Drummer Library
28 drummers. Every stage, move, technique and song study opens straight into a playable workout — nothing is locked, jump anywhere you like.
Progressive / Technical
Mike Portnoy
Dream Theater
Progressive-metal architect — coordination, orchestration, odd meters
Portnoy builds drum parts like a composer builds a score: linear phrases, huge double-kick vocabulary, tom orchestration around a big kit, and constant metric surprises, all locked to the band's stop/start writing.
10 stages · 9 moves · 11 songs
Neil Peart
Rush
Precision and orchestration — every fill composed, every part earning its place
Peart treats the kit as an orchestra: huge tom movements, deliberate cymbal choices, ride bell patterns and snare-to-tom phrasing, all written with the same care as the riffs and lyrics around them.
10 stages · 9 moves · 11 songs
Danny Carey
Tool
Odd meters, polyrhythmic independence, and a hypnotic, orchestrated kit.
Carey builds vast, meditative grooves out of odd meters, tabla-influenced hand technique, and polyrhythmic ostinatos across a huge, orchestrated kit, turning mathematics into something hypnotic.
10 stages · 9 moves · 10 songs
Gavin Harrison
Porcupine Tree
Rhythmic illusion and groove displacement
Harrison makes 4/4 sound like it is lying to you. Grooves that seem to float over the bar, ghost notes that whisper, and fills that land in places your ear does not expect.
10 stages · 9 moves · 10 songs
Terry Bozzio
Frank Zappa / solo
Ostinato architect — four-limb independence, melodic drums, odd meters
Bozzio treats the kit as a melodic instrument built on top of rock-solid ostinatos: one or two limbs hold an unshakeable pattern while the others play free, tuned toms sing actual pitches, and odd meters are phrased so smoothly they feel inevitable rather than counted.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Bill Bruford
Yes / King Crimson / Earthworks
The thinking drummer's drummer — crisp snare voice, odd meters, interlocking parts
Bruford's playing is built on a distinctive, dry, articulate snare sound, an ear for interlocking parts that leave space for the rest of the band, and a restless curiosity that took him from Yes's flowing odd-meter rock through King Crimson's angular interlocking and into Earthworks' jazz-informed electronic textures.
10 stages · 10 moves · 9 songs
Thomas Lang
Solo / clinician
Independence taken to its limit — four-way control, ambidexterity, gospel chops
Lang builds his playing from the ground up as a system: every limb trained to independence from every other, ambidextrous technique so either hand or foot can lead, and hyper-controlled double-pedal work and gospel-influenced chops layered on top so nothing is ever accidental.
10 stages · 10 moves · 9 songs
Rock / Alternative / Grunge
Matt Cameron
Pearl Jam / Soundgarden
Heavy hitter with a jazz brain — power, odd phrasing and taste in equal parts.
Cameron plays like a rock drummer who also studied odd meters for fun. Huge backbeat and cymbal wash from the Soundgarden years, married to the dynamic, song-serving pocket he brought to Pearl Jam. Ghost notes, offbeat accents and groove displacement sit inside grooves that still feel simple from the outside.
10 stages · 9 moves · 10 songs
Sean Kinney
Alice in Chains
Dark, heavy pocket built from repetition, space and tension.
Kinney rarely plays a note that doesn't serve the riff. His grooves are simple on paper but hit like a hammer, built from half-time feels, syncopated accents and cymbal placement that creates tension rather than releasing it. Fills are short and blunt, dynamics are wide, and everything follows the guitar riff like it's welded to it.
10 stages · 8 moves · 10 songs
Dave Grohl
Foo Fighters / Nirvana
The biggest backbeat in rock, played dead in the pocket.
Grohl hits harder than almost anyone and still lands every note exactly where it belongs. Simple vocabulary, huge dynamics, fast one-handed eighths, and fills that always resolve on beat one.
10 stages · 9 moves · 11 songs
Chad Smith
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Deep funk pocket, big rock backbeat
Chad hits like a rock drummer but grooves like a funk drummer. Huge backbeat, laid-back 16th-note hi-hat work, and a pocket that locks tight with one of the busiest bass players around.
10 stages · 9 moves · 11 songs
Taylor Hawkins
Foo Fighters
Melodic arena-rock fills over tight, powerful backbeats
Hawkins built his playing on tight, punchy arena-rock backbeats topped with fills that sing like a second melody, mixing the syncopated precision of Stewart Copeland with the manic power of Keith Moon. He knows exactly when to hold back and when to let a fill explode, always serving the song's energy first.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Stewart Copeland
The Police
Reggae-rock hi-hat intricacy, rimshots and restless syncopation
Copeland fuses reggae and ska phrasing with punk energy: a busy, precisely controlled hi-hat, cracking rimshots and cross-stick voicing, splash accents dropped in unexpected places, and a ride bell that syncopates against the beat rather than sitting on it. Everything is played with tight dynamic restraint, so the intricacy never overwhelms the song.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
John Bonham
Led Zeppelin
Behind-the-beat groove, triplet feel and a room-shaking single kick
Bonham plays fractionally behind the beat with an almost lazy-sounding pocket, then explodes into triplet-based fills and blistering single-pedal footwork. The feel is huge, human and dynamic — quiet verses that detonate into massive choruses, all captured in a real room rather than close-miked and tight.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Phil Rudd
AC/DC
Immovable time, total minimalism and a pocket you can set a clock by
Rudd plays almost nothing, and that is exactly the point: a rock-steady groove, a consistent hi-hat, and a backbeat that never rushes or drags no matter how loud the guitars get. There are barely any fills, no unnecessary decoration, and every arrangement choice serves the song rather than the drummer.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Metal
Lars Ulrich
Metallica
Thrash precision, riff-locked arrangements, and relentless right-hand drive.
Ulrich built his vocabulary around locking to Metallica's riffs note-for-note, driving thrash tempos with galloping right-hand patterns, and composing long-form arrangements with tom-heavy fills and double kick.
10 stages · 9 moves · 11 songs
Dave Lombardo
Slayer
The godfather of thrash — raw speed, tribal power, relentless aggression
Lombardo plays thrash like a street fight: fast alternating double bass with real swing in it, skank beats that punch instead of blur, tribal tom patterns that sound like war drums, and fills that explode out of nowhere rather than counting neatly into the next bar.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Gene Hoglan
Death / Testament / Strapping Young Lad
The Atomic Clock — inhuman precision, orchestrated double kick, unshakeable time
Hoglan earned the nickname Atomic Clock for a reason: his double kick sits under the most chaotic riffing imaginable and never wavers, while his tom work is orchestrated with a composer's sense of where each drum belongs. He treats extreme metal drumming as a precision instrument, not a wall of noise.
10 stages · 10 moves · 9 songs
George Kollias
Nile
Extreme-speed specialist — blast-beat endurance, ankle control, technical precision
Kollias treats extreme speed as an athletic discipline: relentless blast beats, brutal double-bass endurance, and total ankle control that lets him sustain inhuman tempos for entire albums of technical Egyptian-themed death metal without losing articulation.
10 stages · 10 moves · 9 songs
Joey Jordison
Slipknot
Machine-precise groove-metal speed with a relentless left foot
Jordison combined thrash-level speed with groove metal's syncopated stomp, playing with machine-like consistency while keeping the hi-hat foot constantly busy underneath. His parts feel programmed-tight but are full of human aggression, built to survive nine people making noise on stage at once.
10 stages · 10 moves · 9 songs
Mario Duplantier
Gojira
Jazz-informed metal phrasing — dynamics, tom orchestration, polyrhythmic riff-locking
Duplantier plays metal like a jazz drummer who happens to hit very hard: constant dynamic shading, deeply orchestrated tom parts that feel almost tribal, and a habit of locking into polyrhythmic riff figures rather than just keeping straight time underneath them.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Modern / Contemporary
Chris Turner
Oceans Ate Alaska
Hyper-technical progressive metalcore — gospel chops meet blast-beat brutality
Turner plays like a gospel chop drummer who got dropped into a metalcore band: linear hand phrasing borrowed straight from church, dropped into breakdowns, blast beats and double-kick riffing with total precision and zero wasted motion.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Anika Nilles
Solo
Odd-subdivision groove writer — quintuplets, septuplets and hybrid grooves that still feel like pop
Nilles writes grooves the way a composer writes melodies: odd subdivisions and hybrid sticking woven so smoothly into the pocket that the maths disappears and all you hear is a hook. Every fill is a musical phrase, never a technical flex for its own sake.
10 stages · 10 moves · 9 songs
Benny Greb
Solo
Sound-of-groove philosopher — dynamics, hand technique and Moeller in service of feel
Greb treats the drum kit as a sound source first and a rhythm machine second: every note is chosen for its dynamic weight and tone, built on efficient Moeller-based hand technique and a deeply practical, structured approach to practice.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Matt Garstka
Animals as Leaders
Polymetric layering and linear coordination over djent's shifting riffs
Garstka builds parts by stacking metrically independent layers — a kick pattern in one grouping, hands in another, a hi-hat ostinato in a third — over Animals as Leaders' djent riffing, using metric modulation to bridge sections that never quite line up the way you expect.
10 stages · 10 moves · 9 songs
Yussef Dayes
Solo / Yussef Kamaal
Jazz-broken-beat feel — fast fluid hands, hi-hat texture, loose-but-locked pocket
Dayes plays like the groove is always slightly ahead of you and slightly behind you at the same time: broken-beat phrasing borrowed from jazz and UK club culture, fast fluid hand runs, constantly shifting hi-hat texture, and a pocket that feels loose right up until you realise it's completely locked.
10 stages · 10 moves · 10 songs
Atmospheric / Experimental
Sólstafir
Sólstafir
Space, patience and tribal weight
Sólstafir's drumming (largely from Guðmundur Óli Pálmason) is built on silence as much as sound — vast dynamic builds, washy crashes used like a hi-hat, and tribal floor-tom grooves that breathe over nine-minute songs.
10 stages · 8 moves · 10 songs
Sigur Rós
Sigur Rós
Mallets, brushes and orchestral patience
Sigur Rós drumming (largely Orri Páll Dýrason, with later contributions) serves texture over technique — mallets and brushes, half-time crescendos, and huge slow builds that treat the whole room as an instrument.
10 stages · 8 moves · 10 songs