Dennis Chambers torches Buddy Rich's band 🔥 · JP Bouvet's desk-tap melody trick · Skrillex meets a drum solo ⚙️

@Eddie Van Dongen | Creative Drum Coach

Eddie Van Dongen builds a slick halftime groove over Eminem's "Godzilla," translating the rapper's phrasing into singles, doubles, and kick patterns moved around the kit with a snare landing on every 3. He frames it as a window into his process: studying how rappers time and move through bars, then mapping that flow onto the drums. Looks intricate, breaks down simple.

@Roni Kaspi

Roni Kaspi posts a sweat-soaked shed session that doubles as a clinic in groove under pressure. No gimmicks, no edits to hide behind, just a drummer locked into the kit with the kind of intensity that explains why her reels keep landing. Worth the 30 seconds if you need a kick to go practice.

@Matt McGuire

Matt McGuire drops a drum solo into a Skrillex track and the seams disappear, with kit fills slotting between the drops like they were always part of the production. The Chainsmokers' touring drummer has a knack for these EDM mashups, and this one rides the bass design hit for hit. A short reel that earns the gearbox emoji.

Dennis Chambers tearing through a chart with the Buddy Rich Big Band is exactly the kind of footage worth pulling out of the archives. This clip comes from the Buddy Rich Memorial Concert series, where a rotating cast of heavy hitters took turns behind Buddy's old band, and Chambers' turn is the one that tends to flatten people. The horns punch, he answers with that impossibly relaxed grip and machine-gun right hand, and the solo goes by in what feels like one long exhale.

If you have never sat with Dennis in a big band setting, this is the context that shows why. The orchestration forces structure on a player whose vocabulary can otherwise feel limitless, and the solo lands harder for it.

JP Bouvet wants you to put the sticks down for a second and tap this one out on your desk. His latest short pitches a melodic strategy you can audition with nothing but two hands and a flat surface, which is exactly the point: if the idea sings on wood, it will sing on the kit.

The angle here is treating your phrasing like a melody instead of a rhythm. Drummers default to thinking in subdivisions and stickings, but Bouvet's framing asks you to hum or sing the shape first, then let the hands chase it. Try this today. Pick a short phrase from a song you actually like, four to eight beats, and tap it on the desk with alternating hands until the contour feels natural. Now move it to the kit and orchestrate it: kick for the low notes in your phrase, snare for the accents, toms for the connective tissue. Start slow, somewhere you can hear every voice clearly, and resist the urge to fill the gaps. The most common mistake is reaching for chops the moment you sit down at the drums; the melody gets buried under sixteenths. Keep the phrase recognizable first, decorate second.

The takeaway: if you can sing it and tap it on a desk, you can play it musically on the kit.

@Eddie Van Dongen | Creative Drum Coach

Eddie Van Dongen is two days into a thirty day challenge of moving a single paradiddle around the kit, and the lesson behind it is one most drummers need to hear: if your paradiddle only lives on the practice pad, you are leaving most of its value on the table. Same sticking, same rudiment, different orchestration. That's the whole idea.

The paradiddle is RLRR LRLL. On the pad it sounds like an exercise. Around the kit it becomes phrasing. Try this today: keep the sticking locked, but send the right hand to the ride or floor tom while the left stays on the snare. Then flip it. Then put the doubles on toms and the singles on the snare. Same six strokes, completely different musical result. Start slow, somewhere around 70 to 80 bpm, and prioritize the orchestration sounding intentional over playing it fast. The common trap is letting the sticking break down the moment you cross the kit, so isolate one new voicing at a time before stringing them together. If you want a place to apply it, drop one of these orchestrations into a fill over a simple groove and see how it sits.

The takeaway: a rudiment you've drilled for years can sound brand new the moment you stop treating it like homework and start treating it like a phrase.

@• CLAUS ~ THYLSTRUP •

Claus Thylstrup has a quick reel up demonstrating fill and pattern ideas built on groupings of 3 and 5, and it is a sneaky-useful concept for anyone stuck playing everything in even fours. Walk away knowing how odd groupings inside a 4/4 bar create the illusion of metric tension without actually leaving the time.

The idea is simple. Take a steady stream of 16th notes and accent or orchestrate them in clumps of 3 or 5 instead of the expected 4. Because 3 and 5 do not divide evenly into 16, the accent pattern shifts across the bar before resolving, which is what gives those odd-grouping phrases their forward lean. Start at something slow, around 70 to 80 bpm, and play straight 16ths between hands and kick. Then accent every third note with your right hand moving around the kit. Once that locks in, try the same exercise with groups of 5. Count out loud, "1 2 3, 1 2 3," and let the downbeat land wherever it lands. The common mistake is rushing the group of 3 to make it line up with the click. Do not. Trust the math and let the resolution happen on its own.

When you are ready to apply it, drop a one-bar fill of fives into a basic backbeat groove and feel how it pulls against the pulse. Odd groupings are the shortest path from boxy to creative.

Carlos Santana and Chad Smith trade notes on how drummers fuel everyone around them in a short Drum Channel clip pulled from their longer sit-down. It's a quick reminder from a guitar legend and the Chili Peppers' engine that the kit shapes the room, not the other way around. Worth the scroll, then dig into the full interview on DrumChannel.com.