Awesome Drumming

Few drum fills are as iconic than the one in Phil Collins’ Something in the Air Tonight. Musician Jared Falk likes the rhythm so much that he had dozens of drums set up in and around the Drumeo studio so he could play it a few extra times. If you don’t have time to watch the whole performance, skip to 3:07.

We enjoy watching Drumeo’s series, where they ask musicians to create the drum track for a song they’ve never heard. In this session, they challenged Julliard jazz professor Ulysses Owens Jr. to perform the Nirvana song In Bloom. Ulysses’ interpretation both touches on the original and adds some new flourishes compared to Dave Grohl’s original.

(PG-13: Language) Drumeo frequently invites percussionists to improvise rhythms to songs they’ve never heard or played before. In this session, they asked Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith to take on the Thirty Seconds to Mars song The Kill (Bury Me), and he totally nailed it despite his lack of familiarity with the track.

Richard Rey aka Office Drummer, has a unique skill. He accepts song requests, then live streams an improvised drum beat regardless of whether or not he’s played it before. His performances include Beastie Boys’ Intergalactic, Outkast’s Hey Ya!, Green Day’s Brain Stew/Jaded, and MGMT’s Electric Feel.

Musician Timothy Fletcher is one of the most talented drummers we’ve encountered. Here, he shows off his mad snare drum skills as he juggles his sticks and swaps some out in the middle of the performance. Be sure to check out his TikTok or Instagram channels for more amazing drumming.

Percussionist Dennis Chambers has performed with acts including Santana, Parliament/Funkadelic, George Duke, and CAB. Drumeo challenged the legendary jazz-funk musician to listen to Tool’s Schism for the first time ever, after which he improvised a killer new drum track.

During a performance in Paris, France, a group of 1000 musicians gathered to pay tribute to late drummer Taylor Hawkins with an epic performance of the Foo Fighters’ track My Hero. A few years back, Rockin’ 1000 played the Foo’s Learn to Fly.

If you look around, you can find a bargain-basement drum kit for about $200. But if even that’s not in your budget, you could do what Deden Noy did, and make your own drums from plastic buckets, water bottles, scrap metal, and packing tape. Check out his YouTube channel for more performances.

Crazy as it sounds, Snarky Puppy drummer Larnell Lewis says he never heard the Metallica track Enter Sandman before now. But it didn’t take much time for him to pick up the rhythm, which he proved with a flawless performance right after his first listen in this video from Drumeo.

The 1981 Rush instrumental track YYZ is known for its intense rhythm track, but that didn’t stop musician Mitch Bruzzese from performing the daunting track live for his Twitch followers – while wearing a blindfold for the entire 4+ minute song.

Drummer David Dockery’s latest rhythm-matching exercise lines up his drumbeats with one of the many classic improv bits from Rick and Morty, as the duo tunes into one of the multiverse’s infinite TV channels, and encounters a salesman with an eye problem.

Drummer David Dockery continues his series in which he synchronizes his drumming with dialogue, this time adding some rhythm to the words of Peter Griffin. We’re still not sure that he can actually drum all 50 states in a 1/4 of a second though.

Drummer David Dockery is back with another rhythmic reinterpretation of a classic scene. This time, he transposed the dialogue from the famous fizzy lifting drink argument from Willy Wonka into a drumbeat. Listen to the beat without the voices here. “I said GOOD DAY!”

Their stage schtick is cheesy, but that takes nothing away from the talents of these dueling percussionists as they both play on the same drumset during a performance of the classic surf tune Wipeout! by Rich K. and the Allnighters, featuring drummer Steve Moore.

Drummer David Dockery synced up his rhythms to match the dialogue from Charlie’s Pepe Silvia meltdown on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It’d be cool if he did a live performance like this with scenes from a bunch of TV shows and movies playing on a big screen.

Night Verses drummer Aric Improta shows off an impressive bit of showmanship in which he performs a backflip between two drum kits, and manages to keep the rhythm going with only the briefest of pauses in his solo.