A growing community

Following up this post by Mark Feldman, I thought it would be good to direct your attention to my drumming blogroll, in case you somehow are not a regular follower of them already. There are other blogs than the ones I've mentioned, mainly dealing with gear, amazingness, or heavy metal, or just telling what the blogger is up to, but I'm interested in ones that deal with actually learning to play the drums and being a musician. I also haven't mentioned a few good ones that are either defunct, or extremely occasional posters.

If you write or know of a drumming blog not mentioned here, please let us know about it in the comments.

Four on the Floor - Along with Trap'd, Jon McCaslin of Calgary has the most active and prominent drumming blog. Excellent text and YouTube clips, occasional technical pieces. Most recent post: The Calgary Scene - Michelle Grégoire

Trap'd - By Ted Warren in Ontario. As I've already mentioned, I love his online teaching style. Most recent post: A little jam

Tim's Parlour - The one that inspired me to make this an actual drumming blog. Very sporadic posting, and not easy to navigate (get thee on Blogger/Wordpress!), but great content. Most recent post: Idea #11 ("This is a simple idea for working on hand co-ordination and involves playing different figures in each hand over a basic foot pattern.")

Bang! the Drum School - Mark Feldman in Brooklyn, NY has a great blog on his teaching studio site. Lots of downloadable content, just like here, for every level of player. Most recent post (after the one that inspired this one): Samba Independence Part 2

The Melodic Drummer - Andrew Hare in DC just started this blog a few weeks ago, and already has a ton of outstanding content. Most recent post: The Caravan Warmup: Moving moeller strokes between drums

Rudimental Hands - A really good blog for keeping track of what's current in the marching percussion world. Most recent post: Wednesday: Basic Strokes

David Aldridge's Drumming Blog - Primarily text, and a sporadic poster, a little esoteric, always interesting. Most recent post: Bio Robotic Drumming... Really

Jazz Schmazz - This is an honorable mention- it's primarily a jazz recordings blog, but he does have at least a couple of excellent Max Roach and Pete LarRoca transcriptions posted.

A start

It's kind of a joke, but the idea of a micro-size drum set that is a viable instrument is kind of interesting. It wouldn't have to be this small- maybe if you could fit the entire thing in a standard stand case.


(h/t to feldiefeld @ Bang)

Around the drums Max Roach-ily

More good stuff from Bang! The Drum School- a fun page of Max Roach-inspired fills. I like this kind of thing for just practicing getting around the drums- something I never actually did in isolation, until recently.

I also like single pages of exercises. We're going to have to have a talk about that soon. Too much writing either focuses on giving you 30 years worth of stuff (*KOF New Breed* ), or takes a completist attitude in which we must explore every bloody permutation of a thing, regardless of real need (*AHEM Stick Control, pp. 17-23*). I'm tired of that. Give me one thing to work on and really learn today.

Transcription from the web: Steve Gadd - Capuccino

Here's the most recent of many good things from Mark Feldman at Bang! the Drum School in Brooklyn, NY. Feldman was actually one of the winners of the big Modern Drummer contest to win Neil Peart's drums back in 1987- I remember as part of the multimedia package the magazine included a floppy 45 of the winning solos. Those were simpler times. Anyhow, here's Feldman's transcription of Steve Gadd's solo on Cappuccino, from Chick Corea's Friends (thanks for the correction, Kyle!):

Get the pdf from Bang! the Drum School