Some rooms have extremely weird acoustics and ringing sounds. In those cases, I might deaden the drums a bit with some gaffer tape or moon gel. Sometimes I put a little more padding in the bass drum because the low end is getting out of control. Sometimes a different microphone or microphone placement could be the solution. There are times where the cymbals could be too bright, or too dark. Maybe the stage is tiny, and everybody is standing way too close to one another. I try to adapt my sound to the size of the stage, the size of the venue, and the amount of people on stage and in the audience. There is no one thing that works all the time. And there is no perfect solution to every problem.

I come from a deep background in music reading. I started on piano and trumpet; when I switched to drums, I played in orchestras and jazz bands where I’d read miles of charts. Reading is a very valuable skill. That being said, I hardly ever read music on gigs nowadays. I can’t even remember the last time an artist or a producer handed me a chart or anything like that.

Normally, when someone hires me to do a show or a session, he or she sends me CDs in the mail and highlights the songs to learn. More often, a person emails me the MP3 tracks from demos, album cuts, or live versions.

I’ll listen to everything, and then write my own charts of the arrangements with notes dictating tempo markings, the song lengths, dynamics, the spots where the drums enter and lay-out, any signature beats or drum fills that appear to be essential to the music, etc.

Next, I’ll internalize the songs by losing the charts and playing the tunes by memory. I like to get to the point where I feel as though I am functioning on auto-pilot. During this whole process, I am also morphing the songs to make them more of my own.

“Beautiful Ruins” – Jess Walter (book)

“Intouchables” – Toledano & Nakache (movie)

“Django Unchained” – Quentin Tarantino (movie)

“Delta Machine” – Depeche Mode (album)

“Zero Dark Thirty” – Kathryn Bigelow (movie)