Josh is the guy in the band who’s just so friendly and super, wanting to walk up to you and say, ‘Hey, I’m Josh. I drum in this band, and I’m a big fan of you, and I really appreciate what you do.’ Josh has all these great friends in the industry now.
Unfortunately, like, homework and school wasn’t the thing that I was obsessing over. It was, you know, music and making music and how to like – and drum machines. And we met Rick Rubin, and Rick Rubin had a drum machine. So I would just cut school and go to his house – his dorm room.
I was a drum ‘n’ bass DJ at first but not any one of note.
Every film for every actor is a make-or-break film. I believe every film has the power to break you or make you. So, an actor will treat every film like his last film. That’s the way we need to work, and that’s the way you can drum up that passion needed to do good work.
I got my first drum kit when I was six years old.
Bristol is known for having quite a good success rate of music – Massive Attack and Portishead, that drum and bass, dance music scene. I never listened to that stuff when I was a kid, but my parents did, and my parents knew some of those people.
Once at the White House I was asked to conduct the Drum and Bugle Corp. The man just handed me the baton and I finished the song. It was great. I got to keep the baton.
The thing I find frustrating about rock music is, how different can you make an acoustic drum kit sound, an electric guitar and vocals?
Come to think of it, the way I play is like a drum machine- very mechanical.
While I absolutely love a great drummer and get tunnel vision listening to drums at a show, a lot of the time I feel like drum machine-driven music tethers you to a genre.
I don’t like straightforward drum sounds and hate snares; can’t stand them.
When Mr. Ludwig invented the bass-drum pedal, that’s what made the drum set possible.
People don’t realize how much it means to your music to record on tape, whether it be for new music or old music. People don’t realize how much or how imperative it is to use actual hardware when making drums because those are actual percussion samplers. They’re hardware instruments that are made to have the drum hit.
There are athletes and celebrities that are out there and they Twitter and they constantly try to drum up press because they’re narcissists.
My version of a stress dream is, really, showing up on a concert stage with a drum set and not knowing the chart.
I never use a piano stool. I always use a drum stool. Because I feel that when you’re down there, you’re playing in that way you’re supposed to. I like to be above it.
Somebody gave me this drum machine and somebody else asked me to program something for a project. I really liked programming and I was really interested in using the drum machine.
For me, drum elements are like hieroglyphics – I think of a certain physical figure, and a little three-dimensional glyph will appear in my mind as I’m playing.
Without banging a drum or getting on a soap box, there are always ebbs and tides in this country in terms of the political and social climate that we might be dealing with at any given moment.
As soon as you pick up a guitar, you’re up against the legends of rock. The same goes with stadium drum kits and electric bass. Essentially, you’re already in a soundscape that’s very familiar and has a lot of established legendary material recorded using those instruments.
Embrace the faff. Stare out of the window. Bend paperclips. Stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what you came downstairs for. Pace. Drum your fingertips. Move papers around. Hum. Look at the garden.
We would work up a tune that would make me learn a drum pattern I hadn’t played before. In the early stages, the pattern wouldn’t just fall into place, and I would start thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the worse it would get.
Playing well with others is important – not being too flashy, just keeping good time and of course coming up with cool beats. A good snare drum, kick drum, high hat. Just getting good at the hand feet coordination.
I was playing legit snare with a traditional grip, not a matched grip. After I broke my left wrist, I couldn’t hit a snare drum anymore. From the age of 13 to 17, I couldn’t really get a pop on the snare drum. I would hit it, and my wrist would almost shatter.
You hear a great Art Blakey drum solo or Elvin Jones, and you can tell when they’re taking a breath. You can tell when they’re loading up for something big. There’s just this humanity in it, and I think that’s important as well.
I was a big Drum and Bass junkie when I grew up.
I’m super serious about that stuff. I mean, it’s rare that I sit down at a drum set when I’m not touring, because we tour so much.
If I do a song where I’m angry, when it’s time to perform it live I’m not mad, I’m happy. I’m at a concert. But I have to somehow drum up that rage. That’s acting.
In the morning on Sunday, a drum is sounded at about 8 o’clock.
Having toured a lot really influences some of the decisions you make in the studio – is this part anthemic enough for people to want to sing to it at a show? is this part dynamic enough? Is this drum beat ‘arena’ enough? You think about it a lot when you are creating, for sure.
Drums all have their own particulars – each drum has a place where they sound the best – where they ring out and resonate the best, and the head surface isn’t too loose or too tight, mainly so you get a good rebound off of the head.
When I write, I write the drum beat. Though sometimes I write on piano or guitar.
My love for dance music started when I was a child. Some of my earliest memories are hearing Trance music in the charts and later being heavily influenced by the eclectic tastes of my big brother, he quickly turned me into an avid Drum ‘n’ Bass head even though I was too young to rave.
Just no gentrified drum and bass music anymore, please! It’s not good for your health.
With a computer, you have access to so many drum sounds and samples that your snare drum will be unrelated harmonically to your kick drum.
In the past, I used to rely on the randomness of working with samples, which was a good way because it threw you in a completely different direction. You just thought, ‘What if I take this samba drum and combined it with an ’80s synth line or something from this record?’
Every time I talk about this, I say: when the singer is singing, he must be respected, you must be able to hear what he’s saying. You can’t put a trombone and a drum up there, and a microphone on the drum, microphones on everybody. You can’t hear what he’s saying.
For live you need a microphone for the snare and the high hat, the kick drum, a nice stereo overhead and one for the toms – you can get away with using four mikes.
I got tired of different drum sounds so you buy different effects for more manipulation.
