Mike Mangini

I love Dream Theater, but I really only love the Kevin Moore-era albums. It's clear to me that when Moore left the band lost someone good at crafting songs as opposed to riffs and solos separated by a chorus.

It's also clear that Portnoy assuming a stronger leadership role didn't mean he was really contributing anything musical, he just wanted more control and the heavy riff-driven sound gave him plenty of opportunity to overplay and protect his prog rock drummer slot in the Modern Drummer polls.

Mangini's skills are more than a match for Portnoy's, so as far as I'm concerned the drums are the least of my worries. I feel like Dream Theater is still finding their way as writers again but even without Portnoy getting in the way they still need better songwriting. All of the post-Portnoy albums are good enough, but lacking any real creative spark like Images and Words and Awake had. If anything they sound a little like a band trying to copy the sound of those albums without really quite understanding how they made those albums in the first place.
 
Mike Mangini So Far

Mike James is a classic example of why winning is important to a players overall value and ranking.

People on here like to
 
Matt Bo Eder said:
True, it's arguable. However, if you didn't have Greg Lake's Lucky Man on that first album, would they have gotten to Tarkus?

Watching a ELP historical documentary, Emerson was always pushing the musical boundaries, which I think is a great thing. But, I think if ELP just followed Emerson, they would've lost much of their audience which may have shortened the lifespan of the band, I think anyway.
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Hi Matt Bo,
you're probably right in this, it was just my personal preferences that came out. And I do love Greg's voice, and some of his songs too, I just feel that it was Keith who made that band what it was. I also love the Nice, Keith's band prior ELP, and they had a fantastic drummer too. Not to knock down in any way on CP but the Nice had "groove" for lack of a better word.
Sadly now mr Lake is not longer with us, 2016 has been rough on some great artists!
Now I'm going to put on "Moonchild" with Greg Lake and King Crimson!!!
Merry Xmas everybody from Sweden.
 
One thing i loved bout watching the audition videos is how quiet and nice mike is. then as soon as he gets behind the kit he's a monster... as far as DT.. never heard a song other than whats in the show. I preferred the way the band sounded with the ex-kreator drummer..
 
Icetech said:
One thing i loved bout watching the audition videos is how quiet and nice mike is. then as soon as he gets behind the kit he's a monster... as far as DT.. never heard a song other than whats in the show. I preferred the way the band sounded with the ex-kreator drummer..
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I always thought the toms in his audition sound like cannons.
 
I studied with Mike (Mangini) for a year at Berklee. To me he is easily the most technically proficient drummer out there. His coordination, chops and ability to count and play polyrhythms is absolutely insane. People can debate all day about musicality but I'm talking about from a pure technical level.

And yes he's also a super nice, helpful, humble, self-deprecating person. On the contrary though he is INCREDIBLY serious about his instrument and really opened my eyes on what it takes to truly be prepared for a gig.

I don't listen to Dream Theater (outside of occasional drum videos) but I was really happy to hear he got the chair... he totally deserves it and is the perfect drummer for any prog/rock/metal band.
 
GoAndPractice said:
I studied with Mike (Mangini) for a year at Berklee. To me he is easily the most technically proficient drummer out there. His coordination, chops and ability to count and play polyrhythms is absolutely insane. People can debate all day about musicality but I'm talking about from a pure technical level.

And yes he's also a super nice, helpful, humble, self-deprecating person. On the contrary though he is INCREDIBLY serious about his instrument and really opened my eyes on what it takes to truly be prepared for a gig.

I don't listen to Dream Theater (outside of occasional drum videos) but I was really happy to hear he got the chair... he totally deserves it and is the perfect drummer for any prog/rock/metal band.
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It's cool you got to study with him and I've heard somewhere he's won some World's Fastest Drummer awards or records but I don't remember if that's true or not.
 
BenjaminCamelot said:
It's cool you got to study with him and I've heard somewhere he's won some World's Fastest Drummer awards or records but I don't remember if that's true or not.
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Mangini and Johnny Rabb used to go back and forth year after year winning fastest single strokes in a minute competitions. Some kid has the record now, I believe. Mangini is likely too busy working in DT to be bothered with worlds fastest competitions.
 
Just wanted to resurrect this thread to add to the chorus of praise that Mike Mangini has received.

I saw Dream Theater at an especially good venue (The National Arts Center in Ottawa, Canada) last night and was blown away by so many aspects of the show. Man, did it sound GOOD for a rock concert!

Mangini's playing was a revelation for me and the most refreshing thing I've seen for years.

I'll be honest; I was taken aback by Mike's unorthodox cymbal setup at first and it took me a couple of songs before I could wrap my head around what I was seeing and hearing but after that, it was pure bliss.

For those that don't know: Mike's cymbals are angled steeply and mounted way, way above his head - like 7 or 8 feet by the looks of it. Nonetheless, they sound amazing and really cut through the mix. That, and they are HUGE. I was close enough to the stage to hear those monsters clearly - something I have rarely, if ever, experienced at a rock concert. His cymbal setup was fascinating.

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in to express my appreciation for what I witnessed last night. I've seen many, many of the greats in concert and Mike Mangini's performance ranks right up there with the best of them. I'll run out of adjectives describing how jaw-droppingly good it was.

I took just the one photo and should have zoomed in as it's difficult to see the topmost cymbals, especially to the left and rear, but they're HUGE.

Cheers

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Tommy_D said:
Mangini is a monster behind the kit. I think his drumming fits the music well, but I dont care for the music any more. Its not because of his drumming though. Its the structure of the songs, the awkward key and timing changes that get made and the general direction the music is moving towards, which is strangly sci-fi, theatrical and over the top.

Lots of the musical direction came from Portnoy who kept it more grounded in a heavy prog rock style. But with Portnoy gone you are left with Petrucci and Rudess to go crazy. Granted both of these guys are musical virtuosos, but its too much crazy and really needs to get grounded back to its heavy prog rock roots. This latest "rock-opera" album is neither rock, nor opera. Its awful.

Lets get back to something like Train of Thought. That was a fantastic album! If they want to get "proggy" try writing songs like When Dream and Day Unite, or make another album like Six Degrees of Inner Turbulance if you want the concept style album with "balls and chunk" (to use a DT term).
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I agree 100%. I liked the music much better with Portnoy. Now it seems they just try to make things as sophisticated as they possibly can losing the good music in the process. I'm not sure it has much to do with Mangini though.
 
Mangini sounds great. So did Portnoy.
I don't actually recognize a huge difference in the music with the drummer change.
The most drastic change in music for the band happened when Jordan R. joined. The drummer change was pretty much transparent compared to that one.
 
I've seen Dream Theater several times on this tour, and I've been blown away every time.

Mangini's set up is pretty crazy, and just watching him play it makes my rotator cuff hurt. But his speed and fluidity around that kit is absolutely unbelievable, and his playing is rock solid.

As far as the music goes, I'm really impressed by the new album. My three-year-old comment in this thread about the songwriting needs an update. I think Distance Over Time is the best album they've produced in a long time and I think it has a good balance of all of the elements that make Dream Theater special.
 
I can't listen to Dream Theater. Monster players but the tunes don't resonate with me. That said, both drummers mentioned are KILLER!
 
TOMANO said:
I can't listen to Dream Theater. Monster players but the tunes don't resonate with me. That said, both drummers mentioned are KILLER!
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Me, either, Tomanto. Considering that I've always been heavily into bands like Yes and Kansas, you'd think that DT would be an easy match. But, no. Nothing I've listened to has excited even the slightest interest for me. My loss, I'm sure, but it just ain't happening for me.

I saw Mike Mangini when he was still playing with Extreme. His performance that night had me standing there with my mouth open and catching flies. The guy seems to have honed every tiny aspect of drumming to the extreme (no pun intended), and his fit with that group simply seemed perfect. (His playing on "Here Today" - is that the right title? - still astounds me.)

(HOW does he grow his hair so long so fast? Seems that at the time he joined DT he had rather short hair, but within months it was down to his belt.)

GeeDeeEmm
 
Winston_Wolf said:
I've seen Dream Theater several times on this tour, and I've been blown away every time.

Mangini's set up is pretty crazy, and just watching him play it makes my rotator cuff hurt. But his speed and fluidity around that kit is absolutely unbelievable, and his playing is rock solid.

As far as the music goes, I'm really impressed by the new album. My three-year-old comment in this thread about the songwriting needs an update. I think Distance Over Time is the best album they've produced in a long time and I think it has a good balance of all of the elements that make Dream Theater special.
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Apparently he arranged his cymbals like that the keep them from bleeding into the drum mics. Talk about sacrificing yourself for your art!

I quite like the new record too. I think it's every bit as good as Train of Thought. I'm glad that I'm not alone! (y)
 
I won't discuss who is better, as I think they are both killer and very different from each other. In fact, both are one of my main inspirations aside DT. However, after "A Dramatic turn of Events" I haven't really listened to DT's albums. If they don't hook me, I don't listen to it in it's entirely without thinking half way "why amI listening to this?". ADTOE I think was the best complete work after Portnoy, but that's just my opinion. I have seen them in 2015 and it was one of the best concerts I have ever been to, ranking nr3 for my top favorites. In my opinion DT got too technical and too few musical, it lacks those hooking melodies in a 15 minute song. The solos became way too technical as well and again, few musicality other than a bounch of fast strings and keys. They don't take the full potential of Mangini with polyrythms as stuff. I got a lot more hooked by other bands like Haken, Leprous, Animals as Leaders, Plini, etc. Simple reason for me is that again, you can make the most complex music ever, but if it loses the melody to hook you with... yea. Not for me.

I would even dare to argue they got too commercial. Every album is the same, they release that one hooky song with a fancy solo in the middle, and the rest of the album is pure messy technical stuff without melody I can't listen to. Like a formula of some sort.
 
I used to really dig them, but now it's more of an appreciation than an emotional reaction.
Since Scenes From a Memory I've felt they write too many half-time, let's try and get people to sing-along, choruses. It's like half the tunes they write they hit a stumbling block at the chorus and decide "let's do that half-time thing and see if we can people to sing along" again...
The last album does have some winning moments (distance over time), a lot of them, but it also has a lot of those annoying choruses so many songs which I would consider for my everyday playlist don't make the cut.
They kind of stopped being a prog band after Octavarium and became more of a glam math metal band.
 
danondrums said:
I used to really dig them, but now it's more of an appreciation than an emotional reaction.
Since Scenes From a Memory I've felt they write too many half-time, let's try and get people to sing-along, choruses. It's like half the tunes they write they hit a stumbling block at the chorus and decide "let's do that half-time thing and see if we can people to sing along" again...
The last album does have some winning moments (distance over time), a lot of them, but it also has a lot of those annoying choruses so many songs which I would consider for my everyday playlist don't make the cut.
They kind of stopped being a prog band after Octavarium and became more of a glam math metal band.
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Funny you say math metal band. I’ve referred to DT as math rock for years.
I saw them a couple of times during the Portnoy years and while their stuff doesn’t resonate with me, they put on a helluva live show.
 
I got a chance to see Portnoy with the "Sons of Apollo" at the House of Blues in Anaheim a while ago and it was a good show. Billy Sheehan was on bass, and somebody told me the keyboard player was another DT guy that Portnoy fired a while back, but they know how to put on a show. At times a little self-indulgent, but that's kind of how that prog rock stuff is, no?
 
Bo Eder said:
I got a chance to see Portnoy with the "Sons of Apollo" at the House of Blues in Anaheim a while ago and it was a good show. Billy Sheehan was on bass, and somebody told me the keyboard player was another DT guy that Portnoy fired a while back, but they know how to put on a show. At times a little self-indulgent, but that's kind of how that prog rock stuff is, no?
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I'd like to see one of those shows.
I saw Portnoy with Transatlantic in NYC around 2000 and I enjoyed it more than any dream theater show.
And I have enjoyed some DT shows for sure. You can see me in the front row of the SFAM DVD in NYC and that was tremendous.
 
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