:biggrin:I love watching videos of drum covers of Mangini songs. Mike Mangini's drumming composition skills is quite underrated, and I think this is often compounded by how effortless he often looks when he is playing these songs. When other drummers do his compositions, the complex and intelligent composition of his drumming often becomes more apparent.
Here is a fairly competent drum cover of The Bigger Picture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w16fT1NWxwITheo got the basics right, and shows how beautiful the bass and snare parts are composed, especially when the ghost notes come in. He, however, did not get the cymbals part right. The intro should be played with two rides instead of one, and in the instrumental part, he was not able to play how the high notes in the ride should have been highlighting the notes of the high harmony. And he did not nail the fast hi-hats in the outro.
Next is The Enemy Inside drum cover by Paulinho of VRA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QClUhA08wTgThe video showed what a beautiful example of metal drumming The Enemy Inside is. It also shows how Mangini uses the full big drum kit in the composition. It also highlights how good the bass drum parts are composed, and how drumming speed contributes to a good drum composition.
Next is Illumination Theory drum cover by a 15-year old kid, Vincent Greeson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2WFXnNvTU4So far, this is the best IT drum cover I have seen, and I think it's because this kid plays Mangini-style with an open stance, and an ambidextrous set-up. I love how he improvised with the ghost notes on the snare in the Live, Die, Kill section. The clearer cymbals here also finally highlighted how good Mangini composed the cymbals parts (a lot of which, unfortunatley, are really low in the final studio version).
He did not exactly nail the fast parts in the instrumental of The Pursuit of Truth, and the cymbals in the 3-3-4-2, 3-3-4-3 section of The Pursuuit of Truth. He also had a rather difficult time with the Surrender, Trust and Passion section. I find it funny that even in other IT drum covers, drummers are having with this slow part. It must be the elaborate composition of the bass drum parts.
According to the comments section, this Greeson kid is attending Mangini's drum clinic in the summer.
My favorite drum cover so far is the Looking Glass by Gabriel Faro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dccxnz0LVbYThis guy nailed it while putting in his personal touch as well. I love how he played the hi-hat in the instrumental. It's different from how Mangini did it, and might even be better. He botched the ending though.
He shows just how beautiful the drum composition is in this song, which I find is fairly underrated by many DT fans.
Gabriel also plays Mangini-style like Vincent, with the open stance and the ambidextrous set-up. He has a Haken drum cover as well in his channel (Atlas Stone), which he also plays Mangini-style. Will we have more young drummers playing this way because of Mangini's influence?
Topic: Drum covers of MM-era Dream Theater songs (Read 1027 times)