Paradiddle around the kit ⚡Aaron Gillespie's Underoath deep dive 🎤 Clapton on meeting Steve Gadd 🎸

@Kembely Almeida

Kembely Almeida channels Anderson .Paak's NPR Tiny Desk flow in a reel that locks the pocket, splash accents, and vocal-led ghost notes into one tight loop. It is the kind of tribute that doubles as a study guide, with the snare conversation doing as much singing as the hook. A quick, repeatable lesson in playing groove like a frontman.

@Miguel Lamas

Miguel Lamas locks into Michael Jackson's "Working Day and Night" and turns the groove into a clinic, racking up 123K views and nearly 9K likes on the reel. The Pearl and Meinl endorsee makes the disco-funk pocket pop without ever stepping on the original's swagger. Quick, sharp, and built for repeat plays.

@Owen Jackson

Owen Jackson splits the difference between The 1975's glossy pocket and J Dilla's drunken swing in a quick reel that lands both worlds in one kit take. The Nashville session player leans into the lopsided feel without losing the gloss, a useful study for anyone trying to bend a clean groove sideways. Short, specific, and worth a rewind.

Paiste's 10" PST X Swiss Splash takes the brand's hand-hammered Swiss hole pattern and shrinks it into a quick, trashy accent: short sustain, airy decay, and a noisy bite that cuts without lingering. Cast from CuSn8 2002 Bronze with aluminum Pure Bells, it stacks well on a hat or thin crash for stick-chain sizzle effects. It's an easy way to add an exotic voice without raiding the cymbal budget.

Evans EQ Pods take aim at the Moongel throne with a Teflon-coated top side that resists dust, grime, and the slow descent into gooey unusability. The seven-pod pack runs $15.99 and offers a sturdier, dual-layer build that holds shape through repeated apply-and-remove cycles, which matters if you're hunting for that perfect overtone tame on a snare or rack tom. Reviewers consistently flag them as a step up from moon gel for cleaning up ring without choking the drum.

Aaron Gillespie finally sits down in the Drumeo studio for a 90-minute walk through Underoath's catalogue, from the early recordings through They're Only Chasing Safety and into the darker territory of Define The Great Line. He plays full performances of "Young And Inspiring," "It's Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door," "In Regards To Myself," "Reinventing Your Exit" and more, with stories from the studio and the road threaded between.

The real reward is hearing him break down how he sings and drums at the same time, why he started doing it in the first place, and how the band chased a live sound on Define The Great Line. For anyone who came up on metalcore in the 2000s, this is the deep dive worth setting aside an evening for.

Eric Clapton recounting the first time he met Steve Gadd is exactly the kind of vault footage worth six and a half minutes of your morning. Pulled from Hudson Music's Gadd documentary, Part 1 of the Clapton interview series finds Eric reflecting on that initial encounter and on what it felt like to play the blues with one of the most surgically musical drummers alive.

It's a quiet listen rather than a chops clinic, but that's the value. Hearing a guitarist of Clapton's stature describe how Gadd's feel shaped the band around him is a small masterclass in why drummers are hired, kept, and revered. Worth sitting with before you dig into Part 2.

@Pavel Mamonau

Pavel Mamonau's latest reel zeroes in on a deceptively small idea that reshapes how 16th notes feel: RLR / LRL. Same three-note cell, same sticking family, but phrased two different ways. Walk away knowing that asymmetrical stickings, not new chops, are often what unlock a more musical 16th-note flow.

Here's the concept in plain terms. Most drummers default to alternating singles when they play continuous 16ths, which lands accents predictably on the right hand. Grouping the notes as RLR then LRL forces your accents and lead hand to shift across the bar, so the same subdivision starts to phrase in threes against a four feel. That's the "break the symmetry" part. To work on it today: set the metronome around 60 to 70 bpm and loop RLR LRL RLR LRL as straight 16ths on a single surface, accenting the first note of each group. Once it locks, move the accented note around the kit, snare to tom to ride, and keep the unaccented notes quiet and even. Common mistake: rushing the second group because your weaker hand is now leading. Isolate LRL on its own for a minute before stitching the pattern back together. Try it under a simple backbeat groove, or over a slow funk tune where you'd normally play straight 16ths on the hat.

Same notes, different phrasing, completely different feel. That's the whole lesson.

@Eddie Van Dongen | Creative Drum Coach

Eddie Van Dongen is six days into a 30-day challenge built on one idea: the paradiddle is the most famous rudiment in drumming and the most wasted one. If you only ever run it on a pad, you are missing the entire point. The takeaway here is simple — RLRRLRLL becomes musical the moment you stop treating it like a wrist exercise and start orchestrating it across the kit with dynamics and kick drum placement.

Try this today. Play a straight paradiddle at a slow tempo, somewhere you can hear every note clearly, and keep it at a steady 16th-note feel. First pass, leave it on the snare and just accent the downbeat of each grouping so the sticking starts to breathe. Second pass, move the two right-hand notes to the hi-hat or a tom while the left stays on the snare. Now you have a groove, not a rudiment. Third pass, drop kicks underneath the natural accents and let the doubles fall as ghost notes. The common mistake is rushing past the dynamic layer and jumping straight to kit orchestration. The accents are what make it sound like music instead of a drill. Start slow, get the loud-soft contour locked in, then move it around.

Apply it to anything with a 16th-note pulse and you will hear the paradiddle hiding in plain sight. The rudiment is a vocabulary, not a workout.

Sari Kujala packs three linked patterns into 47 seconds, and the through-line is worth stealing for your practice pad. She starts with the six stroke roll, RLLRRL, then peels it apart into its two halves, RLL and RRL, drilling each as its own sticking before recombining them. Treat it as a mini system: get the doubles clean and even in RLL and RRL on their own, then stitch them back together to feel how the six stroke roll is really just those two cells shaking hands. Try it slow on a pad, then move the doubles to toms or splash the accent on a cymbal to hear the pattern open up around the kit.