Great replies everyone! I've been listening to a lot of Landau recently. What's interesting to me is that his playing style these days is quite different from the 80s rock/fusion style he (among others, like Lukather and Dann Huff) were known for. He's got a lot more blues and jazz in his playing th...

Gaddabout wrote:Oz Noy by a factor of 1,000. The dude is just funky.

But as a wanna-be guitarist, currently digging on Larry Carlton's Steely Dan stuff.

Hiram Bullock was great with Steely Dan as well.

Wow, the Aja album has SIX guest guitarists. Carlton, Dias, Graydon, Khan, Parks, Ritenour...geez.

Hey HOD'ers, been a little while since I've been around these parts. :P As drummers, who are your favorite guitarists? I love a lot of the usual suspects, as it were, like Micheal Landau, Steve Lukather, Scoot Henderson, Frank Gambale. I also really enjoy many of the other great studio players like ...

Good article. Once music became just another way of making money off the masses, it was inevitable that the quality would decline. Profit trumps performance, and technology has enabled this social reality. Technology, of course, is not a bad thing in of itself. It's the (mis)use of technology for ri...

F*cking wow guys!?! It is absolutely shocking to me that you have such a low opinion of your audience, or would be audience. First of all this whole thing about old guys calling new music crap is complete shit. It's different, leave it at that. Second, saying music isn't as important to young peopl...

No faith in the average human to have good taste? Most people will spend neither the time nor the effort to find the truly talented. How are people supposed to know the good from the bad, when there is so much bad music available? Well, they can't. So they stick with something that is safe, like on...

Groove and how you (YOU) do it is the same as the way that you speak. I'd like to be able to articulate as well as Hitchens, but that just will not happen. I've recently come to the mindset that I'll never be able to truly cop someone's grooves or licks, because I'm ME, not them. The reason anyone ...

Just to be clear, Gadd has chops, they're entirely unique to him, and they're very challenging to reproduce (though many have tried). His hands are really, really good and his feet are skilled and powerful like a dancer. In fact, his feet are probably his real secret. Fantastic dexterity with both ...

I love Steve Jordan. A great example of someone who can play chops games with the best of them, yet deliberately emphasizes groove and feel.

What makes drummers like Steve Gadd great? This question may seem absurd, but I'd argue that it is very relevant musically. The key to drummers like Gadd, Jim Keltner, Jeff Porcaro, Vinnie, and other greats is their phrasing and feel, not their technique. Vinnie has far more "chops" than K...