Mike Portnoy

tintin said:
i was a big fan of mike once. but then i guess i listed to dream theater just TOO MUCH!
it was obvious to point out mike style after awhile with that hand x2 feet x2 thing.
that was the first thing i practiced when i first got my double pedals. and. it took me like half an hour to play it as speeds as fast as the tracks that has those rolls.
it is clear that mike's playing has become kinda stale and more to the metal side. well duhh. he is the metal head among his band.

but i kinda like those little cute "clown walking over a tight rope" kind of tunes that dream theater likes to play once in awhile. it kinda makes things light and interesting apart from the other songs like "Panic Attack" from the latest album which is kinda a disppointment to me. hmm.. u can call it evolution or watever. personally i feel that. dream theater is losing that X factor it had years ago when it was playin albums like Images and Words.

u can to give mike some credit cuz those hand x2/ feet x2 rolls are pretty decent and clean. though.. many drummers can do it too. haha. well mike is an interesting drummer. but please, i suggest that u move on. i mean. don't just stick to mike. though he has pretty sweet chops and can play as if there are 2 drummers. i recently got the hang of symphony X and i find that the drummer plays much simpler stuff and allows the music to breathe. i think that's very important in music composition rather than dumping tons of demi-semi quaver rolls throughout 5min. i'm not saying that mike does this thing though.
of course. being a seasonal drummer. mike does know when to play this and when not to play that. but i guess.. sometimes he just gets carried away? =)

cheers. no offence to portnoy fans. i was one of u guys too! haha!
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I can buy your post more so than someone that just posts a thinly disguised...ok, blatently overt bashing. I understand why you'd get sick of Mike. I have never been impressed by his drum solos. But I have to look at his overall body of work.

DT,LTE, Transatlantic, OSI, yellow matter custard, Hammer of the Gods, Neil Morse, and so on.
 
DrummerDad said:
I read all the titles and found nothing on him so here goes.

I love his technique. I used to listen to all the "normal" stuff till I heard him. And it seems all I want to listen to is Dream Theater now. I have played for awhile, and most drummers have certain niches, or habits. Once you figure out what they are doing you can play it. I usually can play a song the 2nd or 3rd time I hear it, But his stuff takes weeks, months on some of it, just to figure out the numbers behind what he is doing.What drives me crazy is most people( non-players) look at me like Im crazy when I start to try to explain what he is doing. They are like, man he screwed that up, and Im like, No he just dropped a beat, He'll pick it up in a minute.His drumming has texture, all the normal stuff is boring now. Can anyone tell me of a comparable band, with all the technicality of DT?What do you guys think of Mike? Sorry if this is a repost.

http://www.drummerworld.com/drummers/Mike_Portnoy.html
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can anyone tell me the name of the song he is playing in that video with Dream Theater?
 
Jalmar said:
Buy many cymbals and three bassdrums and then you have Portnoy in a nut shell.
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I actually see him lots of times with 4 bass drums.

And you really shouldn't think that little of Portnoy :)
 
lfdy said:
I actually see him lots of times with 4 bass drums.

And you really shouldn't think that little of Portnoy :)
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Well, actually, I am only exaggerating this understatement, Portnoy knows how to play and I respect him for that. But even though, who needs three or four bassdrums?
 
Jalmar said:
Well, actually, I am only exaggerating this understatement, Portnoy knows how to play and I respect him for that. But even though, who needs three or four bassdrums?
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True...

But hey, if you get them for free :) Same for his cymbals...
 
Hey everybody. Here is a link to a video off Dream Theater when are jamming for their album Train Of Thought that was released in 2003. Cool stuff and you get see alot of Portnoy and he's also telling about the writing.

mms://wm.elektra.com/dream_theater_bonus/nyc_hi.wmv
 
I was never impressed with him until I saw the solo at the drum clinic on drummer world. For once I was impressed.
 
Tommy Lee is #1 said:
I was never impressed with him until I saw the solo at the drum clinic on drummer world. For once I was impressed.
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Really? It is the exact opposite for me. IMO the solo at the clinic here on drummerworld by Mike is one of the worst solo's I've ever sceen him play on video. I'm far more impressed by his work with Dream Theater and LTE. I think he just shines inside the music, rather than solo's.
 
I just borrowed a copy of Live at Budokhan. I'll be back soon with my take.
 
toteman2 said:
Really? It is the exact opposite for me. IMO the solo at the clinic here on drummerworld by Mike is one of the worst solo's I've ever sceen him play on video. I'm far more impressed by his work with Dream Theater and LTE. I think he just shines inside the music, rather than solo's.
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Neil Peart states on his new video "anatomy of a drum solo"

-Some drummers are not soloists. They express everything within the context of the music. Sometimes the solos are nothing more than a collection of dry rudiments. I always thought there were drummers that didn't need to solo, because they said everything already.
 
toteman2 said:
Really? It is the exact opposite for me. IMO the solo at the clinic here on drummerworld by Mike is one of the worst solo's I've ever sceen him play on video. I'm far more impressed by his work with Dream Theater and LTE. I think he just shines inside the music, rather than solo's.
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Yeah, i fully agree.

I don't really like Portnoy solo's either, but i do like his playing in DT and LTE.
 
I must say that the opening fill to "Paradigm Shift" with Dream Theater is extremely creative and well played.

Even if he isn't my favourite drummer, he can still put up a few good fills.
 
Jalmar said:
I must say that the opening fill to "Paradigm Shift" with Dream Theater is extremely creative and well played.

Even if he isn't my favourite drummer, he can still put up a few good fills.
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Yeah, i like that fill a lot too...
 
Stu_Strib said:
I just borrowed a copy of Live at Budokhan. I'll be back soon with my take.
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(quoting myself aside)

Yeah so I watched Live at Budokhan and I have to say...

Pretty damned impressive.

The usual Portnoy nitpicks didn't really bother me. So what if he uses the hand hand foot foot fill too much, and so what if he stands up and points, and spins sticks, and overplays from time to time? His time and pocket was impeccable. He actually made the normally mechanical sounding "metal" bits sound musical. Killer drum sound too.

I didn't know he sang too!
 
Someone with similar technique as Mike is probably Neal Peart or the Rev from Avenged Sevenfold. Both bands play prog.
 
He sings in a lot of songs. More in their newer stuff than in their older stuff. For example, As I Am, The Test That Stumped Them All, and In the Name of God, to name a few.
 
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