Hello everybody, as you can see I'm here with the great Marco Minnemann. Who? Oh, that's me, ok.
Hi. He accepted to be a guest of the DrumHouse and we're going to have a nice interview and nice chat with him
Good morning
So Marco I was completly blown away by your DVD when I saw it some years ago, and I really learned a lot from your concept of playing on vamps
How did you develop that and has it something to do with your playing other instruments also?
Yes! Very much! I want to address this to all the people out there, because I started playing guitar and at the same time I started playing drums
And before even playing guitar, when I was 5 years old, I started playing organ, 2 Medieval organs with foot bass
That's why I came up with all this kind of Hi-Hat patterns and all that stuff, I guess, you know, because (indipendence stuff) I always, to me it was always more listening to music, to the bands, reather than listening to certain drummers 
And that's kind of strange because people always ask me, who were your influences? And I always say, well I listen to Frank Zappa's music, you know? And my favourite bands were the Queen or, still are, and Led Zeppelin, Police and Miles Davis and you know, Zappa of course
and all this kind of stuff, and when I started writing my own music, I heard these Hi-Hat patterns, actually in my head, and I thought, you know? People play these with their hands and on a double, you know
kick, or like, I have 2 kick drums, why don't I try to, like, playing a paradiddle, or a double paradiddlediddle between kick and Hi-Hat?
And then i put other stuff on top
Oh, let's put the coffe here... you know,  but, you know, and then I tried to first of all play the regular drumkit and then kind of thought like, well, what if I put my gong drum over here
and use it as a kick drum replacement, or something like that, and then play like the other patterns just with the Hi-Hats, between Hi-Hats
that opened all another universe, and meanwhile I'm able to incorporate also two bands playing as you could have heard with the Aristocrats
And it works quite musical, it was a long way, it took me years and years, it took me over 15 years to be that comfortable that I just sit behind the drums and go like, ok let's make it sound good
How can you make it that musical though
Well, you mean the concept? Yeah, I mean you obviously can do it really well, some people get caught into the matts stuff
Happens to me all the time but, meanwhile I kind of know where to go or where I want to go
It's like, you know, at some point it was like not only the decision to play these patterns but also to pick first of all the right instruments, that I want to hear and kind of place them actually the right way as well
For example I kind of decided on some of my older videos, or DVD's you could see that I have like a little foot snare on the side, or I had like whatever, maybe a cowbell or some other 
Stack cymbals, and then I looked at the DVD and then I thought like, you know what? I actually don't like that sound at all.
So i got rid of that foot snare, and I thought, I'm pretty much a Rock drummer, I love being a Rock drummer, I'm like a Rock drummer with, like, other infuences, with like, you know? Capacity or something like that, I don't know, but intrested in the technical aspect and I want to
kind of spread it out as much as possible, but always using it in a very musical way, but I'm more of a guy when it comes down to the point, I like a  craky snare drum, a fat kick drum, you know? 
Melodic toms, and cutting cymbals. And I'm pretty much a player that likes to play everything on the rock sound, more like a rock sound
just love it, so basically my set up is still like 13" Hi-Hat here, 14" Hi-Hat over here, I got rid of the 8", sometimes I play it but i used to have it over here, then I striped on my cymbals as well
I usually have like 5 cymbals splash over here, crash over there, another crash over here, another china or a crash over here and a ride cymbal over there
And 5 toms, which is like, 8-10-12 or sometimes I use like 10-12-8, meanwhile 16-18 and a 22" gong drum and sometimes double kick either way like, when I'm playing
with the metal bands 2 times 24". We did this in Uk with a band, so we played, we basically had 2 24" kicks just looks great and sounds good and it's just cool
But I'm fine also with a 22 or 23" that DW makes, actually with a double pedal, so that's fine too
But, your question was actually how to make it sound musical, so first of all pick like the instruments, and then, again, kind of make it sound musical, that's all up to you
I can play the most complex pattern and make it sound like boring or something like that, you know? Like if I want to play like, let's say a, whatever, throw something at me, like the 3/16th groupins or whatever like
Something like that, and I have , let's say like 2 different groupings of that like, let's say the first one plays
and the second one let's say, plays the off beat, so we have like
and then we have like, let's say, with the kick drum, let's say,
so, you know, if I want to kind of sound, make it sound more melodic, I can go on the toms
wait a minute, let's do something up here
ok,that's the one
you know? just still I try to kind of get some flow and some groove going and then I kind of bring it to the instrument, like creating some patterns
is like writing a song, you know? you just do that and it's the same with my patterns that I do with my feet, so I would come up with let's say a pattern
let's create something on the spot, like a single drag or something like that, oh my God, I see other things that I'm just creating on the spot, and this is my love, sometimes I totally messed up and some times it works
So let's see like
Let's bring that to the feet for example
then you try to put something on top and create a melody, maybe like a modulation of 3 or 4 or whatever
Anything would sound good, it's even a challenge to play on this drumkit you know, I'm not used to play it, we had this today in the clinic and it was really fun
But you know, this is what's that's all about, let's put a ratamacue
Stuff like that, I try to kind of build it up slowly and then kind of add one element to the other and kind of make it, you know, an entire bollock of pattens, that kind of come together in a musical composition
It's like playing a guitar chord. Actually you know man, your approach to music really inspired me and I built a whole sistem of myself on playing on odd times
Awesome! Thanx to your... nono haha
Thanx to your way that I saw in the DVD, so I'm really thankfull and I love having you here now and seeing you play. That's awesome. My pleasure, I always like playing
