John Otto Quotes

But really, anytime, I play on a practice pad as much as I can.

Oh, I was super serious about practicing and rudiments, and still am. I still have all my books.

But I think that any young drummer starting out today should get himself a great teacher and learn all there is to know about the instrument that he wants to play.

Even on the drum level, it's all about stating your theme, going back to certain things that need to be emphasized, not doing fills for the sake of doing fills.

It's been years and years and years I've been playing the drums, and they're still a challenge. I still enjoy using drumsticks and a snare drum.

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.

My playing is always just a little on top of the beat. I can't lay down the kind of groove that Brad Wilk can. I'd really have to lay back to do that; it just doesn't feel natural to me.

I'm more a percussion instrument than a dancer.

I started playing piano and guitar when I was in elementary school, and then I was finally like, 'I want to sing.' So I started taking voice lessons and decided I wanted to go to an art school and take music seriously.

There's a lot of personality in Lars's drumming. That's what makes it unique.

That's where I learned, basically, all my skills from the drumming that I do - most of my style comes straight from death metal.

Dad was pretty solid. He had great grooves and there was occasional moments of sheer brilliance with fills and things, but in general, the sheer brilliance is the simplicity, how much groove, how much feel he had, all the subtleties that we miss.

I deal with more complex rhythmical patterns than a regular tap dancer. I even think in rhythms.

Drumming is a real part of my live show, and I like to do it because so many people aren't expecting me to go and do it.

I'm always making tracks. I find that when you make tons of tracks, you stumble upon genius. You can't always turn the drum machine on and right away there's a hot track. Sometimes you luck out. But it can take a lot of time between thinking about the artist, listening to music for inspiration or going to clubs.

I'm a good guy, and I'm a pretty good drummer, by the way.

My drum parts are a song within the song; that's the way I look at writing my drum parts. They follow patterns, and they're written to interact with the rest of the band. There's quite a bit of thought that goes into it.

I started playing drums in the 4th grade.

You don't have to be a great drummer to be the most important guy in the band.

When I was much younger I tried to play guitar and bass first. Drums were just the easiest thing for me to play. I picked it up really quickly.

Mad World's distinctive percussion intro was played on a Roland CR-78 drum machine. We first recorded it at twice the speed, but it sounded great slowed down.

Since I was a child, I was yearning to learn about percussion because that's what I loved.

A lot of young drummers have a tendency to really overplay. Sometimes simple is better, and the notes that aren't played between the spaces are bigger than the notes that are.

You really have to play with the space in a riff so it can be allowed to breathe.

I started as a drummer. The feet are an extension of that.