Drum Pattern Quotes

So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.

I wanted to play drums, and I got a set when I was 14 and just started to play in the house, to the stereo. I liked Ringo Starr, of course. And Sandy Nelson. I had his record, 'Let There Be Drums,' and I'd play along with it.

Once I've got something that I feel is strong, if I get long enough to think about it, it'll turn into something. I'll start thinking about the drums - what the drums are doing, what the bass is doing. Then, if I can remember it by the time I get to a recording device, it'll turn into a song.

The original 'Don't Let It Get to You' started with a beat. The drums came first. All the musical and lyrical elements were written over those drums.

I have a method of working on music: I'll get up in the morning and throw down some drums on my drum machine, and then I'll come back later and try to pop off rhythms to it.

I've always loved the mixture of crushing live drums with a programmed groove, that really cool blend, like in the verse there's a really funky drum beat that is programmed then it comes in to the chorus; you've got that enormous human feel where the band kicks in.

With 'Under the Pressure,' I just found two chords I liked, and built it up, did like a ten-minute drum pattern.

I usually write from the rhythm section...If a drummer got a funky beat on some things - like a half-shuffle or a shuffle or a backbeat that's even - I can write something.

And I like messing around in the engine room of music. Seeing what happens in the rhythm section area.

It's really important for the bass and the drums to somehow blend.

For KRS-One, I have a specific sound - sparse drums and bass. I try to steer away from elaborate productions.

So when I was working with Amy Winehouse on "Back To Black," you know, she had all these beautiful songs, incredibly well-written and just her on an acoustic, nylon-string guitar. And she'd play them for me, and then I would kind of drum up my idea of what I thought - make a demo with what I thought the drums should be doing, the guitars - like, quite a crude demo.