I prefer recording drums in the analog format, but that does not mean I would only do it that way.
I started playing guitar when I was, like, 5, and I picked up playing drums when I was 6 years old.
A great drum record has to sound good; in fact, it should sound special. It should capture the richness and the actual tones of the drums themselves, regardless of who is playing.
You just can’t walk into a venue, sit behind your drums, and expect to play a great show. It’ll never happen.
Producers like to record all the drums first, then they do the bass, then all the guitars, so you’re constantly moving from one song to another.
If you listen to a lot of old funk records, the drums are really small. But you don’t perceive it like that because the groove is so heavy.
I like drums, really, if they’re under control.
When I turned 17, I had a bike malfunction at a race, and in my head, I went, ‘You know what? I’m done. I’m going to go play drums.’ I still ride my bikes for fun, but that was the turning point.
The drums can get pretty boring as a solo instrument.
I got to Brighton in the late 90s and discovered samplers. Suddenly, I could be my own band with a guitar and sampler, getting my drums in charity shop records. It was better than bashing around in someone’s basement, trying to compromise ideas.
The records I make, I’m there from the writing of the first note through the click tracks to the miking of the drums to the editing of everything to the production to the vocals to the artwork.
The drums are about gravity. Your hand naturally falls down on the drums as you hit them.
There was always a guitar hanging around the house when I was a kid. It was a much lower impact instrument than me playing the drums, which is what I really wanted to do. My mother put a stop to the drumming.
Obviously, I like the drums to be heard. I think they’re important.
You can feel the drums, and you can feel the bass. So, being able to feel the music through the floor, it makes me feel like I’m a part of the band and not just the only person in the room who doesn’t really understand what’s going on.
I think I love it more as I get older because I keep getting better on drums, vibes and piano.
I started out when I was about 12, playing drums. I started singing when I was about 15.
I play guitar, piano, and I’m learning to play the drums.
My son Wesley has just turned 13. He was 12 during the recording of this record and he is quite a drummer already and has been studying drums since he was four, but he’s also very interested in African percussion and studies percussion.
I studied the Ghanaian drums and bongo drumming.
I sit around for ages waiting for inspiration. Then when I get an idea, I want to go with it and get something as quickly as possible. It’s like catching a fly in a bottle. I’ll play with drums for a bit, then the piano for a bit, play the guitar.
I wanted to play drums because I fell in love with the glitter and the lights, but it wasn’t about adulation. It was being up there playing.
I’ve been playing drums since I was 7.
I started playing drums at three, then piano at five, then clarinet. But it wasn’t till I picked up a saxophone aged 13 that I really got serious about music.
From the very beginning, I had a lot of female role models in music. I would go to shows, and there were always women fronting bands and playing guitar or backing up and playing drums or bass in a band. That probably contributed to my belief in myself to go out and perform for people.
I have a drum set in my dressing room. I play drums to relax and have some fun.
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man’s history is the beating of war drums.
I’m interested in creating a little sound world for songs, really crafting it, building it, and making it like a little doll’s house with little things inside it, staircases and rooms and everything kind of relates to everything else. I’ve never seen it as drums, bass, guitar and vocals in very separate spaces.
I learned how to play the drums. When we were in pre-production, when we were still in LA, I had a couple of drum lessons and then some in Toronto. I got the one beat down and that was it.
I do play drums when I’m on tour.
I just love crafting and shaping sounds. Actually, many of the sounds that I work with start off as organic instruments – guitar, piano, clarinet, etc. But I do love the rigidity of electronic drums.
I tried playing the drums, and I could play ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ by The Cure.
I stopped playing the drums when I was ten, and I picked up Rubik’s Cubes. I was doing that for a while, and then I got into cinematography.
I worked with Jack Nitzsche for ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ and we’d booked a symphony orchestra. He dismissed them and came with a little man who poured water into glasses of different sizes to make a glass harmonica. And most of the music for the film was that – with some Indian flutes and some drums.
From a musical standpoint, I was inspired by ’90s hip hop, with a lot of drums and the tempos. I’m always inspired by David Bowie and Prince.
Probably for drums, a guy I really enjoyed watching is Simon Phillips. I’ve seen him play with The Who and with Pete Townshend on his own – a really great drummer.
Energy wise, playing the drums was a lot of fun; I just felt like it was a natural fit for me.
In ‘Dancing Drums’ I interweave all my mediums into what I like to call, simply as ‘trance.’
On the records that I grew up with and loved, every song was unique – it’s almost as if you had a different journey every time – and the drums were big part of that story.
I got so lonely in 2012 and I wasn’t playing drums. I thought I would just form my own band and play drums again. I think it was 2013 that we started looking for two other people and formed Day of Errors.
We have a lot of people onstage. We have a live violin, live cello, live drums played on this kind of massive electronic kit with some acoustic elements built in.
I was kind of bored playing drums in a band. Which was depressing, because playing in the band was kind of a golden ticket.
Yes, I love to play drums and bass and guitar and piano. Those are the main instruments I play. That is it.
You listen to a Metallica song, and you listen to the drums, and they’re not necessarily swinging, but the arrangements are different. Why is that? Because it’s more in tune with jazz arrangements. It’s very different. It’s not a traditional rock and roll production, in terms of the drums.
It’s much easier to have a diversified career as an electronic musician than it is as a drummer. Nothing against drummers. If you’re a drummer, you just wait around for people to ask you to play drums. But if you have your own studio and can make music, you have the ability to approach music a lot differently.
You can’t beat two guitars, bass, and drums.
You can’t beat 2 guitars, bass, and drums.
I took piano lessons and I wanted to play drums when I was six. Luckily enough, my parents let me have a drum kit in my room – which is kind of crazy.
At the time I learned drums, I wanted to be the drummer of Hanson. I wanted to be this guy because he was so young, and he was already drumming in the band, you know, so I just wanted to be like him. And later, I discovered hip-hop music at boarding school.
Like my best friend, I asked for drums for Christmas, and got them. But when he moved on to guitar, I realized two things: (1) guitar is a much more expressive instrument, (2) way more girls pay attention to guitar players than to drummers.
You can have the best riff in the world, but if the drums behind it just ain’t vibing it, it’s not gonna be the greatest riff, right? So you’ve gotta have someone there that can really bring that to life.
If I could play drums like Patrick Carney or Taylor Hawkins, I’d be a really happy person.
I love to talk about the drums and music. I started playing drums when I was probably six and played a lot until I was about ten or eleven years old. So, I guess five or six years where I played. I had a drum set at home, and I would just bang on it. I’d even go on the Internet and study basic beats and so forth.
Every now and then there might be a beat someone turned down that I have as an unused beat. But everything that predominantly matches the artist in my 30 years of doing this, it was me walking in and sitting there with no drums, no samples, no nothing, and making a beat on the spot.
I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.
I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.
My talent for playing the drums was a gift from God.
John Bonham, probably the greatest drummer ever – all of us wanted to play drums like him.
You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.
Lars Ulrich, he was my hero growing up. I wanted to be like him. I played the drums.
I worked with a guy, I can’t think of his name, him and his wife, and one of them had a saxophone and the other played drums. It wasn’t a regular job but I did a few gigs around home with them.
