A very animated Jimmy Chamberlin joins Chad Szeliga, Terry Bozzio and Danny Seraphine in a round table discussion on Drum Channel.
Jimmy talks a little about his recent switch to the ‘Drum Worshop community’ he feels that DW will be able to support “the search for a better sound and evolution of the instrument and artist”. He talks a little about building his DW drum kit online initially; probably using this.
He talked about getting back his (don’t call it leopard) Jaguar print Zwan kit which was leant out to a drum shop, and having that set-up in his home studio at the moment.
A viewer asks; “Have any of you zoned out during a gig?”
Chamberlin: What was the question?
JC would, dependant on the gig and set list - ‘inadvertently’ skip a track or two if he didn’t like them; It was up to the band if they went with it or stopped... Maybe he really hated Starz:
According to Chamberlin shark fishing in Nova Scotia with Taylor Hawkins and Josh Freeze leaves the joints a little sore for a gig the next day.
The one that got away... Chamberlin talks about shark fishing
A little talk around click tracks and maintaining a pulse through a fill. Jimmy went on to say “No clicks used in the Pumpkins and it certainly shows” but post Pumpkins he started to use one (in Zwan). He talks about ‘seeing time’ and a ‘having a clear musical picture in the mind’ about [how a fill should sit in a beat] before even playing it. He also goes on to say that some of “my favourite drummers are sloppy as hell, but as long as it sounds good [to him] and [the grove] has an emotional basis, it doesn’t matter”.
Chamberlin talked a little about recording some tracks for Mellon Collie at Pumpkinland and a little problem which occurred; apparently transmissions from a local taxicab company radios got picked up on their tapes. He also talked about how in order to look at his drum parts in a different way when working with Flood, sometimes Flood would remove all of Chamberlin's cymbals in order to force him to approach songs in a different way.
In terms of practising; Chamberlin revealed that he is currently working on double bass playing and experimenting with Swiss triplets and poly-rhythms from African style drumming. He started off using a couple of books; One on ostinatos, recommended by Bozzio and The Encyclopedia of Double Bass Drumming by Bobby Roninelli.
