I guess I am the resident Mike Mangini thread starter.
As expected, I love what Mangini brought to the table in The Astonishing (although he occasionally fell in love too much with the double bass
). Superb playing and drum composition all throughout. Here, for me, are the top 10 Mangini moments:
10. Begin Again outro (3:15 onwards) - this groovy section has Mangini using his
clockwise & counter-clockwise limb system playing a basic snare and drum pattern while one limb syncopates a hi-hat in the right speaker and another limb does a more playful pattern on the left speaker.
9. Dystopian Overture (2:56 to 3:25) - Mangini does a nice pattern with the toms, which is not extraordinary, but the thing that made me smile here is the added texture of cymbals playing a ride pattern on the right speaker (which basically means Mangini is playing the toms and snare with his left hand only).
8. The Gift of Music intro (0:10 to 0:23) - the pulsating drum pattern in the intro really sets the tone of the song for me, with just the right amount of off-beat bass and snare hits to keep me from doing traditional headbanging.
7. Moment of Betrayal outro (5:25 onwards) - what I love in this part is that Mangini is doing the usual highlighting of what the other instruments are doing, but his choices of what to highlight and how to highlight it comes from out of left field that he keeps you on your toes.
6. Three Days outro (3:26 onwards) - swing jazz blastbeat. nobody saw that coming.
5. A New Beginning instrumental and outro (3:47 onwards) - the drumming orchestration in the instrumental is textbook Mangini keeping a tight beat while highlighting what the other instruments are doing. And then that beautiful outro. Mangini keeping it simple and tight, making JP's guitar solo and JM's 80s bass groove work. Sort of reminds me of his work in early Annihilator or some Steve Vai (Black Forest, for example).
4. Ravenskill (2:10 to 4:00) - Mangini doing just straight up old-school rock drumming and it just
. I keep on picturing people in the concert just headbanging to this beat. I also love the drumming in the more theatrical parts, very dramatic.
3. The Path That Divides (2:04 to 3:58) - One of Mangini's best assets is his kick drum technique and it is in this song that it really shines. Best part was when his bass drum synced up with James during the "rap" portion while the hi-hats and the snare keep a tight beat.
2. A Life Left Behind (0:08 to 1:23) - This is elegant orchestration. It's like Mangini channeling Terry Bozzio during his UK stint. I love the changes in cymbal choices in the orchestration (using the ride when complementing the piano, shifting to hi-hats for guitars, etc). I am a Mangini fanboy so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but for me, this is flawless.
1. The Walking Shadow (whole song) - This is a technical drumming masterpiece that is also very musical. This is how you use drums in helping tell a story. When the hi-hat goes "tic tic tic" as Daryus waits for the walking shadow, you get that sense of foreboding, being disrupted by clever shifts in downbeats to contrast with the riffing. But the best part is the drumming after the interlude, with one of the most complex polyrhythmic drumming in a Dream Theater song. It's a set of ten bars of 14/8 (or 7/4) marked by the crash cymbal. In the first three bars, the snare hits on the 8th eighth note, but on the 4th bar, the snare hits on the 7th eighth note, following LaBrie's lines that goes 4 bars of 6/8, 4 bars of 5/8, 4 bars of 4/8, 4 bars of 3/8 and 3 bars of 2/8, with the final snare hit leading to the roll (the 20th syllable "...Faythe) coinciding with the crash cymbal after the final bar of the 14/8 underlying beat. All this while the bass drum syncs with John Myung's irregular bass. All this craziness not just being a technical exercise but actually contributing to the confusing and climactic atmosphere being called for in the song. Amazing.
EDITED to correct the counting in the Walking Shadow.
Topic: Top Mike Mangini moments in The Astonishing (Read 10024 times)
