Simon Phillips' double bass masterclass 💥 Drum Solos from Dave Weckl and Larnell Lewis

@Larnell Lewis Music

Larnell Lewis opens Snarky Puppy's Recurrent run in Tokyo with a solo that's all torque and finesse, threading gospel chops through fusion phrasing while Justin Stanton's keys hold the room. Shot by Shin Danny, the clip captures the kind of in-the-pocket fireworks that make Lewis's solo features must-watch material on a Snarky tour. Night one, and the bar is already set.

Dave Weckl unleashes a solo on "Fair and Debonaire" during the 2026 European tour with bassist Tom Kennedy, and the clip is already a study in controlled fire. Expect the signature linear phrasing, ghost-note finesse, and odd-grouping ride work that made him a household name in fusion circles. A clean, close-mic'd kit and a sympathetic duo setting make every nuance audible.

Remo's quick A/B test runs four warm, calf-emulating heads across the same 6.5x14 Gretsch Brooklyn maple/poplar snare, so you can actually hear where each lands. The Diplomat Skyntone and Diplomat Fiberskyn keep the stick attack subdued while preserving sensitivity, useful if you want vintage character without losing ghost-note detail. Step up to the Ambassador Fiberskyn or Ambassador Renaissance and the picture darkens, with more midrange body and a thicker overall voice.

The constants matter too: Gretsch 302 hoops and an Ambassador Hazy snare side, which keeps the comparison honest. If you've been chasing the calf sound but don't want to babysit a head every time the room temperature shifts, this is a tidy 38 seconds of reference.

Pick up the Skyntone drumhead here.

Yamaha's Recording Custom Brass 13x6.5 gets a proper studio workout from Gideon Waxman, who runs it through low, medium, and high tunings to show how it behaves across the range. His verdict: plenty of pop, a mellow body, and the kind of versatility you want from a single go-to snare.

The real hook is the value pitch. Waxman frames it as a legitimate alternative to the Ludwig Black Beauty at a noticeably friendlier price, calling it pro-level metal without the boutique sticker. If you've been eyeing brass but balking at the cost, the tuning demos around the two-minute mark are worth your time.

Pick up the snare here.

Ulysses Owens Jr. sitting down at Musora Studios to flip Pearl Jam's "Even Flow" into jazz-fusion is the kind of cross-genre pairing that earns a full watch. Backed by Generation Y, the band works through the tune live, finding montuno breakdowns, Afro-Latin pockets, and open solo space where the grunge riff used to sit.

It's the first single from an upcoming album called Kind of Grunge, a Seattle-sound tribute modeled on Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. Between performances, the players talk through the shared DNA of jazz and grunge, the lineage that shaped them, and why jazz remains one of the most collaborative languages a band can speak. Worth it for the arranging choices alone, and Owens' comping behind the horn solos is a clinic in how to push a fusion band without crowding it.

Steve White playing "This is Day One" live in the Drum Dog Experience room at the UK Drum Show 2025 is exactly the kind of thing worth four minutes of your morning. The track is from Earth-o-naut (Terry Shaughnessy)'s debut record, "This is Nowhere, This is Everywhere," and White approaches it with the taste and economy you'd expect from someone who has spent decades shaping songs rather than showing off on them.

It's a clip from his full masterclass, so think of it as the trailer: phrasing choices, dynamic restraint, and the way he locks a groove into a piece of music that isn't built around the drums. Worth sitting with, then revisiting with the original Spotify track to hear how his read compares.

Get full access to Drum Dog here.

Simon Phillips, the man behind Toto, Jeff Beck, and The Who, just dropped a 54-minute double bass masterclass from the Drumeo vault, and the framework is built around four exercises that move from raw stick-and-foot vocabulary all the way to full-kit orchestration. Walk away from this one understanding how Simon builds ambidexterity from the ground up: feet treated like hands, rudiments mirrored below the kit, and groupings stretched until your weak side stops feeling weak.

The structure tells you how to practice it. Start with Exercise 1, singles into doubles into triples into quads on the feet, slow enough that both kicks sound identical. That last part is the whole game. If your left (or right, if you're left-footed) is lighter, quieter, or late, drop the tempo until it isn't. Then move to paradiddle variations on the feet, which is where independence between the legs actually gets built. Exercise 3 opens up odd groupings, fives and sevens across the kicks, the stuff that makes fills sound less like a machine gun and more like a phrase. Exercise 4 is the orchestration challenge: take what your feet now do and spread it around toms and cymbals.

A few things to avoid. Don't chase speed before the doubles are even. Don't bury the work under a double pedal if you have one kit and a single pedal, the heel-toe and slide concepts still apply. Pick one exercise, one tempo, ten minutes a day. The takeaway: treat your feet like hands and the kit opens up.

@CARLIN MUCCULAR

Carlin Muccular wants you to stop practicing the paradiddle as a hands-only exercise. His angle: the reason your chops and fills sound stiff is that you skip the step where the bass drum gets woven into the rudiment itself. Walk away from this one understanding that a rudiment isn't finished until your right foot is part of the conversation.

The paradiddle (RLRR LRLL) is the obvious place to start because the alternating singles and doubles already create natural pockets for a kick to land. Try it four ways at a slow tempo, somewhere around 70 BPM, before you push it. First, play the paradiddle on the snare and add a kick on every downbeat. Then move the kick to the "ah" of each beat so it sits underneath the doubles. Then drop the kick in unison with your left hand only. Then with your right only. Each variation rewires how you hear the sticking and gives you a different fill vocabulary on the kit. The common mistake is rushing past the slow tempo: if the kick isn't locked exactly with the intended hand, the whole pattern smears the moment you orchestrate it around the toms. Isolate the foot first, then add the hands back in. Once one variation feels automatic, move the right hand to a tom and you've got an instant fill.

The takeaway: rudiments only become chops when your kick is part of the sticking, not a spectator to it.