Stephen Perkins is best known for drumming with Jane’s Addiction but he’s also played for Porno for Pyros, Infectious Grooves and he currently plays with Banyan. Of course, if you have seen this DVD before you would already know that because player history is one of main features of a BTP DVD. All of these BTP features have the same basic structure: there will be a BTP section, 2 or 3 song lessons, and some extras.
I’ve been excited to see this one for a while. I was waiting for the promised Blu-Ray version to come out so I could see if the instructional experience is that much better in HD. Alas, my patience expired when I saw it available on Netflix. I saw the preview for this DVD and thought “that guy sounds like a more progressive version of Steve Smith… and I like that.” As it turns out Todd Sucherman: drummer for Styx, session drummer, and clinician, is a big fan of Steve Smith. In fact Todd actually tells a touching personal story about his relationship with Steve Smith which is one of the nice little touches in this DVD that make it so great, but I’m getting ahead of myself. 
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This review might be a little nontraditional but you’ll have to forgive me because this DVD is quite nontraditional. It’s one of those most rare of animals, the drum and bass instructional video. Carter Beauford, (drummer for DMB) and Victor Wooten, (bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones), decided to turn the recording session for Victor’s album Yin-Yang into the foundation for an entire drum/bass instructional DVD. This isn’t two separate instructional DVDs that Hudson Music decided to sell as a package. It doesn’t try to teach everything you need to know to play either instrument. Rather, it focuses on the music on the Yin-Yang album and examines the give-and-take between Carter and Victor when they play. This is an instructional that demands you pay attention to what they play and analyze it for yourself. Read more
If there’s any drummer who can claim they’ve come from the rock and roll jungle it’s Matt Sorum. With seven years under his belt, he’s the longest sitting Guns N’ Roses drummer ever. Matt Sorum was ejected from the band by Axl Rose after he defended Slash’s decision to leave. So along with Slash and former Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan they formed Velvet Revolver… which is now on hiatus because their lead singer left the band. Lead singer issues aside, Matt Sorum is a road tested rock drummer and well qualified to speak on the topic of rock drumming. Read more
Coordination & Groove is a video that is pretty much honest about its content. It’s a video about coordination and groove, in that order IMO. Alan Schechner (the host) is another one of those working drummers. The kind that we’ll probably end up like if we pursue the working drummer career path. Not famous, but then again… who needs fame if you have a job making music with the instrument of your choice? Read more
I’m gonna be totally honest and say I had never heard of Randy Van Patten before I rented this DVD and I have a feeling you might not know who he is either. He’s a working drummer with a lots of years under his belt and has drummed for lots of people in his time. In other words he’s the kind of drummer we aspire to be like but didn’t realize it when we started. When people say they want to be a studio or a session drummer they often have guys like Steve Gadd in mind, but not everyone can achieve Steve’s level of standing in the music industry. Most studio and session drummers are more like Randy. One of many working drummers who’ve landed some big gigs but never achieved the notoriety of the drum gods. Not glamorous but if they went missing it would put the music industry into cardiac arrest. You can get the specifics on everything Randy at www.vanzdrumming.com. Read more
I’ve just been striking out with a vengeance on my recent Netflix picks for drum reviews and this is strike 3… good thing I’m not playing baseball. Mike Terrana’s Rhythm Beast is very similar to Ian Paice’s DVD that I reviewed previously in that there was some confusion as to what I was getting into when I read the description. The description led me to believe that this was a performance/instruction just like the description of Ian Paice’s DVD led me to believe it was a regular instructional. I was wrong then and I’m wrong again this time.
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So while searching for a story for today, I stumbled across the Hudson Music Youtube channel and found a whole channel for Tommy Igoe’s Groove Essentials 2 DVD. This particular clip popped out to me. It’s about rideless grooves and how to use them. I found it incredibly useful. Same ole Tommy. However, I noticed he’s using Evans heads now where he was using Remo before. Enjoy!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlAuXhP9I5o&feature=related[/youtube]
John Blackwell is the third in the HMMS (Hudson Music Master Series) line-up and unfortunately it’s much the same as his first DVD. Like I said last time, John Blackwell is one of the best drummers of his kind today, but he is not a good teacher or clinician. It pains me to say this but if you watched his first DVD then you pretty much have already seen this DVD. This DVD has more and longer music and it has special guest Marcus Williams. It has more stories about touring with guys like Prince, it has more printable pdfs (which are very nice) but for all intents and purposes it’s the same DVD. It covers the exact same topics as his last DVD but the thing is that he doesn’t cover it much better then he did the first time around.
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Akira Jimbo has probably gone farther than any other drummer down the path of cross breeding acoustic and electronics. Anyone who’s tooled around his drummerworld.com page for a little while knows what i’m talking about. He pioneered his own method of blending electronic and acoustic drums into a hybrid kit upon which he can perform entire songs as a one man band. He’s not playing to a track or over a loop (though he does use loops) he’s using electronic drums to orchestrate parts that would normally be played by other musicians or electronically added afterwards. The system elevates drummers, drumming, and the drum-set to new musical heights. Read more
Akira Jimbo’s first offering to the drumming public is his video Wasabi. Wasabi is mostly about the Wasabi Method Akira developed to help him change up his playing. The Wasabi Method consists of four basic parts used to spice up a groove or lick you’ve heard somewhere else. Incase you were wondering about the title, Wasabi is a very popular spice in Akira’s homeland, Japan. Because the video and method are about spicing up your playing it makes sense that they would be named after a spice, no? Read more
Antonio Sanchez, drummer for Pat Metheny does a master class and you get to be there even if you weren’t there!
That’s pretty much how all the Hudson Music Master Series products work. They film someone doing a master class and add some of their masterful camera work and other little things that are specific to the DVD. Some of those things include a foot cam and onscreen text that highlights some of the points that Antonio hits on. Read more
JABB here with the review of the third part of the Dave Weckl: A Natural Evolution series of videos.
Dave Weckl’s last offering to the drumming populace is all about getting your sound out of the drums. It’s also probably the most valuable DVD in the series because he gets pretty in-depth into mics and EQ, a subjects most drummers (myself included) are pretty ignorant about. This isn’t a video about your touch on the instrument, rather it’s about how you tune, mic and EQ your drum-set.
The video starts off with a section on tuning your drums. Dave covers the different head types and gives a very basic out line of their sound qualities. Dave is a Remo endorsee so he talks about ambassadors and emperors and such because that’s the Remo line of products. He then show’s you how he tunes his drums on a tom tom from his kit. The problem I have with this is that tuning a tom-tom is a different process from tuning a bass drum or a snare drum. Read more
This is JABB bringing you part two of the Dave Weckl trilogy in three…two…one… engaged!
The second part of Dave’s video series focuses on the practice routines that Dave Weckl follows to stay at the top of his game. If you’ve seen any of the Thomas Lang DVDs then you have a very good frame of reference to visualize this DVD.
When I ordered this video on netflix I visualized it being more about Dave giving some ideas about how to construct a practice routine as opposed to handing you one. Of course I expected some exercises and examples, but that’s most of what I got. Well, actually that isn’t true. This is the DVD they decided to cram all the performance clips into because it’s the one with the least actual content in my opinion. So you do get alot of Dave playing with his band to break up the different sections of the video. Read more
Back from an extended break I’m bringing sexy back! no, wait. No i’m not. I’m bringing reviews back!
I just wanted to let you guys know that I’ve matured as a review since my early days and if I seem inconsistent with the way I reviewed earlier in my career, it’s because I’m a bit better and more experienced than I used to be. Maybe someday I’ll go back and re-review some of my earlier works that didn’t have the benefit of my current reviewing maturity when I wrote them. But I digress Read more
