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Mike Mangini

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 12:27 pm
by Harvest
So I ended up going to see a clinic he did at a local music store on Tuesday. Figured it's not too often you get to see a world class musician outside of the classical or jazz world with less than 100 people in the room so I drove down there to check it out. Now I don't know whether I should just quit music altogether or be incredibly inspired :confused: :rawk:

Some eye opening quotes from the evening:

"I started playing drums at 2 1/2. My mom used to get mad at me because I would steal coffee cans and tuna cans and stuff from the cupboard and arrange them so I could hit them like a drum kit. I started performing as a drummer at 4 1/2."

"When I was in Annihilator, they made me stop playing the snare and the kick drum at the same time, because the engineers were complaining that I hit them within the same millisecond over and over again and it was clipping the track so much I had to not do that anymore"

"I love doing patterns with prime numbers - 7's,11's, 13's, 17's, 19's, etc. On one fill on the new record (I think he said Enigma Machine) I was trying different stuff when James Labrie jumped up and said 'THAT'S THE ONE, DO THAT AGAIN', so I worked it out and it was a group of 29"

"I can keep track of 3-4 different time signatures and tempos at the same time, so this allows us to sync our performance up exactly with the production videos that play on screen while we're playing".

"On one of the instrumental sections on the last record, I was following the keyboard and guitar line going up and down the rototoms. Jordan Ruddess kept yelling at me because one of my rototoms was '7 cents sharp from C#' so he made me retune them. I tried to argue that it just goes 'doink' when I hit it but no luck." (Makes sense to me that Ruddess would be one of those annoying-to-the-rest-of-us perfect pitch types).

He also mentioned that he only had about 3 days to prepare for his DT audition due to other commitments - teaching at Berklee and then a South American clinic tour, which makes his audition video look that much more impressive.

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 1:02 pm
by ovid9
Holy crap that's amazing.

Drummers, especially world class drummers, are just built differently. I can barely fret notes and pick strings and maybe hit a pedal at the same time. Having all my limbs going at different time all over the place just hurts my head.

Patterns with prime numbers....oi. :freak:

Sounds like it was a pretty cool time!

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 1:32 pm
by Harvest
Well the primes thing makes sense, actually. Non prime numbers will just sound like whatever the lowest factor of the group is.... 6/9/12/15s all sound like triplets (12s could sound like groups of 4 too).

The crazy part is subdividing a beat or measure into 29 even parts while knowing where the next "1" is to the nearest millisecond :eek:

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 1:36 pm
by Yarbicus
Dude, is crazy good! Must have been a cool clinic.

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 1:39 pm
by Devin
I'm convinced that he is the most gifted drummer on the planet. Dude is just absolutely incredible

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:09 pm
by GuitarBilly
wow it's weird that this thread was posted today because just last night I was watching the DT audition videos for the time.I am not a big DT so I did not know they had the audition videos until a friend of mine told me yesterday that one of the drummers was Brazilian so I checked it out.

Anyway, yeah Mangini seems like a real nice guy, first and foremost. And DEFINITELY an incredible musician.

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 2:58 pm
by Harvest
GuitarBilly wrote:wow it's weird that this thread was posted today because just last night I was watching the DT audition videos for the time.I am not a big DT so I did not know they had the audition videos until a friend of mine told me yesterday that one of the drummers was Brazilian so I checked it out.

Anyway, yeah Mangini seems like a real nice guy, first and foremost. And DEFINITELY an incredible musician.


Yeah, when I watched the videos, to me it either had to be him or Marco Minneman - who is also fucking incredible. I think either of them could've got it, I guess they went with the local New Yorker guy. I thought Marco was better in the audition videos, but I guess Mike got no warmup since he went first, and of course they're all dealing with a foreign kit setup so there's that factor, plus getting only 3 days to work out the fucking drum parts for The Dance of Eternity plus a handful of other DT tunes. :freak:

Another thing he mentioned, is that with the kit he uses it has some ambidextrous stuff, so he'll have the same toms on both sides of him to let him play certain sequences without crossing over - and also so that when he gets bored of a groove, he'll switch back and forth between playing lefty and righty (feet and hands) :lol: *ain't no thang* :whistle:

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 8:42 pm
by ovid9
Harvest wrote:Well the primes thing makes sense, actually. Non prime numbers will just sound like whatever the lowest factor of the group is.... 6/9/12/15s all sound like triplets (12s could sound like groups of 4 too).

The crazy part is subdividing a beat or measure into 29 even parts while knowing where the next "1" is to the nearest millisecond :eek:


The primes thing DOES make sense now that you mention it. It makes sense why a lot of bands play in 13/8 or something because it breaks up the "straight" beat in a way.

Like I said, I'm not a drummer, I'm barely a guitarist. :lol:

That is funny though that he was essentially "too good" for the recording to play certain things back in the day. :lol:

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 1:42 am
by SuperFlyinMonke
Damn, where was he? I would have liked to see that.

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 1:37 pm
by Harvest
It was at Axe Music.

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2013 3:56 pm
by RSBro
I guess Portnoy thought they would never find a guy that was a better fit than him lol. I haven't heard the new DT but I've known about Mangini for about as long as I've been playing. My drumtard said he makes the former Mike look like a n00b for the most part.

Re: Mike Mangini

Posted: Thu Oct 10, 2013 9:40 am
by TurboPablo
I can play the drums. Can hold it down pretty well once I get loose. But to even contemplate the drums on that high a level is just crazy. It's the exact opposite reason I love to hit the skins. So I can turn my brain off and just smack shit.