I’m now realizing that I should have done this one a loooooong time ago. Tommy Igoe’s Groove Essentials DVD was originally a poster. Yup, a single sheet of paper. This humble piece of paper was destined for bigger things then anyone could have expected. Eventually the fans of the poster screamed for a film adaptation of the runaway hit! That call was answered and things have gotten plain old ridiculous from there. Read more
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
As drummers, we are always on the lookout for useful, effective tools to help our practicing more efficient and enjoyable. One of the most basic tools for our practice sessions is the metronome. So for review I bring you the Boss DB-30 metronome from the folks over at Roland.
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
Zildjian’s Pitch Black series is the latest addition to their sheet bronze collection. Falling above the recently released ZHT series, Pitch Black is made of B-12 alloy and designed to be played loud. From Zildjian’s website:
The formidable sound and look of Rock at its absolute best. Pitch Blackâ„¢ cymbals were specifically designed to be coated and played loud… We then developed a proprietary coating process which allows the cymbal to be durable and strikingly beautiful yet still open up like a cymbal should. Eight new models unlike anything you or your fans have ever heard or seen before. The only way we could make these any more Rock would be to put leather pants on them.
