The Drums Quotes

#1. Producers like to record all the drums first, then they do the bass, then all the guitars, so you're constantly moving from one song to another.

Noel Gallagher

#2. I find that doing the drums last, coming from a drum history, really works well for me.

Tommy Lee

#3. I'm really into the idea of playing sit-down drums again. I don't know if it'll end up that way, but as of right now, that's what I'm interested in doing.

Panda Bear

#4. She knew the true shape of the world. All else was shadow and the sound of distant drums.

Patrick Rothfuss

#5. Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: 'I'll do this for now, but I'm really a drummer.' That's what I'll put on my passport application.

Jack White

#6. How can I wear the harness of toil
And sweat at the daily round,
While in my soul forever
The drums of Pictdom sound?

Robert E. Howard

#7. It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.

Damien Chazelle

#8. We are drawn to repetition. We can watch the tide rolling for hours into shore. The clouds skittering across the sky. We can listen to the pulsing beat of bongo drums and are drawn magnetically to the slap, slap, slap of a girl being chastised. The human is a mystery, even too himself.

Chloe Thurlow

#9. I prefer recording drums in the analog format, but that does not mean I would only do it that way.

Randy Castillo

#10. If it hadn't worked out professionally, I would be teaching music theory and composition in a small college somewhere and playing drums in a jazz trio at the Holiday Inn on weekends, and I'd be happy there, too.

J. D. Souther

#11. The drums of Africa still beat in my heart. They will not let me rest while there is a single Negro boy or girl without a chance to prove his worth.

Mary McLeod Bethune

#12. I remember the first time somebody played me Janis Joplin. My friend Donna put on Janis Joplin, and she said, 'You're like her.' At the time, I wasn't even a singer; I was a drummer. I just wanted to play the drums.

Sophie B. Hawkins

#13. The golden rule of drums is hands clapping and feet tapping, and when you are in and out of consciousness, you can't do that to best of your ability.

Steven Adler

#14. As a drumset player I look outside the typical canon of drums - jazz and rock. When I hear something like the "Monkey Chant", even though there are no instruments on it at all, the rhythms are so intriguing.

Glenn Kotche

#15. Music is the beat of a drum that keeps time with our emotions.

Shannon L. Alder

#16. A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within.

Anthony De Mello

#17. This album is moments that I haven't done before, like just my voice and drums. What people call a rant - but put it next to just a drumbeat, and it cuts to the level of, like, Run-D.M.C. or KRS-One.

Kanye West

#18. Puffy's contribution to hip-hop culture was the remix. He offered us the music that his mom played in front of him, with newer drums and younger artists. That worked, and will consistently be there. The remix comes right after the original record, that's something Puffy did to influence the culture.

Curtis Jackson

#19. Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat.

Ron Paul

#20. I could be the drumbeat in your chest like madness before a storm swirling restlessly.

Moonshine Noire

#21. There are no stars, no moon, only knots, only the promise of death. Drums cry out in the abyss and then fade with everything else. Even the shadows fade and all that is left is death. We are all dead, we just haven't figured it out yet.

Courtney M. Privett

#22. I still believe in the need for guitars and drums and desperate poetry.

Frank Turner

#23. The rain picks up outside. It hits and slams against the window, but I think it sounds like music
a light mix of tambourine and cymbals. The wind sounds like a guitar, all low, melancholy notes. Thunder takes the drums. I'm quiet as I listen to the song.

Katie Kacvinsky

#24. I envy drummers. It must be the ultimate to sing and play drums at the same time. Phil Collins, no wonder he's so f ... happy.

Noel Gallagher

#25. I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

David Byrne

#26. I tried playing the drums, and I could play 'Boys Don't Cry' by The Cure.

Brian Posehn

#27. I take my fun very seriously, whether it's playing the drums or acting in comedy bits. The need to be disciplined about it, and not take it lightly, and not be too casual, is something I take deeply to heart.

Max Weinberg

#28. Pre-high tech, objects thunked and crashed and clopped, amid a thunder of drums, a tumult of trumpets. Today things beep and cheep and whistle. We have come from the roar of the lion to the chirp of the tree frog, ceaselessly bleating our identities while the frog-eating bats hover above us.

A.J. Orde

#29. Ah," said Lien Shu, "it is true that a blind person cannot appreciate beautiful patterns and forms, and the deaf cannot appreciate the music of bells and drums. Yet blindness and deafness do not only afflict people physically, they also exist in the minds and attitudes of people.

Zhuangzi

#30. A band like Depeche Mode would go out and record them hitting a trash can with a steel rod or something and recording it. And that would be one of their sounds of the drums. I love the creativeness of that kind of really raw sampling.

Chino Moreno

#31. I'm definitely a guitar player, but it's the last thing I listen to in a song, after the singer and the drums.

Dan Auerbach

#32. Some people are like drums, Ranga. They are only heard when you strike them. Do not be like a drum, Ranga, be heard when thou has something to say, and let the world decide.

Ian B.G. Burns

#33. I found it easy to produce. I'm not the musical guy. I can't read and play music like that, but put some drums and a sample in front of me and I can whip it up nice, and I'll work out some keys and find some interesting instruments to put under it.

Dizzee Rascal

#34. All I hear are Satan's hammers and the war drums of hell, thank you.

Alexandra Bracken

#35. I want to go to the gym
and pretend the weight machines are drums
and play the longest drum solo on them

Megan Boyle

#36. When you've got insane drums and a lot of guitar, it's really hard to mix the vocals, to mix it all well.

Marnie Stern

#37. Before this dumping was halted in the 1990s, the United States had dumped many hundreds of thousands of drums into about fifty ocean sites - almost fifty thousand of them in the Fallarones alone.

Bill Bryson

#38. It's uncomfortable, definitely, but it's also really, really great to talk drums with kids and hear them get excited about music and talk about listening to the drums.

Patty Schemel

#39. That's the beautiful thing about innocence; even monsters have a pocketful of childhood memories with which to seek comfort with.

Dave Matthes

#40. When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine - it kinda sucks the life out of music.

Dave Grohl

#41. We come from a sensory-overload culture, and so we wonder if one guy on drums and one guy dancing around is enough. Adding guys was something we always were curious about. We decided for this run specifically to stay a two-piece. In the future, we definitely could add members.

Tyler Joseph

#42. The drum is the heart of music. The saxophone can play and then rest, as can all of them except the drums; the drummer keeps going - he can't afford to stop.

Jo Jones

#43. On the McLaughlin Report, August 26, 1990: 'There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the middle East, the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.

Pat Buchanan

#44. It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later. I started playing drums at 13, and when I got to the international touring level ... I got interested in cross-country skiing, long-distance swimming, bicycling ... things that require stamina, not finesse.

Neil Peart

#45. I used to be a drummer in a band, and I really loved playing the drums, so I look forward to the right opportunity to do that at some point. Maybe even on TV. Every single live performance I'm doing on TV, I want it to be different and unique.

Zedd

#46. I don't mind doing two or three Eagles songs and playing the drums. I'm not one of those artists who's going to sit here and deny the past.

Don Henley

#47. I'd rather be a superhero in hell, kicking all kinds of demon ass, than an angel in heaven, wafting around with a beatific smile on my face, playing a pansy harp all day. Dude, give me drums and bang cymbals! I like the crash and bang.

Karen Marie Moning

#48. I have often wondered why the sounds of the beating drums do not make the marching soldiers shoot their officers and go home.

Albert J. Nock

#49. I don't think the drums are a solo instrument. Drums are there to set the beat for the music.

Keith Moon

#50. I play the ukulele. I have a great group of friends, and we do things like have battles of the bands - me sometimes on ukulele, but mostly on drums.

Mike Myers

#51. A basic ingredient in the manufacture of perfume, the attar-a heavy, pale-yellow oil stored in small metal drums-had been put up as collateral by Bulgaria, in lieu of gold, at the Moscow Narodny Bank, a Communist finance house for East-West trade.

S.J Perelman

#52. I started playing drums at about seven or eight. My mom used to let me play with the pots and pans, and instead of telling me to stop like most moms would, she just let me do it. So the noise kind of turned into music. From that point on, musically, that's what I want to do: start creating beats.

Roshon Fegan

#53. It was soldier's went marching over the rocks,
and still they came in watery flocks,
because it was spring and the birds had to come,
No doubt that soldier's had to be marching,
and that the drums had to be rolling, rolling, rolling

Wallace Stevens

#54. Everywhere you look on the planet people are using drums to alter consciousness.

Mickey Hart

#55. Louis Armstrong changed all the brass players around, but after Bird, all of the instruments had to change - drums, piano, bass, trombones, trumpets, saxophones, everything.

Cootie Williams

#56. Let each man hear his own music and live by it. The drums roll one way for one man, and another way for another. You have to listen for your own.

Audie Murphy

#57. First Moloch, horrid king, besmirched in blood, Of Human sacrifice, and parent's tears, Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their childrens' cries unheard, that passed through fire, To his grim idol.

John Milton

#58. I was a kid, and I wasn't even sure if I wanted to play the drums, you know? All I wanted to do was skateboard, but I was still learning and taking it in, so it was good.

Travis Barker

#59. Like rain drops dripping on the floor like a thousand drumists beating those drums repeatedly,
My blood runs through my veins ninety nine point nine metres per second when i think of you.

Nomthandazo Tsembeni

#60. The red-jacketed band stirred to life. The first musician raised his trumpet. The trombone dipped. The drumstick rose. Lea lowered her clarinet. It had been Brent's idea not to have their insturments rise and fall in unison. The staggered motion gave it a more exciting rhythm.

Paul Fleischman

#61. Simon: Anyone ever tell you your sense of timing really sucks?
Derek: That's why I don't play the drums. Now what's up?

Kelley Armstrong

#62. I was into hip-hop when I was a teenager. Then I started to look for samples, and I started a long Hendrix period - I liked the drums and the beats.

Gustav Ejstes

#63. White as a winding sheet, Masks blowing down the street: Moscow, Paris London, Vienna all are undone. The drums of death are mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling, Mumbling, rumbling, and tumbling, The world's floors are quaking, crumbling and breaking.

Edith Sitwell

#64. I love to write and have the basic foundation of what the song's all about. Then once the drums are done it's time for fun for me, because I don't know what I'm going to sing yet, and melody-wise I don't even have my lyrics written ...

Kirk Windstein

#65. Out of the sky, the birds, the parrots, the bells, silk, cloth, and drums, out of Sundays dancing, children's words and love words, out of love for the little fists of children, I will build a world, my world with round shoulders.

Aime Cesaire

#66. I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.

Ringo Starr

#67. The only thing that's changed for me is that I've figured out a new way to do this; when I go to record, I like to do the drums last, if that makes any sense to you.

Tommy Lee

#68. My wife and I were shopping for the whole family. In the music department my wife said, "Let's get your nephew a set of drums. That's what your brother did to us last year."

Milton Berle

#69. Too many drummers sit at the back covered in drums, and you never see them.

Tommy Lee

#70. I suppose I am a frustrated musician so I annoy my family by playing guitar in the house. I used to be into acoustic stuff but my son Joseph is learning drums, so now I have an electric guitar and we play Metallica. We have an amp and a PA in the garage with his drum kit.

Kevin McKidd

#71. It's been years and years and years I've been playing the drums, and they're still a challenge. I still enjoy using drumsticks and a snare drum.

Charlie Watts

#72. To play the drums, you have to spread your legs and use your arms. It's a very physical instrument to play. It's not feminine.

Patty Schemel

#73. It was no ape, neither was it a man. It was some shambling horror spawned in the mysterious, nameless jungles of the south, where strange life teemed in the reeking rot without the dominance of man, and drums thundered in temples that had never known the tread of a human foot.

Robert E. Howard

#74. As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm.

Daron Malakian

#75. All I ever wanted to do was play the drums; I felt good about myself when I played the drums. So I worked anywhere and everywhere I could lug my drums in.

Max Weinberg

#76. To get your playing more forceful, hit the drums harder.

Keith Moon

#77. The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried.

Aldous Huxley

#78. Stick choice should be every drummers first decision. Sticks are the liaison between you and your creative expression on the drums. Getting there the smoothest way is the reason I'm using Vater.

Rikki Rockett

#79. Then the room relaxed in cheers and babbling, and she turned in his arms to kiss him hard and cling to him, and he thought perhaps it didn't matter that they faced in opposite directions - so long as they faced each other.'

Roger Wakefield {Drums Of Autumn}

Diana Gabaldon

#80. It's harder to play drums than guitar, physically. I'm always kind of on the edge. I guess that's how I play everything: on the edge of my ability.

J Mascis

#81. I started playing the drums when I was 10 years old, I think because it was fun. And then when I hit adolescence around 14, I sorta liked girls, so drums became more of a passion, and I started playing in bands.

Mitchell Joachim

#82. A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and Holy Ghost on drums.

Hunter S. Thompson

#83. I'm a huge Bob Marley fan; I remember going to Jamaica for the first time when I was a kid and I got so obsessed with the steel drums.

Matthew Morrison

#84. Most of all I remember that what begins with drums and fife, flags and bunting, becomes too swiftly a long and grey winter of the spirit.

Helen Simonson

#85. No one really listens to the drums, I don't think. They're there, but it's not a conscious thing to listen to. Everyone listens to the vocals, of course, and the words.

Patty Schemel

#86. My favorite band at the moment is the Dresden Dolls, they're from Boston. It's a guy and a girl. She plays piano and he plays the drums and she also sings. You can find them on the web they're incredible.

Gerard Way

#87. Their calls competed with the singing of the street musicians and the sounds of drums, angklungs, sulings, and ouds.

Corina Bomann

#88. I take my job very seriously and I work the best that I can on every drum that I hit. I want all the drums and cymbals to sound the best. I strive for perfection and I won't take anything less.

Chris Johnson

#89. When you grow up, you're told that rock 'n' roll is the only authentic way to express yourself. Live instrumentation, singer, live drums. You're told that's the best medium to communicate.

Matt Tong

#90. I was a singer professionally when I was four years old, and I did not really begin to play any instrument - the first one, of course, was drums - till I was about nine years old.

Mel Torme

#91. The drums have hogged a lot of the credit. We're as much
or more
*cymbal* players, as we are drummers.

Peter Erskine

#92. I'm a dude who likes to create music with good feeling. I live like a chameleon through music. It all depends on what the beat tells me to do; that's why you're always gonna get passionate hooks, because I'm feeling the beats and the emotion behind the drums and melodies.

Kid Cudi

#93. Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents' passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It's no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.

Caleb Landry Jones

#94. Lately Fish and I have been hooking up more, which is a good thing because it's just been a struggle for me as a bass player to play with someone who's so creative on the drums, and lately it's been really good, especially during sound checks.

Mike Gordon

#95. Ye living soldiers of the mighty war,
Once more from roaring cannon and the drums
And bugles blown at morn, the summons comes;
Forget the halting limb, each wound and scar:
Once more your Captain calls to you;
Come to his last review!

Richard Watson Gilder

#96. Their Big Chief, Bo Dollis, would marshal them all together and they would start off down Dryades, with Chief Bo chanting one of the Indian songs accompanied by drums and tambourines, and the whole gang shouting back the antiphonal response.

Tom Piazza

#97. It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is "The Judge."

Wynton Marsalis

#98. After the Ed Sullivan Show, Feb. 9, 1964, at approx. 8:04pm [laughs], after that moment every album, every guitar, evey set of drums that was ever sold ... 10% should have gone right into their pocket!

George Thorogood

#99. Respect and humility go together. Humility is not meekness, but the opposite of arrogance. A wise old Indian man once said, "Empty drums make the loudest noise." Grandfather often repeated this phrase to indicate that those with the least understanding are the most arrogant.

Arun Gandhi

#100. My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.

Fernando Pessoa