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 have actually found myself buying up more and more old analogue gear. I have this strange obsession with old drum machines.
I'm a big techno fan. I love that thumping kick drum. We heard a version of 'Lost in Love' and it was thrash metal. It sounded cool!
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.
My son's taking drum lessons, and my daughter's taking piano lessons. One day they're going to start a band.
To the solemn graves, near a lonely cemetery, my heart like a muffled drum is beating funeral marches.
I'm inspired by anyone who's honest in their own expression, people who truly beat to the rhythm of their own drum.
I'm a huge Bob Marley fan; I remember going to Jamaica for the first time when I was a kid and I got so obsessed with the steel drums.
I started out by myself, but it eventually turned into a trio by the mid-'60s - a conga drum and another guitarist. And that's been mostly what I've worked with most of the time.
In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.
I grew up using hearing aids, and I had speech therapy and so forth, and that helped me to develop a passion for music and helped me to develop my drumming talents.
They've drummed the miraculous out of you, but you don't want it to be like that. You want the miraculous. You want everything to still be new.
I feel too much. It's like being drummed to death from within. You know?
But unfortunately, in my unrelenting drive to get back on that drum stool, the major casualty in all of it was that I really forgot about me.
When I was a kid, of course I wanted to be the fastest, the loudest and the one with the biggest drum set, but obviously my aspirations have changed a bit since then.
When I'm acting, I like to think of myself as a non-actor, and a non-drummer when I'm drumming. It frees you up to not care how well you do.
I wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was very basic. All I wanted was drums and another guitar, and I was just going to sing.
No one sits in front of a drum set and thinks they invented it all out of whole cloth. The fact that the set is there means that you've got some dues to pay to Baby Dodds.
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.
No teacher has the right to cure a child of making noises on a drum. The only curing that should be practiced is the curing of unhappiness.
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.
