2025 - Benjamin Waterson

Wrapping Up 2025

December 31, 2025

Well… where do I even begin? Maybe we should start here: I ended up quitting my band, River Mann, at the start of November. Another one bites the dust. An entire article could have been written about it, but ultimately, it just wasn’t a good fit. An EP we had been working on for over…
Read More…
Review: Rudimental Primer by Mitchell Peters

December 14, 2025

Here’s another rudiment review: Rudimental Primer by Mitchell Peters. Mitchell Peters was a percussionist for the LA Philharmonic and was a pretty prolific author, having written at least 18 method books, including nine snare drum-centric ones with neat color-coded covers. Peters’ first was Odd Meter Rudimental Etudes from 1967, but Rudimental Primer is fairly recent,…
Read More…
Joel Rothman — A (Mostly) Complete Bibliography

December 1, 2025

Every drummer has heard of Joel Rothman, one of the most prolific (and for a while mysterious) drum authors in history, who certainly has the biggest catalogue available of any author currently. While I have yet to talk about Joel at length, I have a few dozen of his books, with, as always, many more…
Read More…
“Heavy Soul Slinger” Drum Transcription — Bernard Purdie

November 16, 2025

What time is it? Why, it’s time for another 70s funk drum break: “Heavy Soul Slinger,” written by Horace Ott for Bernard Purdie and his 1972 album Soul Is… Pretty Purdie.* Bernard Purdie has such an incomprehensibly large discography that I feel like a lot of people simply stumble into any one particular recording of…
Read More…
Drum Notation — 2 Voices Reconsidered

November 5, 2025

If I find myself unable to get new articles out, I’ll often spend time revisiting old articles to touch them up, and sometimes take a peek at older transcriptions. It’s mainly to look at the engraving of my drum notation, just to see if I did anything particularly odd that week — I don’t have…
Read More…