Joel Rothman

Son of the Mini Monster for Rock Drumming

Before the advent of rock music, swing and jazz drummers brought greater prominence to the bass drum by playing bass 'kicks' based mostly on eighth-note triplets. Later, with the ongoing development of the rock idiom, the skills of the drumming community became even more developed with respect to the bass drum, as players began laying down more intricate rhythmic patterns using sixteenth-notes, sixteenth triplets, and thirty-second notes. This study concentrates specifically on developing simple to complex-sounding bass drum patterns against a variety of rock cymbal beats in various time signatures. The snare drum is played only as a backbeat throughout. For those of you familiar with the MINI MONSTER BOOK OF ROCK DRUMMING, this book can be considered its offspring - hence, the title, SON OF. While the MINI MONSTER BOOK is all encompassing, covering just about every aspect of the topic, for his first book, the son decided to be more specialized, with his focus purely on the bass drum. Although the vast majority of the book is for rock drumming, the mini monster's son has a certain interest in jazz, and so the final several pages have been given over to developing bass drum patterns within the jazz idiom.