Hi Samuel Balavoine
I'm currently looking for crashes for my drumset, and you always have been a reference to me in terms of sound. I especially enjoyed your cymbal setup used in this video :
The Zildjian cymbals in that particular video (to the best of my memory) are 13" K Hi Hats, 16" Oriental Trash China, 5 custom bells, 18" Crash Of Doom, 2 more custom bells, 15" K Crash, 20" K Ride, 18" K Custom Crash, 12" Oriental Trash China, 18" Z China (discontinued).
Hi Alannah
I had a quick thought just now about practising; when you were younger did you tend to practise playing along to songs more than focusing on technique? More recently I've combined home pad technique practice with later jumping on a kit and finding ideas naturally come out in musical applications, but for a vast majority of my initial years I'd only play along to songs, which I felt hindered my technical ability somewhat.
In recent years I'd only practised rudiments because I felt I had to, rather than understanding their musical purpose. I suppose I'm just wondering how much of your initial practice years were purely "song-learning" based and how much of that, if at all, helped you apply technique later on?
In my early years I pretty much only played along to records. My Dad would have me play along to all kinds of music (mostly jazz based). I guess (in the time before I had proper lessons) I developed my own techniques that I felt I needed to be able to play along (provided that it wasn't crazy fast or complicated). When I started having lessons and studied grip, rudiments, reading etc - I pretty much hated it as it felt so detached from playing along to the records. As the years went by I started to recognise where the general improvement of technique became helpful. I didn't really get serious about studying until I was about 17, 18 years old...but I always continued playing along to recordings and felt that I was developing some kind of musical understanding.
cheers
Gavin