Stop memorizing fills 🧠 metal drummers fake jazz 😂 Simon Phillips in 19/16

Matt Halpern carves through Periphery's "Everyone Dies Alone" in under a minute, the Meinl cymbals cutting clean over those punishing prog-metal kicks. It's a tight, high-density showcase of his signature blend of pocket and polyrhythmic precision, the kind of clip that rewards a second and third watch. Worth the 58 seconds for any djent fan studying Halpern's hands.

@Rick Beato

Simon Phillips casually unspools a 19/16 groove in a Rick Beato clip that has racked up nearly 750k views, and it sounds less like a math problem than a pocket. The way he lays the odd grouping inside a steady, almost funky feel is the whole lesson. Worth the 30 seconds just to count along and fail.

@Sajan Drummer

Jesus Molina takes "A Night in Tunisia" and plays the piano and drum kit simultaneously, trading Dizzy's bebop line with his right hand while keeping the Afro Cuban groove alive with his feet and left hand. The clip has pulled 341K views, and it's easy to see why: independence this clean usually requires two people. Worth a minute of your scroll to study the coordination.

Jim Riley pulls back the curtain on the hand hammered cymbals anchoring his hybrid rig for Rascal Flatts' 2026 tour, in a quick Modern Drummer Tour Kit Rundown with David Frangioni. The clip is short, but the focus is clear: how those darker, more complex hand hammered voices sit inside a setup that also leans heavily on electronics and signature snares, and how Riley's ergonomic placement keeps everything within easy reach on a big country stage. It's a useful peek for anyone weighing hand hammered cymbals against modern, machine-finished options, especially in a hybrid context where acoustic warmth has to coexist with triggered sounds.

The DrumDial bundle pairs the brand's tympanic-pressure tuning gauge with an Evans E-Rings Rock Pack in 10, 12, 14, and 16 inch sizes, a one-two punch for dialing in pitch and taming overtones without ever striking the head. Because it reads pressure instead of torque, the DrumDial holds up in loud rooms where ear tuning falls apart. At $75.94 with the muffling rings included, it's a practical kit for anyone tired of guessing.

ZackGrooves rounds up ten metal drummers and dares them to fake their way through jazz, with Saxologic and Aaron Huntley judging whether anyone can actually swing. The premise is the joke, but the 32-minute runtime turns into a genuine clinic on what separates the two languages: how ride patterns breathe, where the backbeat disappears, and why double-kick instincts betray you the second a brush touches a snare.

It's chaotic, often hilarious, and surprisingly educational once the laughter settles. Stick with it for the moments where a metal player suddenly clicks into a real jazz feel, and for the post-mortem from the judges explaining exactly what gave each drummer away. Worth the full sit-down if you've ever wondered what jazz vocabulary you're missing.

Danny Seraphine's first performance in 16 years, captured at the Modern Drummer Festival 2006, is the kind of footage that rewards a quiet ten minutes. The Chicago co-founder had been off the touring radar for the better part of two decades, and Hudson's vault clip catches him stepping back behind the kit with everything that made his playing distinct: the jazz-leaning phrasing, the orchestral approach to fills, the patience.

The roughly ten-minute cut pairs the performance with a backstage interview and educational segments, so you get the playing and the thinking behind it in one sitting. If you've only known Seraphine through "25 or 6 to 4" and the Chicago catalog, this is a useful window into how he actually constructs ideas around a song.

@Przemek Smaczny

Przemek Smaczny built a short, sharp drum chop around one of the most familiar rudiments on the kit: the single paradiddle. The takeaway here is less about copying his exact lick and more about seeing how RLRR LRLL can stop being a practice pad exercise and start becoming musical vocabulary the moment you spread it around the drums and add the feet.

Start by playing the paradiddle as written, hands only, at a tempo where every note sounds even. 80 bpm in sixteenths is plenty. Once it locks, move the doubles. Leave the singles on the snare and send the RR to a tom, then the LL to a different tom. That alone gives you a usable fill. Next, drop your bass drum under the first note of each grouping so the phrase has a pulse you can feel, not just count. The common mistake is rushing the doubles because they feel easier than the singles. They are not. Make the second note of each double speak as loud as the first, or the whole chop collapses into mush. Once the orchestration feels natural, push the tempo in small jumps and try inverting it, starting on the left, so your weaker hand leads the phrase into the toms.

One rudiment, a little orchestration, a kick under the right note, and suddenly you have a chop. That is the lesson worth stealing.

Mike Johnston wants you to stop hoarding fills like trading cards and start thinking in groupings instead. The premise of his Odd Grouping Concept is simple: if you can phrase 16th notes in groups of 3, 5, or 7 against a 4/4 pulse, you stop playing memorized licks and start improvising fills that sound fresh every time you take one.

The core idea is the gap between groupings and subdivisions. Subdivisions are how you count the bar. Groupings are how you cluster those notes into musical chunks that cross the barline in interesting ways. A group of 5 played in steady 16ths won't line up with the downbeat until five bars in, and that built-in tension is what makes the phrase sound composed rather than canned. Johnston walks it from hands-only into a linear fill, then into a more advanced version that adds feet. Start by picking one grouping, say 3, and looping it as a single sticking around the kit at a slow tempo, maybe 70 bpm, until you can hear where beat 1 lands without counting. Then resolve the phrase cleanly on the downbeat of the next bar. That resolution is the part most drummers skip, and it's why their odd groupings sound like mistakes instead of ideas.

Memorized fills run out. A concept doesn't.