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The second edition of the one of the best-selling original Groove Essentials is finally here and features a DVD with 53 brand new grooves for intermediate to advanced players. You can learn the difference between ghost and grace notes (while being encouraged to experiment with both in all six groove “families”) as well as important “go-to” grooves, like the Train, Bo-Diddley and Texas shuffle. For more advanced players and professionals, GE 2.0 introduces the concepts of groove construction, interpretation and manipulation- training drummers to think like musicians in order to maximize their full potential.

The grooves span from rock, funk, R’n’B/hip-hop, jazz (sticks and brushes), world/specialty, extreme tempos, all-purpose, hybrid, rideless, classic and odd-meters.

Tommy Igoe continues where he finished on the previous GE DVD with a more vibrant and fresh approach to drumming in all styles. The grooves are inspiring and provide a practical method to excel as a musician.

Much like the previous DVD, GE 2 can be used as a traditional learning tool where you can start from beginning to end or as an encyclopedia that the viewer can pick and choose specific grooves to learn. There’s also a free poster with all the grooves played on the DVD.

In this DVD, Tommy talks about the issues like feel, time and playing for the music and not your own ego. The play along tracks, which are sometimes a little bit cheesy, enable the student to hear and see how a professional musician can relate to the style of the music, interact with band and identify relationships between the genres and concepts such as swing rock grooves.

Tommy doesn’t fail to miss anything in this DVD, he displays the way each exercise can be played effectively, yet gives the viewer the opportunity to develop find their own musical personality while learning these new grooves.

Groove essentials 2.0 in my opinion, should be tipped at one of the best educational drum DVD’s for 2009. Good work Tommy!

Adrian Graham/mikedolbear.com

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