Fix your Purdie shuffle 🎯 Ari Hoenig rewires practice 🧠

@Rick Beato

Anika Nilles breaking down Neil Peart's fills after Rush's LA show is the kind of full-circle moment worth a minute of your day. Rick Beato's clip catches Nilles geeking out over phrasing she clearly knows inside and out, with a player's appreciation rather than a fan's. Short, warm, and a nice peek at how deep her Peart vocabulary runs.

@Greyson Nekrutman

Greyson Nekrutman trading "Sing, Sing, Sing" fours with John Stamos is exactly the kind of crossover Instagram was built for, the Sepultura drummer's big band chops meeting Uncle Jesse behind the kit. The Krupa tom pattern gives Nekrutman plenty of room to swing, and Stamos holds his own well enough to make the jam feel like a real conversation. Worth the 60 seconds.

Felix Lehrmann walks Modern Drummer's David Frangioni through the lefty kit he's taking out with Steve Hackett, and it's a thoughtful build rather than a flashy one. Custom-sized Gretsch drums anchor the setup, with Paiste cymbals, Remo heads, and a Gibraltar rack tying everything together. His Rohema signature sticks round it out.

The rundown gets into the why behind each choice, which is where these kit videos earn their keep. If you've ever wrestled with mirroring a right-handed rack for a lefty, or you're curious how a Hackett sideman balances vintage Genesis material with modern punch, Lehrmann's setup is worth a look.

Gretsch's 6.5x14 USA Phosphor Bronze snare gets a proper workout from Archibald Ligonnière, who locks into a single funk groove and walks the drum through three tuning ranges. High tension delivers a sharp, cutting crack; the middle range opens up into a focused, articulate voice; cranked down low, it settles into a thick, fat backbeat with plenty of body.

It's a quick case for why phosphor bronze gets called versatile. Same hands, same pattern, three very different voices. Useful reference if you're weighing this against the brass or steel options in Gretsch's USA lineup.

Ari Hoenig sat down with Drum Dog for a long remote conversation that started, of all places, with a Bill Bruford name-drop in an earlier episode. What follows is less a drum interview than a philosophical one: music as a communication tool, the difference between learning an instrument and learning music, and why Ari hasn't touched a technical exercise in years.

He gets into where his solo playing comes from, why simplicity tends to beat density, and what it means to play on the edge of a mistake. There's also honest talk about picking up piano during Covid, teaching at NYU, and running his Patreon as an alternative to traditional drum education. If your practice list feels like a weight, this one's worth the time.

Get 10% off drum.dog lessons using code DD-DD-10!

@Sam MacKenzie - Session Drummer 🥁

Bernard Purdie's shuffle is one of those grooves that separates drummers who can play from drummers who can feel, and Sam MacKenzie's reel is a reminder to put it back on your practice list this week. Walk away knowing why the half-time shuffle with ghost notes underneath is considered required vocabulary, and where to point your ears next.

The Purdie shuffle is a half-time shuffle built on a triplet feel, with the backbeat landing on 3 and a constellation of ghost notes filling the space around it on the snare. The magic is in those ghosts. They are quiet, but they swing the whole groove and lock it into a deep pocket. Start slow, somewhere around 70 to 80 bpm, and play the triplet feel on the hats first so your right hand internalizes the shuffle. Add the backbeat on 3. Only then layer the ghost notes in on the snare between the accented hits, keeping them whisper quiet. The most common mistake is letting those ghosts get loud, which flattens the groove and kills the swing. Keep the accent on 3 clearly louder than everything else around it. Once it feels natural, take it to the obvious homework: Steely Dan's "Home At Last" and "Babylon Sisters," then Toto's "Rosanna" for Jeff Porcaro's half-time shuffle cousin.

If your shuffle does not breathe, your ghost notes are too loud. Fix that one thing and the groove unlocks.

JP Bouvet has a quick tutorial on finding half-swung 16th notes, the in-between feel that sits halfway between straight and full triplet swing. If you have ever tried to lock with a hip-hop or neo-soul track and your hi-hat felt either too stiff or too loose, this is the pocket you have been missing.

Straight 16ths divide the beat evenly. Fully swung 16ths push the "e" and "a" toward a triplet grid. Half-swung lives in the middle, nudging those offbeats just slightly late so the groove breathes without sounding overtly shuffled. The fastest way in is to play straight 16ths on the hi-hat at a slow tempo, around 70 to 80 bpm, then drag the "e" and "a" back just a hair until the pulse feels lazy but still even. Bouvet's short is worth watching because the feel is easier to hear than to describe. Once it clicks in your hands, try it over a basic backbeat with kick on 1 and snare on 3, then apply it to something like D'Angelo's "Chicken Grease" or a J Dilla beat where the half-swing is doing most of the emotional work. Common mistake: overcorrecting and landing in full triplet swing. Keep it subtle.

The takeaway: small shifts in placement open up a lot of grooves.

Carlin Muccular's pitch here is simple: one ten-minute exercise that doubles as chop builder, independence drill, and warm-up. If you only have a few minutes before a session and you want your hands awake and your limbs talking to each other, it's worth a look.

The core idea is treating a single sticking as a multi-tool. Rather than running rudiments cold, you layer a hand pattern over a steady foot ostinato so the hands build speed and control while the feet hold time underneath. Set a metronome around 70 to 80 bpm and loop it. Lock your bass drum or hi-hat foot in first before you add anything on top. The most common mistake is rushing the hands and letting the foot drift or disappear. If that happens, stop, isolate the foot for a bar, then bring the hands back in. Once it feels glued at slow tempos, push it up in 5 bpm jumps and notice where the cracks show. Apply it to a groove you already play, looping eight bars of exercise into eight bars of time, so the chops translate to the kit instead of staying on the pad.

Small idea, plenty of mileage.