It can be a great experience and improve your drumming if you have the right co-drummer.

I played in a fusion band called Red Reign with a percussionist, well he was more than a percussionist, he had a sort of hy-bred kit, with a hand snare, and small bass drum so he could provide the back-beat sometimes. It was great, he let me lay down the groove and then complimented what I did. Then sometimes we reversed it.

Second time was in an Allman Bros. band called Revival, at first I partnered with a percussionist only, that was great, another great percussionist. Ironically he had never heard of the Allmans before we hired him.

Then we added a second drummer. The first guy talked a good game and then overplayed, and stepped all over everything I did. Very aggravating.

Second guy was great in practice, first gig he got so stoned he couldn't seem to remember what to do with drumsticks. (that was his last gig)

Third guy said he would be Jaimo and I could be Butch Trucks, after the first set he caught a buzz and I thought he was turning into Trucks but no, he turned into Keith Moon.

Fourth guy was a charm. In fact so good we could both switch parts sometimes during the song. I learned stuff from him. We made a lot of eye contact, we were simpatico! My wife kidded me that we had a "Bromance"

He was too good to play in a cover band for long. He moved to Nashville and last I heard he was touring.

Do it! But find the right drumming partner!!!!

For myself, it's an absolute joy when you're playing with another guy that "gets it".

I've done it a bunch of times and I've been lucky that the other guys were seasoned veterans. So it was all about both of us trying our best to drop it in the slot and intuitively, we both knew when to briefly shift our roles to either "lead drums" or "rhythm drums", dependent on the moment. Also, both of us could either play alternate parts to thicken the groove or on the other hand, both grab onto the same groove when it needed to steamroll.

That was with three different guys, all at opposite ends of the musical spectrum. One toured with Deniece Williams for quite awhile and one of the best technical guys around. Trading fours with that guy was always a soul-destroying experience for me. :-) (Ask Roy Burns or Bernard Purdie about Chad Rager. Gawd, how I'd like to be any of those guys!)

Another was a Nashville guy that toured with Jerry Reed, Tanya Tucker, and a bunch of others.

The last guy, for one thing, was in the Southern Rock All-Stars, taking the place of Jackson Spires from Blackfoot after he died. Guy's deep into Motorhead, for example.

EACH ONE of these guys grooved as hard as the next, like puttin' a hand in a glove.

The only reason I bring up these guys' backgrounds is to demonstrate the point that it doesn't matter what a drummer's musical forte may be, if they "get it", then it's an absolute ball to get to tag-team with them on 2 kits.

Absolutely the biggest fun I've ever had tag-team drumming is recording with patterns we'd written out that bobbed and weaved in between each other's. It's like listening to one drumkit in stereo but live in the room. The engineer was pacing about the room initially, asking things like, "How'm I s'posed to get both kits to sound the same?" When we asked, "Why would you WANT to?", he totally relaxed and had as much fun as WE did. For example, I knew the other guy always used an open 24" BD, as do I, but I also brought along a 22" with a cutout front head and some muffling, which is what I wound up using to take advantage of the diiferent characters between the 2. Man, get some syncopated stuff between the 2, and you can give the groove a character that would be impossible (for me, anyway) to achieve on a single kit.

Drumming can be even MORE fun when it becomes a team sport.

Excellent idea for next time!

I'll admit to choosing the two clear kits because it would look cool, but now I can't wait to try it with one wood and one acrylic kit. Or two wood kits, one Slingerland and one Yamaha.

The term "double drumming" defines an early 20th Century technique frequently used by drummers. The technique is still seen today used by many great show drummers during solos. The drummer reaches down to play the batter head of their bass drum with a stick; simultaneously accompanying the patterns their foot is playing with the bass drum pedal. The overall effect is one of rolling two separate bass drums. I know this topic was referring to several drumset players playing together, but wanted to throw this factoid in for the sake of historicity.

I heard that the term double drumming was originally used to refer to the time when drummers first began playing the bass drum and snare drum, (invention of the bass pedal) previously the job of 2 people. Some drummers wanted to be paid more since this skill saved the band the cost of a second drummer so the term emphasized the extra work they were doing.