Peter Wildoer rehearsing for audition video

[Victor Alexandrov]

I have somehow managed to not post a thing in the Wildoer threads so far, because I have nothing to contribute apart from the usual praise which everybody else is already giving anyway. But after seeing once again how much of a gentleman PW is, taking the time to answer each and every post, I just have to join in  and say how much I'm blown away from his monstrous talent, humbleness and being such an all around cool guy with all of us.

Thank you, Peter! Greetings from distant Bulgaria.

[John94]

I'd love to know how people go about getting the time signatures especially in a song like TDOE. Do you like count them out to the music or just get behind the kit and start playing.

[Blazinarps]

Peter, they 100% play to clicks in the studio. I know that they can introduce tempo changes over a set number of bars with clicks i.e. go from quarter note 100 to quarter note 123 over say, 8 measures. That would account for speed changes on albums.

[Wildoer]

Okay, I'll give it another shot. Just answered and did something wrong and everything was gone... 

Here we go again:

Well I have to record that part at some point then. 

Ooh, you could use an instrumental version and sing over that. That would be fun. 

I actually have all the stems (separate drums, bass, guitars, keys and vocals) for ANTR so it would be possible but I'm afraid that it would come across as arrogant towards Portnoy. If I ever do this it would be for this forum only like a fun thing only.

I have somehow managed to not post a thing in the Wildoer threads so far, because I have nothing to contribute apart from the usual praise which everybody else is already giving anyway. But after seeing once again how much of a gentleman PW is, taking the time to answer each and every post, I just have to join in  and say how much I'm blown away from his monstrous talent, humbleness and being such an all around cool guy with all of us.

Thank you, Peter! Greetings from distant Bulgaria.

You are more than welcome with your kind words! Thanks for joining!!!

I'd love to know how people go about getting the time signatures especially in a song like TDOE. Do you like count them out to the music or just get behind the kit and start playing.

I guess it's a mix of both. In the beginning when learning I personally like to know what's going on, what meters are they. I got the notes for TDOE from Petrucci's guitar note/tab book. It have all the meters and I started with listening to the song and following the notes. This gave me an over all picture of the song. Then I started learning every part by itself and at last put everything together. When I knew it technically (what meters etc.) I just played to the music without counting or thing what meters it was. "Just" play along to the music musically. This is of course what it's all about.

Portnoy have a few "licks" he uses every now and then for perhaps five and seven. A great example of this is 03:24-03:30 in this clip:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJw-8kXBRjI
Five would be: kick, snare, kick, snare, snare and seven: kick, snare, kick, snare, kick, snare, snare. These kind of "licks" is great when in a situation like on the audition where we (the drummers) had to improvise to odd meters.

Another very important thing is of course to cover great drummers like Portnoy, Donati, Harrison etc. and learn what they are doing. Building a library of ideas that you then re-make to your own.

Peter, they 100% play to clicks in the studio. I know that they can introduce tempo changes over a set number of bars with clicks i.e. go from quarter note 100 to quarter note 123 over say, 8 measures. That would account for speed changes on albums.

Okay. I just had a hard time to make the music lock to the tempo in Cubase. Here's a screenshot of the Cubase project for TDOE with the meters (the black blur underneath the bar numbers) and the tempo (the line with the dots).



As you can see it's quite a few tempo changes and I never got it to lock 100%. I remember Portnoy is counting along to TDOE in his DVD with a click track.

[Nick]

Peter, if someone posts while you are typing a reply, and you hit post, a screen will come up asking you to review what's been posted and asks if you want to edit your post at all. You have to hit post again at that point and it's likely you did not.

I can turn that feature off for you if you wish so it can't happen anymore.

[Wildoer]

Peter, if someone posts while you are typing a reply, and you hit post, a screen will come up asking you to review what's been posted and asks if you want to edit your post at all. You have to hit post again at that point and it's likely you did not.

I can turn that feature off for you if you wish so it can't happen anymore.

Cool Nick! I've seen that before and that feature is great.     What I did is that I didn't remember how to insert an image. I just dragged the picture from my desktop into the screen between the two [IMG] and that made Firefox to open the picture in the tab. I then closed the tab thinking it opened in a new tab and the whole post was gone. I'll be careful next time.