In researching for my Missing Rudiments book, I found many alternate stickings for ruffs.

“Believe It” is the name of Williams’ 1975 album with this new band line-up: Allan Holdsworth (guitar), Alan Pasqua (keyboards) and Tony Newton (bass).

After 35 years in the music business, Marc put away the drumsticks and began a full-time career as a fine artist and portrait painter. He opened MJP Studios, which is a full service decorative painting company located in Branford, CT. Moe has painted many of the iconic musicians adorning the walls of the legendary ‘Toads Place’ in New Haven, CT.

It’s an old joke: How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb? The standard answer is three: one to change the bulb and two more to discuss how Steve Gadd would have done it.

Sears not only owned the Sears brand name, but they also owned the Silvertone name which they used for musical instruments and their electronics, but they were also okay with not branding their instruments at all. In fact, most of the drums that came through Sears had no branding at all.

955 WFL Black & White and Colorized versions of the 1955 catalog with a few big differences.

The color is so vibrant and bright it was shocking once I cleaned all the dirt off.

This is a very rare snare drum. Of the 3 dance/band Sensitive models introduced in 1929 I feel that the Standard-Sensitive is the rarest although I would not argue if the New-Era Sensitive was also thought of as the rarest.

Want to sell your gear the old fashioned way? Advertise in NSMD. Also you can let NSMD handle the whole sale on a consignment basis.

14x20 bass drum, 8x12 mounted tom, 16x16 floor tom, fiber cases, throne.

During Covid in 1920 I bought some Remo Silent Stroke heads and some “holy cymbals” to put on my teaching kit at home. My wife Georgetta was working from home so I had to lower the volume.

I first applied a high solids filling primer to completely fill in the wood grain, followed by a commercial textured coating to effect the irregular surface feature of this finish.  The intermediate and final colour coats were achieved with an antique brass lacquer finish, onto which I sprinkled brass metal flakes.  I then repeated this application sequence a few more times to add depth of finish, before applying a clear lacquer to produce the final ‘satin smooth’ appearance and feel.  Additionally, each piece of the copper re-plated hardware was then treated with my ‘aged patina’ process to simulate almost 100-year-old Deluxe finish.

There are eight “missing” diddle (paradiddle) fundamental stickings in the list below: The tap diddle, right paradiddle, left paradiddle, five-a diddle, triplet diddle, ruff-a diddle, seven-a-diddle, and the paradiddle-diddle-diddle.

In 1975 I purchased a chrome over wood Slingerland kit that I travelled extensively with over the next 11 years.  This was a monster kit with a 28x14 bass drum,

Here is an excerpt from Mat’s new book. It looks simple at first glance, but it’s not. Several of the exercises tripped me up.

The new set was a gift from my parents by way of Western, Mass. drummer Fernand Choquette Jr. who had been wheeling and dealing in drums and cymbals since high school. His reputation preceded him. If you wanted a square deal, Freddie was the man to see.

 It has some beautiful graphics inside, including color pictures of the Black Beauty “Ludwig Deluxe Model” and the “New Ludwigold Irridescent Display Finish”

Now what got me here was my habit of always being on the lookout for drums, especially the stencils, and there were several drum sets that were used on the show, each season this poor struggling family found a way to get a different drum kit.

This Wine Red Ripple 1960s Rogers Swingtime set I am featuring came up for sale a while back and I quickly jumped on it. I was not going to let them get away from me.

A highly rated technique is pickle juice. The process calls for covering the cymbal with the juice and a dash of salt. Then you just watch the magic happen -- seriously, this will turn your cymbal green pretty fast. Apparently pickled onion juice works best.

I was hesitant to write this article for several years because I was still betwixt and between “growing older” and “old”. It is a subject that most drummers want to put off thinking about until later, and sometimes until it’s too late.

This one is a bit of a transitional oddity, nothing earthshaking but a little quirky.

Only six tubular lugs were installed, probably to conserve metal because eight or ten lugs were typical for 15” snare drums before the war.

This is from a Limited Edition, # 83 out of 100.

We are all individuals, and what works best for one may not work for another. But in general, you can assume that the techniques you see the better players using are some of best practices available. You just need to find the ones that work best for you.

“My first true love was a love at first sight.”

My new book, The Missing Rudiments, is on sale as a printable pdf down load now in the NotSoModernDrummer Store. An excerpt from the book is in this month’s emailed issue.

From my new book “The Missing Rudiments - ”The current modern majority opinion is that, since they can’t both be and are not the same thing, a drag has double stroke grace notes and most ruffs have single stroke grace notes. I agree with that majority in keeping it simple but with the caveat that there are other known stickings for ruffs by historically important authors, which are included in this book. So,“ruff is ruff, drag is drag, and never the twain shall meet.

“Mike Clark has provided the pulse to innumerable influential rhythm sections over his long and varied career. The drummer’s association with Zilber has blossomed over the last decade, focusing mainly on their love for New York City’s hard swinging jazz tradition.”