![]() “Neil Peart will always be a mentor and a hero to me and his influence on me as a drummer for the past 40 years is absolutely impossible to measure,” Portnoy wrote. So with those few “nods,” and now Jon’s, I can rest easy knowing I accomplished what I set out to do, at least in the eyes and ears of those who could “receive” it.Former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy paid tribute to Neil Peart, “one of my greatest heroes of all time,” following news of the Rush drummer’s death Friday. ![]() ![]() And with all that, the technique doesn’t go over the audience’s head.” “It’s like the marriage of you as lyricist and you as drummer. Late in the tour another friend, Chris Stankee, Berklee-educated drummer and long time Sabian pal (and riding buddy), had seen a few of our shows, and described that solo in a way that swelled me up big time. Not my long time trusted drum tech Lorne “Gump” Wheaton, not my band-mates, not Brad in the mixing room, not Jim Burgess, not the crew guys, nobody.įinally, some weeks into the tour my friend Matt Scannell told me after a show that he really liked that solo – how it seemed to tell a story. The important shared quality was that every idea had been born in spontaneity.Īll through band rehearsals I ran through sketches of what I was aiming for – rhythmic patterns conversing over favoured ostinatos (repeating rhythmic bases), polyrhythms and counter rhythms laid across each other, the rudimental snare work I always enjoyed riffing on – all the while letting it evolve naturally.īut again, in all that time, playing that “vision” every day for weeks, nobody ever said anything. Sometimes I would try to repeat a previous accident and fail – so an unexpected nuance would occur, sending the narrative in a different direction. Inevitably, during the development of that solo, and even with each performance of the tour, certain themes and dynamics emerged and were repeated, more or less – though never exactly the same, or in the same part of the story. (Truth to tell, I would much rather have soloed on the “modern” setup I played in the first set – much better ergonomics and more “musical” layout – but… that’s the way it worked out.) Even the samples had to be incorporated in a different way than ever before, because there were no other triggers on the ’70s-style drumset I was playing in the second set of the R40 tour. The band’s long-time technology consultant, Jim Burgess, helped me put together a palette of musical and textural samples on the MalletKat, and I experimented for hours with different ways to combine them. I began to visualize, and thus inhabit, an imaginary movie, retold, re-edited, an re-scored for every performance. The sad part, the travelling part, the “little victories,” the angry part, the lost and bewildered part – it was all in there.Īll these years later, when I saw I could use that approach as a repeatable frame for an improvised solo, I wondered if I might give that story a soundtrack at the same time. It echoed a discovery I made back in the summer of 1999, when I made a tentative return to the drums after an “enforced absence” of about two years.Īs recounted in my book Ghost Rider, that day I sat behind the drums and just started playing… my story. Yet despite those conceptual and technical constraints, almost immediately I felt it becoming a story, a rhythmic narrative. Technically, I was determined to exemplify everything I thought I knew about drumming, and everything I love about the drums – almost 50 years of experience and passion had to go in there somehow. I would approach it as if I was just sitting down at the drums to start playing – to exercise the improvisational skills I have been working on for, oh, about ten years now. My vague design for that solo was deceptively simple. (It often does, honestly – pretty much always – but maybe this time by too much.) I wasn’t going to ask anyone what they thought – fearing the answer too much! In any case, I was proceeding entirely on faith in an idea, and that solitary dedication was not easy. What did it mean? I worried that my ambitions were too high – my reach exceeding my grasp. Especially when we’re pushing ourselves way out on a limb like that.ĭay after day, week after week, after each time we rehearsed that part of the show and I delivered my sketch of the solo, I was mildly concerned by the ringing silence.
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