Drum Teacher Reacts: MATT GARSTKA - Animals As Leaders - 'Tooth and Claw' | (2020 Reaction) 

They had to find a drum God to match the guitarists. This band has some the most talented musicians active right now. At least in my opinion. Tosin, Javier, and Matt are the types musicians you watch in order to feel guilty about not practicing more.

Matt is a MONSTER player. He's definitely on that next level drummer's list these days. I love his band Animals as Leaders too. They're awesome.

I feel like dry cymbals offer an advantage to these types of bands specifically in that it allows them to play the cymbals off of each other rather than into each other. Pay attention to how often he's hitting different cymbals one right after another. They don't sustain into the other one's sound, almost allows them to use them as a second set of toms in a way. It's a sharp note with it's own pitch that's quick and exact and allows the differences to be heard and highlighted rather than the sounds bleeding into each other. Almost exactly the same as him using the gels on the toms to deaden the ring

As a guitarist, I much prefer my drummer having darker, dry cymbals for two reasons: 1. So I can hear my damn guitar 2. My ears

Blake Richardson from Between the Buried and Me. There's a drum cam vid with great sound of him playing "Telos" live.

Matt's playthrough of "The Woven Web" is also amazing.

Matt is the cleanest mess I've ever seen I love the bird eye shot you can see how precise his snare hits are , even with his immaculate ghostie notes

For me, dry cymbals in modern music are used, specially in metal because: - Snare (and ghost notes) and kick are more and more presents in the mixs, to match with the power of rythmic guitares and bass - Cymbals set up are bigger and with a rythmic/ syncopate utilisation, cymbals sustains have to be shorts for the comprehension

I really like the sound of dry hats, they compliment ghost-note-snare-heavy playing really well imo. I like a brighter crash tho and the ride can sit somewhere in the middle

The drum face is strong with this one haha

* Hey! Check out my REACTION PLAYLIST... ru-vid.com/group/PLqspKksRqaUURy8K34sBSKvuGo3ApmLC2 * As a way to prioritize the amount of reaction requests I'm getting in the RU-vid comments... I am going to do the PATREON picks first. www.patreon.com/AndrewRooneyDrums I still love you if you are NOT a Patreon contributor. And I will still try and get to your pick. It's a just a reward for those that help out with costs/time involved with doing the vids. Disclaimer: No guarantees. I can only do what I can do. If a vid is blocked... it's blocked. I'll do my best! Note: Patrons also get exclusive access to the vids that get blocked :) Thanks for watching!

This guy deserves much more views one of the best drummers in the world right now!

Dry cymbals are great for fast playing as you can hear the articulation better of each hit, instead of the notes all muddying together with washier cymbals. It’s good to have a couple of each depending on the tempo of the song and sound you need.

I got so excited when i saw this thumbnail! I watch this performance daily and am blown away every single time by the precision and also the songwriting that’s involved

Love the smirk on your face when he starts playing. Someone who loves drums

This is definitely becoming my favorite reaction channel, good mix between some humor, technical knowledge/analysis, and some genuine reactions to the stuff you're watching.. love it man. If you get to a non-patreon pick, Anthony Barone's playthrough of Rise Of The Fearmonger is jawdropping, it's one of those 'boundary pushing' songs imo for modern drumming. Cheers Andrew!

I LOVE how he fills with the snare.

You're right...not all people watching are drummers. As a guitar player and songwriter, I like watching to see how drummers think. What you all do is like witchcraft to me, and hearing the commentary makes me a better writer. Thanks for the videos, and keep up the good work!!!

Brilliant drummer.. Up there with best in the world. Saw Animals as Leaders in London.. They were supporting Meshuggah.. So it was a drumming orgasm. Try igor cavalera from Sepultura, Propaganda..

La playera de "no entiendo" es la onda jajaja, buen video, saludos!

I would say that dry cymbals allow you to use them more musically - rather than just as big accents - because of the shorter decay. I think though you do have to commit to that by using crashes etc more often to fill out the space where the wash would be.

Something about watching a drummer enjoy another drummer I love is wholesome.

Watched Animals as Leaders in the Logo in Hamburg and after the gig, Matt was just casually hanging out with us in front of the stage having a beer. Nice guy i thought. Good drummer. Back then I haven't figured out HOW FUCKING GREAT he actually is...damn me...If only i knew

I've always loved watching him beat the FUCK out of these drums and cymbals. Makes it sound so amazing!

"Bobby Jarzombek - Peppered Cancer" - You won't regret it and you're gonna love it.

Aric Improta is someone to check out. Doing things that are so innovative. Anything from him playing in night verses. Amazing

Got to see Matt Garstka play on Steve Vai's Generation Axe Tour. He played for all of the guitarists on that tour: Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, Nuno Bettencourt, Zach Wylde, and of course Tossin Abassi. He absolutely held his own with each of them, even across such dramatic shifts in musical style. Amazing!!

AAL is by far one of the most technical bands I’ve ever heard, the Lead guitarist Tosin, is an absolutely beast. Three man band, this is their second drummer and Garstka is an amazing add. Seen these guys live...fucking amazing show

Excited to see you seeing Gartska finally. Dude is a polyrhythmic machine, and loves syncopation with the guitars.

That 10 bpm promise is why I am now subscribed.

Matt is one of my favorite drummers of all time. Dude is savage.

I think a combination of bright and dry cymbals is perfect but it's also situational, for example I find dry cymbals don't cut through the mix enough in small rock gigs that don't have mics setup for the drums but then work great in a jazz setting

I'm waiting for you to see something that makes you accidentally spit your coffee out ! Love the channel 🤩

I've been doing a lot of practice on my old beat up cymbals, not the ones I use for gigs , and really love the trashy sound, but I honestly think there's a place for everything, Dry, Trashy , Swishy, And glorious sustain !

It drives me nuts how drummers like Matt never look like they are even near their limits ,EVER.

Hi Andrew...just wanted to say thanks... due to forgetting passwords etc ive had to subscribe 4 times to your channel but low and behold my kick tempo has increased currently its now 290

I forgot the name of this song, but the moment I clicked on it, it was the one I hoped it was.

I think that's the longest I have ever seen you zone out without stopping the vid...

I want to see your reaction to listening to this the 500th time. That's when your mind will melt.

I was never that much into drumming, I'm a guitar guy That changed when I saw Matt Chamberlain playing with Soundgarden in 2014 Matt Cameron and Matt Garstka are also some of my favorite ones That name has something damn

This video just popped up on my feed- like You, Good Sir, I was stuck in the era I played out in. That would be mid 80s to Mid 90s Thrash/Speed Metal- Charlie Benante, Lars, Dave Lombardo, etc. My son, who's also a drummer, years ago turned me onto his Bands, like After The Burial (FUCKING DAN CARLE IS A MACHINE), Born of Osiris, Messugah (Thomas Haake anyone?), Etc. Mate, you're missing out on SO many great percussionists/drummers out there these days! This (almost) 50 year old Speed Metal drummer was impressed enough with your breakdown that I IMMEDIATELY subscribed.#WellDoneSir Oh, and BTW, Mr.Gartska and his Dad own Main Street Music on Main Street in Westfield, MA right down the road from me. Great Drum Shop, if you're in the area. Annnnd, he plays custom Tama Maples with those custom "dead" sounding Meinls. Also, he and a classmate of mine in high school were THE best Jazz/Fusion drummers in New England. Thus, that series in the middle of the song. For the record, I'm more a K Series sustain kinda guy...

the extra dry meinl cymbals are my favorite, low sustain, cuts through a mix. a stack sounds fookin nice

have a look at those: - anika nilles (!) - madden klass - mario duplantier - krimh lechner

The guy’s amazing at expressing and exploiting time signatures

My ears love dry cymbals. My main hats and crash are extra dry. Of the 20+ cymbals I own the drys are on my kit for both at home and giging. But I have brillient and traditional depending on what sound im chasing.

Animals as leaders is one of the best instrumental metal bands out there.

It's a star bubinga kit. I play Tama maple starclassics but my dream kit is a star maple. I already got a big full set of meinl byzance cymbals to go with my kit, a mix of dry and traditional but nothing to bright. Tama 910 double speed cobra's, Remo heads, and vic firth sticks to finish off my setup. Definitely my 4 favorite brands! Love your channel bud✌

Its Meinl cymbals all over all " new and younger" drummers. Its so nice to see Meinl is really getting out there. They are a superb brand

Meinl Byzance Duals are some of the best sounding, explosive, complex cymbals available. The decay is super fast, there's this dry explosion that also has a hint of pleasant wet "sweetness" to it. They are perfect for accenting grooves, chops, melodic playing and are unique in their tonal properties. I use that line for crashes, especially the 18", 19", and 20" sizes, with a more versatile option in the Transition Ride seen in this clip and I play RnB, funk, pop, and hip hop. Meinl Byzance are by far the most tonally diverse line of cymbals available and the quality is just off the charts. These cymbals project awesome live as well

7:48 The first two bars are straightforward groove. What he does in bar three, with the little splash hit, is just absolutely sick.

I like using both dry and washy cymbals. It allows me to be very flexible, as well as let me use both sounds to compliment the rest of the band, and either stand out or stay in the pocket backing up everyone else.

Car bomb- Elliot Hoffman is my favorite modern drummer hands down, there’s some good video of him playing their most recent album

Matt is amazing

5:50 i am a drummer and sound tech, the reason (or the main one imo) you hear highhats ( or any symbol for that matter) so dry it is because we compress the shit out of drums, expecialy in metal and rock. reason being is that the music is so full now that you wont hear half of the ghost notes or even the normal low dynamic ones. it is a style, it is a bit of a necessity, it is how things are done nowadays. Ofc when we record a drum the sounds are all there and high hats arent that short sounding and have a bit of a resonance or tail if you will, but you do not hear it because either the hits are cut short with a gate due to the cleaning of the sounds (so you wont hear sounds that do not belong there after they are brought up louder with compression). If you have a guy like matt you dont need to put in sync anything pretty much he is so precise it would be just no work to do. but for the post part drummers arent so precise and ofc thats the differenc between people like matt and other normal mortals, so you have to sync. now imagine someone hits the high hat and then either snare or kick, then you go to sync it and you have on 1 the high hat, on 2 the resynced snare, but a bit before 2 you have the snare picked up by the high hat mic, so there you cuz and you end up with a slightly shorted high hat tail. TRUE it makes it sound more dry and there are things you can do to rebuild the sounds to not be so dry after being cuz, but as a metalhead myself i still prefear my metal to be very precise when listening to a recorded and edited and mixed and produced and all these things track. it ends up making the track much less slopy and as a side effect it has nothing of the sould that a live song would bring, they are now two different things. Hope this clarify it a bit =) im not realy good at explaining this stuff (or eng for that matter) EDIT: and yeah drums are compressed in life too so...

Quick question, i cant but real drums because of the sound since i live in an apartment with many ppl, but is there any digital drumsets in the pricerange of 1000-1500 dollars range u can recommend, mostly for metal kinda wibe but i wanna play it all

I feel like there's a benefit for both dry and bright cymbals. I can see where dry cymbals would play a good role, especially in the studio with recording so there doesn't have to be as much maintenance on the sustain. But as far as live drumming goes I would go with bright cymbals over anything, especially if I'm playing somewhere smaller that doesn't do overheads. They cut further and the wash in a live performance will eventually flow back under everything else going on in the music but you'll still get a very loud initial punch and just the amount of sustain you need.

Great song

Matt is a damn technician on the drumkit 🤘🏻🤘🏻

You're in for a treat...

Dry cymbals are the cymbal equivalent of moon gelling your toms. I've always preferred a more electronic sound to my kit. I think it cuts through better when playing intricate fast stuff like this sort of thing.

I like A customs myself to be honest I'm so stoked to have a drummer watch drummers. I hope ya check out Matt Griner someday.

I understand what you're saying about dry cymbals. I use a dry hihat and a dry ride, but need crashes with more wash and sustain

Hes sooo good

You started talking about dry cymbals and I got an ad for Gatorade. Well played, RU-vid.

jajja q buena remera...saludos desde rio grande tierra del fuego argentina son geniales los videos

I seriously believe that this kind of music can only ever make sense to the people who made it. This kind of technical skill and mastery of the drums takes my breath away. A truely amazing drummer. I’m assuming Berkeley or somewhere……?

Fuck, Matt g's me up so much. God I love his style, equipment and existnece.

I like darker, dryer cymbals too. You can't have that wash in such a busy context. I like some wash in slower, smoother passages. Edit: you could probably have that discusdion about foot technique. Do you leave the beater in the kick drum or do you let it breathe..?

I like a mix of bright cymbals and a dry darker cymbal.

Budget drummer tip. Halloween gel window decorations work just as well as moon gel. But they are dirt cheap and come in funky colours and shapes.

i’d really love to see you watch some danny walker videos from when he was with intronaut. very unique style.

I like dark/dryer cymbals. However, I play a combination older(ish) Ks and As. I don’t bash on them though. If I play heavy, I have a set of Stagg SH and DHs that I don’t feel bad laying into. So, I guess my preference is not too dry, not too bright. Can’t stand bright, brilliant, glassy cymbals.

I like my cymbals drier than a James Bond martini

As a mix engineer, I've noticed that with newer modern metal mixes, cymbal wash is sth that mixers try their best to avoid, so maybe that is the reason why dry cymbals are being used more often...

3:50 About that Tama/Meinl thing. Meinl, apart from being awesome cymbal manufacturer is I believe the biggest distributor of music gear here in Europe. They distribute Tama, Promark, Evans and also some non drum stuff, for example Ibanez, and I believe also Mesa, D'Addario and many others. Not sure about North America, but I'd guess if they're happy about this partnership in Europe, they extend this on NA market. That's why you can see a lot of endorsed drummers with Tama/Meinl sets - it's, I guess, logistic/partnership thing.

I believe Tama and Meinl share a US distributor which is why sponsorships tend to have both. Ibenez as well, which is why you see a lot of bands with Ibanez Guitars/basses and Tama/meinl drum kits. Polyphia comes to mind.

i think the dry cymbals allow for more cymbal playing without it being overbearing on the other parts of the kit. and possibly they are a bit quicker, shorter lived, in the life of the attack allowing for more separation between hits, even fast hits.

I’d love to see his reaction to Toe’s drummer

I use a mix og dry and more "shiny". In order to not have too much dryness, i balance it with som shiny to. I think that a bit of both is the way to go.

His live performance in Saint Petersburg exhibits Buddy Rich levels of crossovers.

I’m a guitarist, so I like a drummers analysis of drummers I think are good

I use those decorative jelly stickers instead of moon gel. They work exactly the same, but can be bought at the dollar store for, you guessed it... $1.00

hahaha man it's me again, I have three for you, since you said you've lived in a cave hahaha you're going to enjoy this. Bobby Jarzombek, Hannes Grossmann and Marco Minnemann, peace bro I really enjoy your videos.

3:59 I believe he's playing a Starclassic Bubinga set. I believe its kind of a middle ground between a Mahogany and Maple--loosely speaking. I think they also discontinued this series, but are using a bubinga mock up in a new series called Star Bubinga. 5:57 He's such a busy player, I think partly--from a performance standpoint--they get out of the way fairly quickly.

You have to watch some of his drum lessons on Drumeo or the Drum Channel. It's insane how his mind works.

Matt and I attended Berklee at the same time. He is absolutely mind blowing and I highly recommend checking out his educational material. Next time you want to react to Matt Gartska I would recommend one of these three videos: Perennial The Brain Dance Ectogenesis

I prefer dry cymbals for this style of music. The "sustain" you talk about ends a lot sooner before you move onto your next cymbal. It makes all the technical runs more enunciated and they don't get drowned out in the "wash" as you put it. I think of them as shiny metal toms if that makes sense. I've seen Animals as Leaders live and you can hear every single note he plays on the cymbals which I don't think you'd get if he wasn't using dry cymbals.

I want to TY for improving my single stroke bpm. Today it went up 4.7833926 and 2/3 bpm! WooHoo!! You da man!

Always enjoyable. I think the next best thing to seeing something for the first time is getting to vicariously share somebody else seeing it for the first time. Hey I heard you bring up the topic of women drummers and I immediately thought of my favorite. I don't believe she's well known in American but in her home country of Japan she's a bit of a national treasure. Her name is Senri Kawaguchi and she's been playing in the public eye since she was probably 12. She's quite tiny but I can't imagine you won't be impressed with her technique and power. She plays really any genre but seems of late to have settled into a fusion vein. I love her and believe you will too. Here's a link to a solo of hers that demonstrates her abilities well. Senri Kawaguchi-the 2018 Bag Show: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dI3UN3TJ3m8.html

Yeah, those are Tama Stars. That vid came out somewhere around 2015-2016, and he was promoting STAR series drums. On a personal note, I don't like dry cymbals for something that it's not a low-volume gig or general group. But I like Meinl because they have generally darker tones than say Zildjian for example.

Being a drum teacher, I think it would be great if you could breakdown/analyse some of the interesting techniques these drummers are using.

Matt hits like those drums insulted his mum. Perfect combination of taste, aggression and space. Dude is awesome . The traditional cymbal helps for say bands like HUM where the drumming in sparse and a little is a lot for instance (p.s. check HUM out when you get a chance). Here he is all over the place and I think the dryness adds to the attack and bite and immediacy of his drum phrasing but that's just me. Check out the POCKET QUEEN !!

Dry cymbals (in my view) work great for creating mood on a song and I noticed the moongelled toms are a good combination with all that dryness, I almost feel like putting lotion after that. I'd like to have a K series Ride but I prefer my cymbals and hi hats a bit brighter, great drums tho.

Need to do one of Francesco Paoli of Fleshgod Apocalypse playing The Violation, and keep in mind he had only been playing drums around 4 years when he recorded it.

Another sick tama and meinel guy is Craig Reynolds of stray from the path

I don’t like super dry cymbals when I’m playing by myself but in a mix they are great for busier music especially. I have also noticed that in a lot of modern records, the cymbals are mixed really low for that same reason.

Blake Richardson - Voice of Trespass , live drum playthrough.

I think it's best to have at least two good, bright cymbals. What's good about the dry cymbals like these is these drummers are doing a Lot of cymbal work so the fast decay of sound let's each cymbal strike be more defined. It doesn't get all muddied up. But a few loud and bright cymbals would be good for the huge emphasis crashes or a good ride or ride/bell. There needs to be a mix used wisely.

I think dry cymbals sound great for a band like this cuz they cut quicker. Then when you see a band like this live and you hear the full sound with open cymbals it makes it feel special as opposed to listening to a live performance of the album track. Also you can also add verb to anything. You can't take it away.

Check out Troy Wright he's the drummer of Plini before