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BiographyName: Paul Kellett
Styles/Influences: I'm a rock drummer at heart, and I love anything with good, dynamic drumming. My musical tastes range from blues, a little jazz, rock, metal & glam through to early thrash metal, death & Grindcore. My major drumming influences would be Dave Lombardo for his technique, style and sheer exuberance, Chris Adler for what I consider to be a fresh way of playing thrash metal, Nicko McBrain, Joey Jordison, and Tommy Lee. I'm not a great lover of songs that are just an all out blast beat start to end, preferring stuff with more groove to it, hence Dave Lombardo heading my list. I really like the drumming on the Swansong album by Carcass - it's essentially rock beats, fairly slow (compared to the guitars), but with an incredibly brutal, heavy sound. That would probably best sum up what I want to do behind a kit. My signature is throwing in triplets with the kick drum. History: I started playing drums when I was 15 and went though 2 years of bedroom/garage bands messing around as you do. I discovered motorbikes at 17 and that took over my life for the next 2 or 3 years. I got a Yamaha Stage Custom when I was about 20 and started playing rock/blues stuff, again with a series of unsuccessful bands. I'm entirely self taught and slightly embarrassed to admit I know practically nothing about music. I have a reasonable talent for the feel of music and have always just played from the heart, slowly getting more idea of how to get my body to lay down what I can hear in my head. In October 1994 I was involved in a motorcycle accident that severed some nerves in my left shoulder and also gave me a brachial plexus injury that would leave me paralysed for the better part of a year and take a further 18 months to regain decent mobility. The nerve injury means I have a limited range of movement in my left shoulder and reduced upper arm strength and grip. I have a full range of movement from the elbow down. After a few years of not thinking about drumming, I got invited to join a folk/rock band by a friend. I was soon able to hold a basic rhythm, enough for the type of music we were playing, but I couldn't reach past the 1st tom with my left hand and the reactions of my left arm were a bit too random to perform any sort of roll with any consictency. I was getting a bit bored and frustrated at not being able to do what I could hear in my head when a drummer friend let me have a play on his Roland TD10 practice kit. I quickly realized that with a bit of careful arrangement I would actually be able to reach all the pads on an electronic kit, so I traded my acoustic kit in for a new Yamaha DTXpress IV. The kit comprised of five 8" rubber pads for snare, hi-hat, and toms, a kick drum pad and two 1/4 segment cymbal pads. This kit I was able to set up so that everything was arranged around my right knee and slowly, it was tweaked and expanded until I had a kit that was comfortable and easy for me to play. The overall width of the kit is only about 5 1/2 feet and I can reach everything bar the 2 ride cymbals on the right with both arms. I was never really happy with the cymbal sounds from the controller, so very quickly I reverted to acoustic cymbals. Once I got used to the layout and joined CopperBomb in 2005 and I actually had a stable band that I was happy in and who practiced regularly once a week (give or take). I started to see a marked improvement in my ability, control, and stamina. My current problem is a tendency to get caught up in the music and get very heavy-handed. Due to the hard rubber pads, I play Ahead aluminium sticks (5B) which last maybe 3-4 months as opposed to a wooden 5B which lasts 15 minutes tops before the top 2" snaps off. My friend recently gave me a set of hickory 7A sticks which have lasted about a month before one broke and the other is still going strong so I've got a few more pairs to try out whilst also concentrating on calming myself down and becoming smoother. In regards to the rest of my gear, I use a basic round throne set low to avoid my legs cramping up during fast double bass runs. I have a 10" 3-zone snare pad which sits just above my left knee with the Yamaha hi-hat controller digital foot pedal configured to trigger a kick drum sound at my left foot as well as a 10" Pintech mesh-headed kick drum pad with a Big Dog bass drum pedal at my right foot. I have a set of Zildjian 14" ZHT hi-hats on a fixed rack-mount to the left and slightly back from the snare with three 8" single-zone pads across the top of the rack programmed as high, medium, and low toms. The 3rd tom pad sits in line with my right knee. The 2nd 10" 3-zone pad is to the right and below the 3rd tom and set as a deep floor tom (with 2 effects assigned to the rim). The hi-hats, Stagg crash, and Zildjian china are the only cymbals I can comfortably reach with my left arm, so most of my accents are done right-handed. Gear
Drums: Yamaha DTXpress IV (except where noted)
Cymbals: Various
Hardware & Misc:
Sticks: Easton Ahead 5B |
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