Neil Peart transcriptions | 10 Rush drum parts

Transcription books live or die on the tracklist. This one picked well.

Francesco Vecchio has released Neil Peart: 10 Drum Transcriptions, covering Rush from 1975 to 1984 — the decade where Peart went from a busy new drummer to the reason half of us bought a second rack tom.

The tracklist is the story

All ten, in full:

• Fly By Night
• 2112
• Xanadu
• Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres
• La Villa Strangiato
• Tom Sawyer
• YYZ
• The YYZ drum solo from Exit… Stage Left
• Subdivisions
• Distant Early Warning

A proper spread, rather than a greatest-hits grab: the early hustle, the long-form Hemispheres-era workouts nobody transcribes because they take a week, the Moving Pictures pair everyone wants, then the shift into electronics on Signals and Grace Under Pressure.

Including the live YYZ solo is the smart call. Solos are where transcriptions usually go vague, and it is the one piece here you cannot really learn by ear at speed.

Formats, and a note on AI

Paperback, hardcover and eBook, through Amazon, Etsy, Gumroad and other retailers. Both printed editions bundle a digital copy; the hardcover adds a bonus digital edition of Vecchio’s earlier Neil Peart: An Introduction to His Drumming Style.

The publisher states plainly that no AI was used. Worth saying out loud, given how much machine-generated notation has quietly turned up in drum sheet music lately — most of it confidently wrong about anything harder than a backbeat.

Prices are not in the announcement, so we are not going to guess. Check the retailer.

Vecchio is no newcomer, either: he runs Francis’ Drumming Blog, trained in jazz drums at Saint Louis College of Music in Rome, and has self-published transcription collections since 2021.

Final thoughts

Peart material never stops selling, and this one earns its place by going after the parts that are genuinely hard to pull off a record.

Working towards it? Start with our breakdowns of Tom Sawyer and YYZ — then look at the kits Neil Peart actually played them on.

Source: Drumming News Network.