Why Tool's Danny Carey Is Your Drummer's Favorite Drummer

that the drums get bigger. One that is this thick. I don't even know it should be 20 layers. Almost that drum sounds beautiful. You know, man, but me. but to make it kind of a uniform reduction, like even this one, I think it was the second of these kits that I made that has the Alex Gray stuff. I started the second one a little thinner because I wasn't there. I wasn't getting thin enough when I got to the big drum and I wanted to be you, so I wanted to transition smoothly, evenly across each drum, but this one, you can see, I'm not, it's not a lot of pastels. and Danny, what are these made of?

It's Binga on the inside, kind of like the old signature, um, like the signature sonar drums of the early '80s, yeah, and I think we didn't put Bingo on the outside because I knew it was. I'm going to have Alex paint them so I just wanted to be like a blank canvas so this kit is Beachwood like because I was going more for that phonic plus sound that I grew up playing so there's the other one that I made that actually He's on tour right now. I had them, they have ebony inside. and then they are Maple, although that seems to generate something about Maple seems to generate a little more bottom end or something I found, but they are both cool kids and use the triple triple flange stores, yes, just the Classic, but

your

The trap is which is a diecast.

I can't tell from here this one is just oh this is a diecast. It's like the imitation of T Old Bellbrass. You already know. Okay, there you have it. He's a Savage. I can't remember the name. of this one, but it's meant to be pretty much identical to the Bell brass that they made in the early '80s, maybe something like that, yeah, so Danny uses it a lot, you'll play with the snares off and and and for me I I know that when I record brass snares with bell, they seem to have a really good note that sounds great with the snares off.

Do you find that yes, definitely, that was something like having a Thro attached to them? Yes, it still has a big cut. even without the traps and then came originally. I started doing that just CU. I wanted to have a place to go during the song like, oh okay, I can start like this and then I get to the course, I'll use the traps and it's like, oh my gosh, you know that was the original intention behind doing that a lot of times. , but I got very attached to the sound. Sometimes I use it all the time, you know, but usually it's a big contrast to be able to set up the snares and suddenly you have something up here if you play the toms down there what's the sound the pitch uh can you play down play the toms there's a little space, you know because I don't have a 12 it's like 8 10 14 16 but I don't care about that and I really like having the Roto color stuck in here because I treat it almost like a tom, usually most of the time when I'm on tour I use a a Single ply, clear head on this instead of a coated one, darkens it a little bit, of course, you know, and I like the metallic cutting sound, you know, more than making it sound like a normal Tom, but always .

I looked at the kit like you know, here are the wings and here are the bases or something you know like that, so I didn't care. I remember having a couple of kits that you know have like 8 10 12 13 16 and I was like, how can I even tune these where there's any contrast? It just seemed like a waste of space to me. You know, I couldn't get enough of a difference to really know if it's that Tom or that one. You know, so I got attached. using the smaller ones and then these bigger ones, you know, just for the contrast value, you know, yeah, and

your

pads have two different sounds, usually they can have three, you know, some of them see this one has three, three, yeah, but it's Well, for the sake of variety, it's quite difficult to hit them, practically like you're sailing through a melody very quickly, so a lot of times I just have a center one and an outer one, they're actually divided into three.

With the battery, you can see this is what happens with the three positions, one, two, three and um, yeah, usually the bigger the middle one is a little bit bigger, so most of them I have the same sample on the two outer ones and so they are like two sounds. like a conga turn on the outside, this is the same sound sample on all of them, but then I can take the parameter from the center to the edge and just have it bend the pitch, so it's oh wow, it's pretty cool, yeah, that's really cool, kind of neat when you play because then it's just a little bit like a variation head, yeah, it's more real you know, especially if you make it very light, then it really emulates a real drum very well because it becomes more high, you know? but when you do it more extreme, it just makes it fun, you know, okay, so let's talk about the snare, Ed metal snares and you usually use what is 8 in deep snare, right, yeah, I really like the 8 in sound is this one is shallower just because I had my best ones on the road, but this is what was here, but I like the body, especially like we were talking, without the snares on and you can turn it up loud, it still has a nice It's got a sharp cut, but it still has a fullness to it that I've stuck to, so I'm pretty much an 8 inch guy all the time for my snare and usually some kind of metal, you know, yeah, you I like his tone.

Also and short and but it has a kind of um yeah, it's amazing how some of the bronze ones get some warmth, you know, brass is different from bronze and different from uh, like pheromagnesium or you know. like some of the sonar guys make their Chrome drums or whatever you know or black beauties, you know, but yeah, I guess the black beauties are brass, right, they're brass with Chrome on, yeah, that's right. It sounds beautiful, but, um, yeah, it's um. I stuck to the thicker ones, generally I think they sound better. You know, you usually don't wash on the trip, you usually use the tip of the stick to articulate.

I do not do it. I really use the shaft maybe for a certain accent or something, but I use a lot of the ride more like the Bell and then, uh, it's a pretty dry ride, yeah, it's very dry. I tried to get it I always wanted it to be articulate, so you could listen to it like a jazz ride, yeah yeah, I've always gotten more into that, I like articulateness, I guess that's something that probably came from, like Lenny and Billy, you know, Lenny White, those guys just come from that side. and Tony Williams too, you could always articulate his walk, you know, that always caught my attention and I love being able to hear his syllables, you know, it was cool, we also talked before about the difference using a 24 and 22 inch kick, oh Yeah. yes this looks like an 18 to me or is it 17 18 this is at least 18 this could even be 19 in this one yes this one I think is an 18 so logically it should have been kind of okay what's your theory? having different pitches between the two, always when I use two base drums of the same size, whether it's 22 or 24, I used to always use 24, I always tuned this one lower just because it made more sense if the lowest one came first.

I'd start hearing the beat backwards almost in my head or something would mess with my brain, you know, so I'd always tune them that way and then when I was lucky enough to have sonar start making kits for me, I'd just I did well, Manda. Every drum has a sweet spot, so if you try to push one higher than it wants to, you're losing the beauty of the drum, so I started having to get 22 and then it's also a matter of convenience. because the drums always get bigger to my right, so now I have more room if I want to use deeper Toms here, I don't have to set my son up like you know Slayer or whatever, you know, those guys you know.

I've never felt comfortable playing with my stuff like that, you know, the piss symbols, they seem to match, yeah, they're close, they're signatures, all of these, yeah, beautiful. I love those symbols yeah normally yeah I normally use a full here instead of a power and then but 18 because I usually use both 18. I tried using a 16 here as a power one that just didn't work for me so I like the full 18 here and then it's a power of 18, so the tone goes down and it's a power of 20, yeah, this one takes a beating. I mean when I need volume, I probably hit this one harder than any other, you know, B and So the chinina are just because of their color.

This is a very old China, uh, 2002, like a 24, so it's a very dark color. I found that in the return container and in the nasty thing in Brea. I grabbed it and thought, oh. OMG this sounds amazing. I have new ones now because I won't take them on the road because I'm afraid of breaking them, you know, but the new ones don't sound the same, maybe it's just because it's faded from not having a rhythm for years and years or something, but and then a 22 here which is a signature these are my babies. I've been using them since I've been with py, you know, these are my

favorite

well, I really appreciate it Danny, this has been awesome, thank you so much for it's been awesome, man, thank you so much for letting me into your house here, it's funny , there's a lot of history here, a lot of

tool

history anyway.

Sure, yeah, I'd like to thank Danny once again for being my guest today. Leave a comment. Press the Subscribe button. Give it a like. Thanks so much for looking.