We’ve already covered the best gifts for drummers and a huge list of gifts for musicians. Now, we’ve got guitar lovers covered as well, with our brand new guide to the best gifts for guitarists here.
If you’re looking for something to give the guitarist in your life, this page is for you. We cover the best gear across a wide range of prices, starting from under $20. Check out our ultimate guide on the best gifts for guitar players here.
Sad news for the drumming world today, as Charlie Watts passes away at a hospital in London.
No cause of death has been released, however Watts’ publicist released a statement saying that he “passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family.”
Charlie Watts joined the Rolling Stones in 1963, and was part of the band’s first stable lineup. Since then, he has formed the band’s rock-solid rhythm foundation and has been an integral member both in the studio and live.
Earlier this month it was announced that Watts was to undergo an “unspecified medical procedure”, and was unable to perform with the band.
Travis Barker has listed a huge range of drum kits, drums, mixers, electronic drums, drum machines, and more for sale on Reverb.
Central to the collection are two drum kits:
Both of these Travis Barker drum kits have some minor scuffs, but are otherwise in great condition. The Troy Lee kit will set you back USD $30,000. If you’re short on cash, the Evel Knievel kit is a more affordable USD $25,000. The kits sport Remo drumheads across the board, with Remo Emperor and Remo Ambassador drumheads on the snare and toms, and Remo Powerstroke heads on the bass drums.
You’ll also find a lot of electronic drum gear, all with much more reasonable price tags.
Here are a few highlights:
All gear comes with a signed certificate of authenticity from Travis Barker. If you’re interested, take a look at the full store on Reverb here.
Two new articles are now online, this time focusing on the all-important practice pad.
As a drummer, the practice pad is the go-to tool to improve your chops. There’s an endless number of pads out there, making it difficult to figure out which one is best. Luckily we’ve come across a great one: the Freddy Charles signature practice pad. It’s built for bounce, and (importantly) you get some very nice educational content with the pad to ensure you’re making the most of the rebound the pad provides.
Read our review of the Freddy Charles practice pad here.
Freddy was also nice enough to also write an article for us, which shows beginner drummers where to start when using a practice pad. Take a look at Freddy’s great article on learning drums with a practice pad here.
In this article, London-based drummer Nick Schlesinger covers his unique take on creating great new grooves and patterns using old and seemingly simple concepts (in this case, showing how far you can take a six stroke roll). You’ll see the drum transcriptions for each part of this lesson throughout the article below, or you can download the transcriptions all in one (as a PDF).
This lesson is based on one of Nick’s video lessons, which you can check out here:
By Nick Schlesinger
Let’s level the playing field for a moment. As drummers we’re all in the same boat, always looking for ways to develop ourselves. We want to be better players and musicians, be it for teaching, performing, recording purposes, for our self-esteem, YouTube views, etc.
As a full-time drummer, getting better at the drums means being better at my jobs: teaching and doing remote sessions.
So when learning something new, no matter how complicated that thing might be, it helps me in the following ways:
That said, whatever it is we’re learning, we should always focus on the 5 pillars of drumming:
With that in mind, I’ve always been into the idea of getting the most juice out of what I already know. I mean, think about it, you’ve mastered, say, the Single Paradiddle (i.e. RLRR LRLL) and got a couple of cool grooves out of it and think “OK, what’s next?”. To me, that’s not value for money… I’ve spent all this time learning the Paradiddle just to get a couple of grooves and fills out of it? No way! I want my money’s worth.
How do we do this? By going deep. So I wanted to share a few creative concepts to this end. You’ll be able to use these to turn something you already know into something unexpected with just a little creativity!
In this example, we’re going to turn the six stroke roll into a funky groove. If you’re not familiar with this rudiment, have a look at the following transcription:
Now, the focus here is to understand the concepts and process rather than the specific groove we’re creating. This will help you apply these to other things too!
It’s worth mentioning that I’m basing all of this stuff on content from my book Concepts, which has tons of great ideas for you to apply to your playing. You can get a copy here.
The concepts and ideas we’re going to use in this lesson are the following:
This is a great way for you to approach something you’re familiar with and look at it differently. What I mean by changing subdivisions is, in essence, changing a sticking from, say, eighth notes to sixteenth notes, or perhaps from sixteenth notes to triplets, etc.
For the purpose of this lesson, I have taken a six stroke roll in its sextuplet form into straight sixteenth notes (see below). Note that I also decided to keep the result as one bar long. Why? Why not! It’s just an idea I had at the time.
Again, the point here is to let your imagination take you somewhere new!
As a side note, and not necessarily directly related to this example, but another idea similar to changing subdivisions, for instance, is to try things both with a straight feel as well as with swing. Rudiments, stickings, grooves, etc will sound and feel completely different depending on how you play them!
The next concept I decided to apply in coming up with this groove is Permutation, a concept Tower Of Power’s David Garibaldi is well-known for. The great thing about permutation is that it lets you explore the same idea from, in this case, sixteen new different perspectives.
Put simply, permutation in this context means changing the order of the sticking we’ll be playing.
This is great because we’re getting more deeply acquainted with something we’re already familiar with, and really squeezing a lot more juice out of it. You can apply this to your favourite licks/chops too. My suggestion would actually be to write the permutations down, as this is a great way to internalize them, but also to use a reference and keep track of things.
Notice how the accents move with every permutation. This makes for exciting possibilities when it comes to orchestrating our groove.
Let’s explore the notation so far.
Let’s give the groove shape by orchestrating it moving the right hand to the hi hats.
With regards to our hands, however hard we may work at making them even, we’ll always have a dominant one. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. That, to me, helps me pay attention to rhythms that each hand creates within a sticking, and that in turn helps me think musically. Based on those “melodies” I start hearing music in my head… And from there, a groove starts forming.
This, to me, is the stage where I start thinking about how I’ll shape a groove. In this case, as I heard funk in my head, that’s what dictated where I should be playing the bass drums. This also shaped the decision to turn the groove into a call-and-response 2 bar phrase, because I thought it important to start the groove strong on beats one… We want people to “shake they booty”.
What we get is the following as the original groove (the “call” bar):
And the second, “response” bar is as follows:
The two bar phrase then sounds like this:
So you’re probably thinking that’s nothing new, and that’s fair enough. However, once you’ve thought of your groove, why not try and hear the same musical idea in a different genre? How does that affect the groove you’ve come up with?
This concept of placing something where it doesn’t belong is a great way to think creatively. So, the Funk groove in this example… How would it sound in a Drum and Bass song, or a Heavy Metal track? Sticking to the same sticking and accents, where would you, for instance, play the bass drums, what tempo would you play it?
Now imagine what you could do if you started applying more concepts to the groove… How far could you take it? That question in itself is where great practice and creative development lies.
For more creative concepts to help you break new ground with old ideas, why not check out my book Concepts? It’s a neat guide full of inspiring ideas and resources for you to help make the most from your drumming.
Nick Schlesinger is a professional musician and drummer based in London, UK. He has a successful private teaching practice, and experience teaching students of wide-ranging skills and ages as well as neurodiverse students. He also records drums remotely for artists all over the world. Nick has published articles in magazines such as Modern Drummer, his book Concepts is published by Hudson Music, and also is the creator of the CHOPZzz pillowcase which has sold worldwide.
Read our deep-dive into the history of the Ludwig drum company. From humble beginnings, Ludwig rose to become the most recognizable drum brand in history, endorsed by some of the biggest names in music, and recorded on countless albums.
Read our full history of Ludwig drums, including a quick guide to today’s kits.
Our latest article looks at how you can build a tiny, powerful, full-featured electronic drum kit that is perfect for playing quietly in an apartment. It even blows most full-size electronic drum kits out of the water when it comes to the number of pads, features, and functionality.
See what makes this tiny electronic drum kit so powerful right here.
Looking to own a piece of history? Currently being auctioned is Neil Peart’s drum kit – a Slingerland set used on Rush’s tours and albums between 1974 and 1977.
Update: This drum kit sold for USD$500,312 -yes, half a million dollars- on December 10th
The Neil Peart drum kit is a chrome wrapped Slingerland kit made in Niles, Illinois, USA. Made of 3-ply shells of maple, poplar, and mahogany, the drum set is comprised of:
Neil Peart’s cymbals include:
The drum set also includes a wide range of LP cowbells, chimes, bells, woodblocks, and more.
Along with standard hardware, the drum kit features Neil Peart’s dual Ludwig Speed King bass drum pedals (one on each drum), with a square felt bass drum beater.
When it comes to drumheads, Peart played both Remo and Evans heads across the kit. Most of the drum set’s batter heads are clear Remo Controlled Sound, while resonant heads include blue Evans all weather rock heavy duty heads. The snare drum features a Remo Ambassador snare side drumhead.
Peart’s concert toms feature unnumbered Remo experimental heads – while there’s no clear information on the exact type of head these are, they look like Remo Controlled Sound with a white dot (rather than the standard black dot). Remo Experimental heads are prototypes, and are sometimes given to performers for testing purposes.
Neil Peart originally purchased the drum set from Toronto music store Long & McQuade in mid-1974, very shortly after first joining Rush.
A few weeks later, he was playing these drums on Rush’s first USA tour, where the band opened for Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band.
The drum set was then used to record the classic Rush albums Fly by Night, Caress of Steel, and 2112, along with the 1976 live-in-Toronto album All the World’s a Stage. Soon after, the drum set was retired.
This Neil Peart drum kit is clearly roadworn from the years of touring and recording: The drumheads are covered in stickmarks, paint is missing from the bass drum hoops, and there’s snare rash on the rack tom from years of heavy use.
The drum set has an incredible starting bid of US$80,000, and will likely be sold for much more. Read more on auction house Bonham’s webpage.
DW fans: check out our new guide to Drum Workshop’s history. We cover their beginning and ongoing innovations, starting from their very first product, a hardware case drum seat.
We’ve just released a brand new article covering the history and numerous innovations of Premier drums. Plus, there’s a full overview of today’s Premier drum kits, to help you find the best drum set for your needs.
