Besides, let's not kid ourselves here. Do you think MM sits there and thinks "oh no, this section really could benefit from a fill, but the song just modulated its key to Gb minor, whereas my toms are tuned to E minor scale! Can't play that fill."
Yeah, right. It's drums, and the transient nature of their sound makes pitch perceived only in the broadest sense, especially when put under several layers of *actual* melodic instruments.
Ehem. So you can not hear the melodic drums that are prominent in Breaking All Illusions? And in the intro fill of The Enemy Inside? It does not match the melodies note for note but MM tries to apprizimate them.
And MM does think about melodies when he plays drums for DT:
From
https://www.moderndrummer.com/site/2011/05/mike-mangini-of-dream-theater/#.Uwn_tGKSySo"The toms are set up in an apex shape so that I can perform patterns as a classically trained musician. When guitarist John Petrucci plays a minor scale from high to low, descending one note at a time, I can also descend one note at a time on my toms, in the exact sequence."
"My cymbal setup is designed to complement the specific dynamic frequency in the same way. I’ll use a smaller cymbal for high notes in the music and larger cymbals to accentuate the lower notes. I need quite a few of them to cover the gamut of the heavily composed music of Dream Theater."
From
https://www.drummagazine.com/features/post/mike-mangini-wired-science/P1/"“I’m following the key signatures of the music, I’m changing cymbals based on key signatures, my tom toms are following the unison runs exactly,” he explains. “If Jordan Rudess goes up the keyboard then I go up the drums; if John Petrucci goes down his guitar in sets of triplets or threes, I go down my drums in triplets or threes.”
From
https://www.metalsucks.net/2011/09/29/rigged-dream-theater%E2%80%99s-mike-mangini-takes-you-through-every-piece-of-his-mega-drumkit-part-2/"The cymbal arrangement is setup where for the most part darker sounding cymbals are on the left side and brighter sounding cymbals are on the right — higher pitch right, lower pitch left. That determines whether or not I play righty or lefty. Let me give you an example: on a song like “Caught in a Web,” the musicians in the band change key signatures from whatever key signature that they’re in to one that’s up a couple of steps. When I go from a lower key signature to a higher key signature, I will often switch from my left side hi-hats (which are lower pitched) to the right side ones (which are higher pitched).
That is the one thing that is going to stick out as being distinctly different from me and everybody, and that includes Mike Portnoy. When it comes to playing Dream Theater songs, I’m not going to play on just one hi-hat. I’m going to be switching hi-hats when the guys change key signatures."
"The reason I have those as stacks is because hitting an open Chinese type cymbal rings too much for me and has too much of a splash impact sound for my orchestral uses of it. For example, I’ll use the bigger stacks when I’m really looking for tone. In other words, if I hit them (and this is all over the new album) but if there’s a place where I need a stack and it’s within a section where those guys are changing notes all over the place, I change oriental stacks based on the notes being used. So if they’re playing three notes in a row that are going low, medium and high in a pattern of 7/8 that goes “boom, boom, Boom; boom, boom, Boom” I actually use those cymbals to match what those guys are playing. I don’t so much use those bigger stacks with the older catalogue, although I am using them a little bit here and there. That’s mainly Dream Theater’s future."
The final thing I want to say about the metal is the way that it’s arranged in pitch, because that will transition with the tom-toms. The way that the cymbals are arranged in pitch is neither from left to right or right to left. For example, the highest stack is with the right hand. The next one below it is with the left. The next one below that is with the right. The one below that is with the left, and the one below that (the last one) is with the right. So for 5 stacks, the physical arrangement is right, left, right, left, right from high, lower, lower, lower, lower and lowest.
The tom-toms are arranged like that in an apex shape from the middle out; they neither go from left to right or from right to left either. The center tom-tom is a 6″ diameter drum. To the left of that is the next one below it which is the 8″. So when I say the toms go 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 what I’m saying physically is: right, left, right, left, right, left, right and then the gong bass drum is with my right. That is the only part of this kit that breaks the protocol; that the 20″ drum isn’t all the way to the left just for the sake of me doing it for some reason just to do it. I’ll put the gong bass drum to the right because in the future of Dream Theater with me, I’ll use that gong bass drum as a connective orchestration tool between my toms and the kicks. Because it is a bass drum, I use it for some bass drum hits. It allows me to do that with my right hand which frees up my left hand for some other purposes. Here’s my point: the gong bass drum being next to the 18″ floor tom is the only part of the kit that breaks that protocol of right, left, right, left.
The way that I use the toms is extremely specific to the music. For example, there might be a riff in Fatal Tragedy where Mike does a regular kind of drum fill where a drummer starts on the snare drum and goes to the high drum and whips around the kit. Upon studying exactly what, for example, Jordan Rudess is playing, some of the transitions, Jordan is going up. He’s ascending in pitch, so I’ll use my drums to follow him. I’ll play the same rhythm that Mike played, but in this case specifically, I’ll change the notes that I’m hitting – the actual pitches of the drums so that it reflects a little bit more of what one of the band members is playing. I cannot do that if my drums are ascending or descending. I can only do that, and I think that any human is in the same boat as me, where you really can’t hit a drum set one note at a time from ascending to descending.
For example, if Jordan is ascending in a D major scale – he starts on a low D and ends up at a high D (he hits an entire octave), the way that I do that on my kit, I can start on the low drum and play it with the following physical picking going right, left, right, left, right, left right up the drums. But if I was on an ascending or descending pitch arranged tom-tom setup, I’d have to cross my hands over to do that. And I couldn’t. I just couldn’t keep up the speed like that. With the acoustic drums, the setup is very specific. I’m an orchestral trained musician that loves heavy metal. When I look at the band I’m in and check out the drum set, which makes me go back to that comment before, “who’s going to see this? Who can I work with that doesn’t tell me what to do all the time” or “that I have too many drums. Why don’t I groove and use a small bass drum and a small kit and just show up with 3 drums and a cymbal?” I have no problem doing that, and I enjoy it and love it but it’s not my potential. It’s not what reflects the thoughts in my mind and the feeling in my heart. I’m going to die one day. I’m not going to be on my death bed saying “I can’t believe that I let others, who should have minded their own business, make me feel bad and change my drumming. Screw them.”
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Topic: Portnoy's vs. Mangini's drum set (Read 44651 times)