my101snaredrums
Junior Member
Having watch mike portnoy's drum videos and even listening to his drumming style, he is a very 16th note-orientated and "square" drummer and this is the drumming style that Dream Theatre has built their music on. All the drummers invited to the audition are at a much higher caliber level than Mike Portnoy will ever achieve, musically speaking. I was surprised to see that just about all the band members had already learned the odd timing piece that the keyboard player wrote and that was presented to every drummer auditioning. First off, all of these drummers are very skilled musicians and most of them had trouble making sense of the rythmic anomalies presented in the sight-reading piece. Even Portnoy would have trouble playing this junk. It is true that some musicians have better sight-reading abilities than others and it would have been better to introduce a piece that none of the band members had seen before hand to truly see how well even jives together.
Portnoy never even learned how to play the montruous kits that TAMA supplied him with outside the common tempos all related to 16th note patterns. It doesn't make sense to me that the band would be looking for higher skilled drummers than Portnoy when the guitar player stated that they would still like to play the songs with the original drumming composition parts.
Good thing that none of the drummers chosen to participate in the auditions other than Mike Mangini actually made the band because all of the band members would have to skill up to be able to hang with drummers like Donati, Minneman, Lang, and the others.
Portnoy never even learned how to play the montruous kits that TAMA supplied him with outside the common tempos all related to 16th note patterns. It doesn't make sense to me that the band would be looking for higher skilled drummers than Portnoy when the guitar player stated that they would still like to play the songs with the original drumming composition parts.
Good thing that none of the drummers chosen to participate in the auditions other than Mike Mangini actually made the band because all of the band members would have to skill up to be able to hang with drummers like Donati, Minneman, Lang, and the others.