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On The Beaten Path Progressive Rock

“On the Beaten Path Progressive Rock: The Drummer’s Guide to the Genre and the Legends Who Defined It”  By Rich Lackowski

This gem is brought to you by Rich Lackowski and Alfred Publishing and follows the enormously popular “On the Beaten Path: The Drummer’s Guide to Musical Styles and the Legends Who Defined Them”

Broken down into begginer, intermediate, and advanced levels, Rick Lackowski always starts out with a concise musician biography and an overview of the hardware used by each. Lackowski then tackles on average three songs from each artist, and with legends featured such as Gavin Harrison, Danny Carey, Neil Peart, Carl Palmer to name a few, get ready for many hours of fun!

This is where Lackowski shines! He has a gift that enables him to break down the core elements of a musical piece and translate those ideas into easily understandable written notation. In a sense, he spoon feeds the elements so that you not only understand the notation, but rather the emphasis becomes on the feel of how the piece is played. This becomes especially important when he explores various polyrythms featured in this book.

Another big plus is the CD at Rich Lackowski includes, where most of the examples are recorded by Rich himself. This is not one of those lame drum machine recordings either. Lackowski records the parts of the studies necessary to give you an audial sense of what your looking at. He stays true to form and proves also that he is a very talented musician and instructor.

Here’s the bottom line; most drummers will readily admit that they devloped their individual styles by adopting the creative techniques of others and this book provides a short cut as it offers a well rounded exposure within a particaular genre. This enables the drummer to add some new perspectives and techniques to their respective arsenal, that they themselves can use as a spring board to create their own individuality. You will also be quite surprised when Lackowski demonstrates that what always sounded difficult, may be downright easy.

On the Beaten Path: Progressive Rock is a must for anybody who wants to get on the inside track to understanding their heroes.

Tags: Alfred Publishing, On the Beaten Path: Progressive Rock, Rich Lackowski