride and the

y. y. œ œ œy .
Ex. 35

ã 44 œ .
Ex. 35
œ y œ y œ y y œ œ œ œ œ œ .. 10
left on the snare. An open hi-hat on beat 4 10
œ œ. œ
.
gives the groove a refreshing pause every two
bars. The double paradiddle is played between œ œ œ œ œ 10
10

76 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

Ex. 36 > > > >>> > >
4 y y y y y y œy y y y y y y y œ y y y y y y y œy y œ œ y y .
 y. y. œ œ y.
Ex. 35

ã 44 œ . œ y œ y œ ..
œ y œ Latin
œ Add y œToœ Your
œ œ œ Pop
œ œ. œ œ. œ œ œ

Ex. 36 > > > >>> > >

ã 44 œ
Ex. 36
floor tom/high tom and snare in Ex. 34, while
y y y y y y œ œ y y œy y y œ y
y y y y y y y y y œy y œ y y .
four-on-the-floor bass drum stomps quarters.
œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ .
> > > > > >
The cross rhythms between the hands and feet R/L R L R R L R L R R L R R L R R/L R L R R L R L R R L R R L R
accentuate a 3:2 polyrhythm.
>1 1 > 1 1 1 1 1 > 1 1 1
Ex. 37R/L R L R R L R L R R L R R L R
>1 1 > 1 1 1 1 1 >œ 1 1 1
R/L R L R R L R L R R L R R L R

Ex. 4 œ1œ 1 œ 1 1 œ 1œ œ 1œ 1 1 1 œ 1 ..
CALYPSO
ã 43737 1œœ 1 œ 1 1 œ 1 œ 1 1 œ 1 1 œ 1œ
Ex.

ã 44 œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ..
An Afro-Caribbean music originating in
Trinidad and Tobago, calypso is designed
to get audiences to move. Ex. 35 includes

>R R >L R R L R L R R >L R R L R >L R >L R L R L R L R >L R

simultaneous hi-hat and bass quarters, but

>1 R1 >L R1 R1 L R1 L R1 R1 >L R1 R1 L R1 >L R1 >L R L R1 >L R L R1 >L R

hi-hat eighths or sixteenths are also commonly Ex. 38 R
Ex. 38

Ex. 4 œ œ ..
ã 4 Yœ1 1 œ Y1 1 œ 1 Yœ 1 1 œ Y1 1 œ 1 Yœœ 1 œ Yœ œ 1 >Yœ œ œ Y1
played. In Ex. 36, the bass drum hits 1, (1) ah,
38 œ

ã 44 Yœœ
3, and (3) ah, hi-hat accenting produces a
multi-dimensional effect, and the addition of œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ ..
toms at the end of measure two spices things Y Y Y Yœ Y Y Y rimshot

R.
rimshot

. L R
up. Notice that the three side of the clave is R R L R R L R L R R L R R L R R L R L R R L
Ex. 39 R R L R R L R L R R L R R L R R L R L
44 œ . œœ zz œœ œœ zz œœ œœ œ œ œœ œ . œœzz zz œœ œœ zz œœ œœ œ œœ œœ ...
stressed throughout. Ex. 39
Ex. 39
ãã 44 œy .. yy œ œ œyy .. yy œ
GADD MOZAMBIQUE y. yy yy . yy yy
Steve Gadd took the bell pattern from the New
York-style mozambique (not to be confused Ex. 40
Ex. 40

ãã 4444 Yœœ œœ yy œœ œœy

Ex. 40
Y y y yy y
œœy yy y y
œœy œœ œœy œœ YY œœ yy y
œœy yy y
œœy yy yy yy ..
with the Cuban variety), and created his
œœ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ .
yy œ
own infectious groove, which he used on
Ex. 41 y > >
>>œ >>œ
Paul Simon’s “Late In The Evening.” The two

Ex.4 ..
Ex. 41 y y œ Y y
ã 4441 yy œœ œœ œ œ
grooves in Exs. 37 and 38 are transcribed
Ex. 41
ãã 4 œ yy œœ œ œ YY œœyy œ yy œœ œ œ ...
from a Gadd drum clinic. Look up “Steve
Gadd — Mozambique — Clinic Los Angeles” œ œ œœ œœ œ œœ œœ œ
on YouTube to check it out. y
Ex. 42

ã 444 œyy (( œœœ œœœ)) œ œœœyy œ œœœ yy (( œœœ œœœ)) œ œœœyy œ œœœ œyy (( œœœ œœœ)) œ œœœyy œ œœœ yy (( œœœ œœœ)) œ œœœyy œ (( œœœ œœœ)) .... 10
MERENGUE Ex.
Ex.
42
42
Ex. 42 y y y y y y y y
ãã 4 œœ ( ) œœ ( ) œœ œœ œœ ( ) œœ ( ) œœ œœ ( ) .
The merengue immediately catches our
attention because of the prominent four- œœ œœ
note (five notes if you count the beat 1 of the
Ex. 43

ã 444 œœy œœ œœ œ œœœy œœ œœ œy œœœ œ œ œœœy ... œœ œy œœœ œ œ œœœy œœ œœ ...

following measure) sixteenth-note lick that Ex. 43
occurs on beat 4. Ex. 39 is a more traditional
Ex. 43
Ex. 43 œ œ œy œœœ œ œ œœœy œ œ œœœ
sounding merengue, while in Ex. 40 the
ãã 4 œy œ œœ œœyy œ œœyy œœ œœ œœyy .. œ œœyy œœ œœ œœyy œœ œœ œœyy œœ œœ œœyy œ œ ..
rhythmic skeleton is fused with funk. Ex. 44 y .
ã 44 yzz y yzz œy œyzz y œyzz œy .... 10
Ex. 44 y y y y yz y yz y y y y y y y y y
yz y œyz y yzz y yzz œy
Ex. 44

ã4
SONGO
Songo was invented by Los Van Van in the œ œ œ œ œ œ
1970s, and was the first Cuban style to 10
Ex. 45
Ex. 45

ã 44
incorporate funk along with the drum kit. Ex. 45 t y t y t y t y t y t y t y t y
œt y œt œy œt y œt y œt y œ œt œy œt œy œt y ..
..
Because it’s mostly played in a linear fashion,
songo is especially suited for re-orchestrations
ã4 œœy œy œR œy œœy œœy œ
œRR yyL œR œy œL œy œœ
around the kit and composites with other types
Ex. 46 R
y RR yL . yL L yR L y R yR yR R
! L R.
of grooves. The open hi-hat in the second
ã 444 œœyœ ... œœ! yzz
Ex. 46 R RR
œ zL zL œR zL œœR . RR œ!! Lz R R
z œRœ
L œ
R
..
. œ œœy
Ex. 46
measure of Ex. 41 results in a slight variation
ã 4 œy .. œ yz z yœ z œœy . œ yz z y œ ..
from the more common pattern found in the
first measure. Ex. 42 combines a songo vibe
y y y y .. y œ œœy y
Ex. 47
y. y.
with backbeat funk, while Ex. 43 uses a songo

ã 44
y y œyy y y œyy y y y œyy y y y œyy
Ex.47
.. 10
Ex. 47
œyy ... œyy ...
pattern to generate a tribal groove using toms.
y y y y œy y y y y y ..
10
CHA-CHA-CHA ã4 œy .. y
y
œ y
y
yœ
y œ œy .. y
y
œ y
y
y
y
œ
The cha-cha-cha is one of those patterns
that sounds the best with the full compliment RUMBA (DANCE VERSION) and rimshots), while in Ex. 47 the lead hand
of Afro-Cuban percussion instruments, but Not to be confused with the more complex, moves to the ride cymbal.
nevertheless influenced the four-on-the- syncopated Cuban rumba, this pattern first
snare Motown beat of the ’60s as well as came into prominence in the 1920s big band WAIT, THERE’S MORE?
grooves played by Santana, Chicago, and scene, and from then on became a big part of The material in this article barely scratches the
many more. The patterns in Exs. 44 and 45 the ballroom dancing phenomena. Recently surface of what is possible when applying Latin
are approximations of the full rhythm section this groove has found a home in blues and concepts to pop music. There are thousands of
sound, but are still valuable when it comes to Americana music. In Ex. 46, most of the action other possible patterns to choose from. Enjoy
laying it down on the kit. takes place on the snare (diddles, rim-clicks, the process of discovery.

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 77

JAZZ
Steve Forster’s Rhythmic
Masterpiece
 Danny Gottlieb

IF YOU LOOK AT THE RECENT

reissue of George Lawrence Ex. 11
Ex.
Stone’s classic text Accents
And Rebounds, you’ll notice
4
/4œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™™
contributions written by John Riley, Dom Ex. 1
Famularo, myself, and Steve Forster. We all
/4œ
Ex. 2
4R œ L R
œ R
œ L
œ R
œ L
œ L
œ
were students of the legendary drummer
™™
Joe Morello, and Steve studied with and was Ex. 1
around Joe longer than any of us. I consider / 4 ™™ Rœœ œ L
œ
œ œ Rœ œ Rœ œ
œ œ L
œ
œ œ Rœ œ
œ L
œ
œ œ Lœ
œ
œ
Steve to be the most knowledgeable expert in
/ 224
Ex.
Ex.
™™
Ex. 1 R L R R L R L L R L R R R L R R
the world concerning Joe Morello’s teaching
approach. And as Joe himself studied with
/ 4 ™™ Rœœ œ Lœ œ Rœ œ Rœ œ
œ œ œ Lœ œ Rœ œ
œ œ Lœ œ Lœ
œ œ
œ
Mr. Stone, we are all connected to Mr. Stone’s
/ 24œ œ
Ex.
œR œR œL œR œL œL œR œL œR œR œR œL œR œR
™™
approach and methodology.
/ ™ Rœ Lœ œ œ Rœ œ Rœ œ œ œ Rœ œ œ œ Lœ œ
™™
/ ™R L L L
Four textbooks are considered the bibles of Ex. 2 L R L
technical development: Stone’s Stick Control / 3 œ™™ Rœ œ Lœ
Ex. œ R Lœ R Rœ L Lœ R Rœ L Rœ L L
œ R Rœ L Lœ R Lœ R L
œ R Rœ L Lœ R L
œR ™™
and Accents And Rebounds; and Joe Morello’s / ™œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
Master Studies and Master Studies II. I am / Lœ™ Rœ L
œ œ œ œ œ œL R Lœ
œ R Lœ R Rœ L Lœ R Rœ L Rœ L L
œ R Rœ L Lœ R Lœ R L
™™
proud to announce that we now can add a fifth /3 R L
Ex.
œR œL œR œR ™™
R R R R L L L
text to this special group. Steve recently self-
/ 4 Lœ™™ œ Rœ
Ex. Lœ L Rœ L Rœ R Lœ R Lœ L Lœ R LLœ L ™
published his own workbook called 143 Binary œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™™™
Algorhythms Applied To Paradiddles, and it Ex.
/ 33 ™ œ œ
Ex.
/ ™™ Rœ œ œ Rœ œ Rœ œ
R L
œ œ Lœ œ L
œ œ œ œ
is a welcome addition to this special group of
/ 4 L™ R
Ex. L
œ L R
œ L Rœ R L
œ R L
œ L œL R LLœ L
™™
texts. Ex. 3 R L R
Steve’s book is basically 143 exercise ideas
/ ™™™™ Rœœ œ œ œ RRœ Lœ RRœ Rœ
R
R R L
Lœ œ Lœ œ
R R R L
Lœ œ Lœ
R R
œ
that can be applied to any group of hand- / 4œ œ
Ex. œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™
to-hand eighth-notes. Steve uses paradiddle / ™ Rœ Lœ œR œR œR œL œR œR œR œL œR œR œR œL œR œ R ™™™
sticking (RLRR) as the basis for his book, but / ™R œ œ Rœ œ Rœ œ
R L
œ œ Lœ œ L
œ œ Lœ œ
this method, pioneered by Joe, can be applied Ex. 44 L R L
to any group of eighth-notes. Joe would teach
Ex.
/ œ™™ Rœ œ Lœ œ R Lœ R Lœ R Rœ L Lœ R Lœ R L
œ R Rœ L Lœ R Lœ R L
œ R Rœ L Lœ R L
œ R ™™
the first three pages of Stick Control and say, / œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
for example, “For every R play a triplet, and for L R L
œ R Lœ R Lœ R Rœ L Lœ R Lœ R L
œ R Rœ L Lœ R Lœ R L
œ R Rœ L Lœ R L
every L play a double paradiddle,” instead of / œR œL œ R ™™
writing out pages and pages of exercises. All
L R L L L R L L L
are variations for developing control using R
/ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ Rœ Lœ Lœ Lœ Rœ Lœ Lœ ™™
and L strokes as the catalyst. Steve’s book
contains 143 amazing variations inspired by L R L L L R L L L R L L L R L L
Joe and Steve’s own incredible creativity.
One of my favorite variations, which I use
regularly with my students at the University This is a great exercise for developing your as I play the drums. Congratulations, Steve,
Of North Florida, is to play a paradiddle on each jazz ride cymbal beat. Every right paradiddle, on creating an epic workbook that I feel will
beat. For every R play a right paradiddle and especially when you work it up to speed, is a stand as one of the most important texts for
for every L play a left paradiddle. right-hand cymbal beat. I use this exercise all drummers.
Ex. 1 begins with alternating paradiddles. Ex. the time. And as Steve illustrates in his book, You can find it on Amazon, and I recommend
2 illustrates Steve’s variation (#13 in his book), you can add all types of variations, including it for every drummer!
where you play a right paradiddle for every R, accents, different drum movements and limb
DANNY GOTTLIEB has performed with Pat Metheny, John
and left paradiddle for every L in Ex. 1. Ex. 3 choices, and more.
McLaughlin, and Gil Evans, and is currently the drummer with
changes to four rights and four lefts, and Ex. 4 The four established textbooks and Steve’s Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band. He has won four Grammy
then assigns a right paradiddle for each R, and new addition are the only technique books Awards and is a Professor of Jazz Studies at the University Of
a left paradiddle for every L in Ex. 3. I will ever use, and I’ll use them for as long North Florida in Jacksonville.

78 DRUM! September 2017 DRUMmagazine.com

HARD ROCK
 Glen Sobel
One Up, Two Down
AN EXTREMELY COMMON and Ex.
Ex. 11 3 3 3 3
Ex. 1 3
important building block of
/ 4 œœ œ3
Ex. 1 4 œ 33 œ 33 œ 33 ™™
double bass drumming is the Ex. 1
// 44 œ œ3 œ œœ œœ3 œ œœ œœ3 œ œœ œœ3 œ ™™
hand/foot combination of œ œœ œ œ œ
œ œ3 6 œ œ œ3 œ œ œ3 6 œ
4 ™
playing one note with the hand, followed by Ex.
/ 214 œ œ3 6 œ œ œ6 œ œ œ
™™
two notes with the feet. Or, as I like to call it, Ex.
Ex. 221 œ
“one up, two down” (Ex. 1). Let’s explore
Ex. 2 ™™ œ
/
4
4
3
œ œ œ 66œ œ 3 66œ œœ 3 66œ œ 3 66œ ™™
some different and unconventional ideas Ex. ™ œ
// 24 ™™ œœ œ œ 6œœ œ œ œœ œœ œ 6œ œ œ œœ œœ œ œ œ œ œœ œœ œ 6œ œ œ ™™
œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ œ œ œœ 6œ œœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œœ
™ œ œ
involving this pattern.
™
3 ™ œ œ œ 6œ
œ œ
Ex. 2 œ œ œ œ 6œ œ œ œ œ œ 6œ œ œ œ œ 6œ œ œ
Ex./ ™™
The right hand can play between the floor Ex. 2 3 X Xœ 6 Xœ 6
tom and snare to create a heavy, swinging beat
/ 33 ™™™ œXX œ œ 6œ 6
Ex.
X
Ex. œ œ XœX œ œ œœ œ œ œXXœ œ œ œœ œ œ XœX œ œ œœ œ œ
™™
(Ex. 2). In Ex. 3, the left hand plays quarter- Ex./ 3 ™™™ œœ œ œ œœ ™™
notes on a left-side crash while the right hand / ™X œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™™
œ œ Xœ œ œ6 œ œ X œ œ6 œ œ Xœ œ œ6 œ œ
plays eighth-notes between floor and snare. / 3 ™ œ œ œ66 œ
Ex. œ œ X œ œ6 œ œ œ œX œ œ6 œ œ œ X œ œ6 œ œ œ
™™
How about a Latin influence? In Ex. 4, the Ex. 3 X
/ 4 ™™ œX œ œ66 œ œ 6 6 œ 6
left hand plays a version of clave on splash or Ex.
œ¿ œ ‰Xœ™ œ œ6 œœ œ ¿rrœ œXœ‰ œ œ6 œœ¿jj œ œ Xœ¿ œ œ6 œœ œ œ
™™
Ex. 4 ™™ ¿™
stacked cymbals while the right hand maintains Ex./ 4 ™™ œ¿™ œ¿™ œœ œœ œ
œ œ ‰œ™ œ œ r ‰œ œ œœ œ
™™
œ¿¿ œœ ‰œ™ œ œœ6 œœ œ ¿¿rœœ ‰œœ œ œ6œ ¿œ¿œjj œ œœ ¿¿œ œ œœ6 œœ œ œœ
/ ™™
the floor/snare pattern.
The pattern in Ex. 5 can be phrased as groups
Ex.
Ex.// 44 ™™ œœ¿™ œ œ66 œœ
™
œœ¿ œ ‰œ™ œœ œ 6 œ œœ ¿ œ ‰œ œœ 6œ œ¿ œœ œ œ¿ œœ œ6 œ œœ œ
™™
of nine per beat, with the left hand hammering
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ™
Ex. 4 ™™ œ œ 6 œ œ¿ œ ‰™ œ œ 66œ œ ¿rr œ ‰œ œ œ66 œ¿j œ œ ¿ œ œ66 œ œ œ
/ ™™
out quarter-notes on a crash. Try phrasing this Ex. 5 4 ¿™ œ6
œ™ 6 j œ 6
/ 5 ™™ Xœ œ œ66 œ œœ¿ œ ‰œ œ œœ6œœ œ ¿ œ XœX ‰œœ œ œ6 œ¿œ œœ œ ¿œ œ œœ6 œœ œ œ
6
pattern over sixteenth-notes while playing a Ex.
Ex.
5 ™
™ ¿™
œ
X ™™
consistent quarter-note on the ride bell (Ex. 6).
Ex.
// 5 ™™ Xœ œœ œ œœ œœ œœœ œ œœ œœœ œ œ œXœ œœ œœ œœ œœœ œœ œœ œœ œ œœ
™™
™™
Practice all examples using a metronome set / ™™ œX œœ 6 œœ œ œ œœ œ6 œ œœ X œ 6œœ œ œ œœ œ6 œ œœ ™
to a variety of tempos. See ya next time! Ex.
Ex. / 55 ™ œ œ 6 œ œ 99œ œ œ6 œ œ œ œ 6œ œ 99œ œ œ6 œ œ ™™
Ex. 5 X X
GLEN SOBEL plays with Alice Cooper. Other credits include Ex. / 6 ™™™ œX O œ œ œ 99œ œ œ œ œ œXœ œ œ œ 99œ œ œ œ œ ™™
Paul Gilbert, Sixx: A.M., Richie Sambora, Orianthi, Tony Ex.
Ex. / 66 ™™3œ œO œ œ œ œ œœ œO œ œ œ œ œ œO œ œ œ œ œ œ ™™
MacAlpine, Cypress Hill, and Vivian Campbell. When in L.A.,
/ 6 ™™™43 œO œ O O ™™
Glen plays sessions, teaches at Musician’s Institute, and does Ex. // ™443 œO œ œ 9 œœ œœO œ œœ œœ œO 9 œœ œœ œ ™™
œœ 9 œ œ9 œ
clinics for DW Drums, Sabian, and Regal Tip. œ œ œO œ œ œ œO œ œ œ
3 ™
Ex. / 6 ™™4 œ œ œ œ œ œO œ œ
™™
Ex.66 3 O œ
Ex.
/ ™™43 œO œ œ œ OO œ œ
œ œ œ œ œ œ œO œ œ œ
™ ™™
/ ™4 ™™
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ

REGGAE
 Gil Sharone
Reggae Hi-Hat Variation
IN THIS COLUMN, I want
Ex.
Ex. 11 > > > >
to introduce a versatile 4 ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿ œ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿
hi-hat variation that adds /4œ ™™
œ
thirty-second-notes within
the sixteenth-note pattern to create some
extra motion without breaking up the flow of
a reggae groove. This variation works within a throughout the bar as you feel them. You can Although he currently plays with Marilyn Manson and Stolen
one drop, steppers, or rockers pattern at any hear recordings of Carlton Barrett using this Babies, and has performed with Dillinger Escape Plan and
tempo. variation in a slow one drop, as well as Bud Puscifer, GIL SHARONE has had a lifelong love of Jamaican
For this example, I placed the added Gaugh from Sublime using it in an up-tempo styles, reflected in his past work with Fishbone and Dave

thirty-second-notes on the hi-hat on beat 3, rockers pattern. Wakeling, as well as on his DVD Wicked Beats, which covers

but you can place the thirty-second-notes Remember to keep the groove strong! Jamaican ska, rocksteady, and reggae drumming.

DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 79

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DRUMmagazine.com September 2017 DRUM! 81 GEAR GUIDE
In Memoriam

John Blackwell, Jr.

September 9, 1973–July 4, 2017

PHOTO: RICK MALKIN

PERIODICAL - Drum (ISSN – 1097-0614, USPS - 23586) is published monthly by String Letter Publishing, Inc., 501 Canal Blvd., Suite J, Richmond, CA 94804. Periodical postage paid at Richmond, CA 94804 and additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.
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