Quotes About Drumming

Certain drummers drop time, and I like to play on top of the beat.

Most great records really start with the drums.

I can think of a lot better things to do with my hands than to cut them up on the rim of a drum.

John Bonham was probably the most influential in terms of playing style and timing.

I don't like drum solos, to be honest with you, but if anybody ever told me he didn't like Buddy Rich I'd right away say go and see him, at least the once.

Apparently this r had to be worked for: Varya told me that as a child she couldn't pronounce it properly, and that her father would make her repeat a series of exercises about gorgeous grapes growing on Mount Ararat and three hundred thirty-three drummers drumming on three hundred thirty-three drums.

One thing that's always been important to me is to try and build a tool kit, drumming-wise, that was diverse and wide-ranging in terms of what I played.

The drum records that I like are ones on which the drumming didn't repeat itself. The players didn't stick to a format or formula.

I feel like, with drum programming, the way I used to do it, I'd think of how somebody would play these drum patterns and then try to replicate that through programming. It's not that it's better or worse, it's just a different style.

Probably some of the most impressive drumming I've done is on the 'Far Beyond Driven' record.

Irrationality is the opposite of rationality: it means unreasonable, unfounded, ill-conceived. Irrationality is reason, practiced badly. A trance brought about by ecstatic dancing or drumming is certainly not rational, but it isn't irrational either. It's non-rational—it belongs to another category of experience entirely. Indeed, much of its value lies quite precisely in the fact that it takes us on a holiday away from reason—

I saw a drummer play once when I was a kid and I thought, that's really cool. You know, you're moving. You're using your arms and fingers. So I tried it and I loved it.

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.

It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later. I started playing drums at 13, and when I got to the international touring level... I got interested in cross-country skiing, long-distance swimming, bicycling... things that require stamina, not finesse.

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.

I love the way Pharell is laying down great drum tracks. He is a great drummer.

In respect for drummers, see, I love drummers.

I love more percussions more than anything. I always wanted to be a drummer.

THE DOORYARD OF NAIROBI falls into the Athi Plains. One night I stood there and watched an aeroplane invade the stronghold of the stars. It flew high; it blotted some of them out; it trembled their flames like a hand swept over a company of candles. The drumming of the engines was as far away as the drumming of a tom-tom. Unlike a tom-tom, it changed its sound; it came closer until it filled the sky with a boastful song. There

I had trouble fitting in, in a musical sense. A lot of drummers get sidetracked by the instrument. It can engulf you.

When I sit behind that electronic drum, it dominates me; there is no innovation in composing music like that.

But, I don't think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can't create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that's written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom.

The advice I like to give to drummers is that there's no right or wrong way of playing the drums. I think the drumming community can be very antiquated and very stuck in the past of, like, this Neil Peart style, technical Guitar Center drum video kind of approach. That you need to have played for 15 years before you ever do anything worthwhile.

It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.