Category Drums

Let’s hear it for rototoms

Ted Shideler 4 Comments

I started playing drums in the school band in the fifth grade. After I stuck with the standard-issue practice pad and set of bells for long enough to demonstrate some elementary skills, my mom let me use my savings to buy a drum set. The only one I found within my $200 budget was a secondhand kit branded “Percussion Plus.” It was the crappiest set of drums I’d ever seen, but it was mine! Almost as quickly as I learned to play, I started looking for opportunities to expand it. That’s where rototoms come in.

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“Buy me a coffee” to help support what I do here, if you want

Ted Shideler Leave a comment

We’ve officially made it into the second week of 2023. In just seven days, this blog has already welcomed nearly half of the visitors it saw in all of 2022! I only started in September, granted, but I’ve been blown away by how many people have found my peculiar interests and obsessions compelling enough to stop by. I have no doubt that it’s going to be a great year here!

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Beat Analysis: Bonzo’s Monster Groove on “When the Levee Breaks”

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Everyone knows Led Zeppelin. John Bonham played drums for the group, and though he died young at the age of thirty-two, he’s often listed as one of the greatest drummers of all time from any genre. I wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool Zeppelin fan, but some of my favorite Bonzo performances are from his typical resume of well-known performances, songs like “Good Times Bad Times,””Ramble On,” “The Ocean,” and “Fool in the Rain,” which Bonham composed as a variation of the Purdie Shuffle we talked about last week. Today we’re going to chat about his performance on “When the Levee Breaks,” the final track on the 1971 album Led Zeppelin IV. It’s a monster, and I’ll play it for you.

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Beat Analysis: Why I think the Jeff Porcaro’s Rosanna Shuffle is the best rock beat ever

Ted Shideler 3 Comments

Unless you’re someone like my dad who listened to precious little beyond John Philip Sousa marches and ragtime, you’ve probably heard the song “Rosanna”, the grammy-winning first single from Toto’s 1982 album Toto IV. The tune peaked as high as Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks, and it’s still played in heavy rotation on classic rock radio forty years after it was released. The foundation of the song, drummer Jeff Porcaro’s “Rosanna Shuffle,” is both notoriously difficult to play and probably the sickest beat in a rock song ever. I’ll play it for you and tell you why I think it is. 

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Direct Drive Pedals: One weird trick to becoming a better drummer, sort of

Ted Shideler 2 Comments

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been playing drums for twenty years, but spending the last two decades with a pair of drumsticks in my hands has taught me a lot. One of the dumber things I’ve learned is that every drummer has at least one specific quirk, and six years ago, I stumbled into one of my own: From here on out, I’ll only use direct-drive bass drum pedals. They’ve made me a better drummer. Sort of.

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