Gretch turns 130!!

If you're a musician (or not), then you have definitely heard of the Gretch brand. Maybe you've even used their products. Well, this year is their 130th anniversary. That's an amazing feat by any company and especially one that makes instruments.
Since 1883, Gretsch has proudly been making drums in the USA. For many, owning an American-made Gretsch drum set is a dream come true - a hard-earned return on the investment a drummer makes to become the best player they can be. 
The original Gretsch factories were located in Brooklyn, New York. It was there that a design formula was developed that would result in what drummers all over the world would come to recognize as "That Great Gretsch Sound.™" Today, Ridgeland, South Carolina is the home of Gretsch Drums and the craftsmen there are still using the same techniques and formulas to build the highly coveted Gretsch USA Custom Drums and Gretsch Brooklyn Series Drums.
I personally owned a Gretch kit and loved it. Unfortunately, due to circumstances out of my control I had to put it into someone else's hands. 
I loved taking it apart and giving it the good 'ol rub down (nothing perverted) and putting it back together and enjoying the beauty. The sound was great, and even in the studio it was amazing. Live performances were just as good. My belief is that you just can't beat a Gretch!

DRUMGASM....a supergroup of drummers????

A new "Supergroup of Drummers"  has been formed including Janet Weiss of Wild Flag, Zach Hill of Death Grips, and Matt Cameron of Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam. The three bashers have come together to form a drumming supergroup, dubbing their upcoming album, Drumgasm.
Portland label Jackpot Records currently has a webpage devoted to the new project.
"Three people, three drum kits, some microphones and a reel of tape – that's it: pure spontaneity," reads the listing. "There's nothing out there that's very comparable to this – maybe the Voodoo drum ritual music of the Drummers of the Societe Absolument Guinin, is all I can think of, though admittedly even that is a pretty far cry."
 This collection of skin-hitters should be out  on Aug. 27th. You can pre-order your copy on
Jackpot Records.com.

 "After the session was done and mixed, I was given access to the recordings, and I spent hours listening closely, parsing out the details in what seems at first like a Niagara Falls of sound. In fact it's very possible to pick out what each of the drummers is doing at a given time and zoom in on action/reaction, call and response, time games, shifting levels of synchronization and de-synchronization, repetition and pattern...it's all there if you want to dissect it. But eventually I found that simply relaxing into the sound, riding the contours of energy, density, movement, was probably the most rewarding way of listening to this music. At this level, the experience is deeply calming, as the sound becomes a river, sometimes roaring in a torrent, other times opening up to reveal subsurface details, but always moving, flowing."
"So for us, the freaks, the heads, this is gold: masters of their instruments in a frenzy of creation - creation for its own sake, for the love of music and sound and drums, a universe away from music as product, musician as brand. Dig it."
-Armitage Shanks
Jackpot Records
Thank you.

Robert "RZ" Zildjian--1923-2013

March 28, 2013 - Robert "RZ" Zildjian, founder of Sabian, one of the largest cymbal makers in the world, has died, according to the company's website.  He was 89.



It all goes back to 1618, in the city of Constantinople, where an Armenian man by the name of Avedis had hopes of becoming an alchemist. He was experimenting with different combinations of silver, iron and copper when he got an interesting end result from one batch - a sheet of metal that could make unique sounds without shattering! Instantly, Avedis realized what his discovery meant –cymbals forged from this metal would be better than other cymbals sold anywhere. Excited about the possibilities from his discovery, Avedis plotted to create a business making cymbals from his new metal alloy. He needed a name for the new company. Taking the Turkish word for a cymbal-maker (“zil”) and adding the Armenian suffix “ian” (meaning “son of”) to it, he came up with “Zildjian” meaning “son of cymbal maker”. In 1623, cymbal production at the new Avedis Zildjian Company got underway. 


Skip ahead a few years later and you now have Sabian Cymbals, thanks to a man known as"RZ".
Robert founded Sabian in 1981 following a dispute with his brother, Armand, over control of the Avedis Zildjian Company, which was founded in Boston by their father in 1928. The Zildjian family has been making cymbals in their native Turkey since the early-17th century. Zildjian chose the name Sabian by taking the first two letters of the names of his three children: Sally, Bill and Andy.
The two companies remain competitors and world leaders in the cymbal business.
Sabian cymbals are still made in the southern New Brunswick town where the Zildjian company once had its production line.

Zildjian ran the second-largest cymbal manufacturer in the world behind only the Avedis Zildjian Company, according to several music equipment websites.
Robert Zildjian is survived by his wife, Willi, their three children and eight grandchildren. A full biography on Zildjian’s life can be found at Sabian’s website.
“We draw comfort from the knowledge that his spirit will live on in the music made by artists the world over.”--Unkown

PEARL--PROJECT 108

Pearl, the world's largest manufacturer of drums & percussion, is asking drummers all around the world to send in videos of themselves playing at 108 beats per minute.

Send us the Youtube link and you may be featured along with some of our top Pearl artists like Todd Sucherman, Terence Higgins, Scott Johnson, and Omar Hakim.

This is a call to ALL drummers. As long as you’re playing Pearl gear, you’re good. That means drumset, marching drums, hand percussion...any Pearl gear will do!

This is your chance to show the world what you’ve got. Impress us with your finely-tuned skills or show us your creativity with something we’ve never seen before!

These 4 bars are yours to do whatever you want and we can’t wait to see it!

You must submit your video by Wednesday January 2nd, 2013 to be included in Wave One of Project 108. 
http://www.pearlproject108.com/