Neil Peart News
by AndyO
I've added a new section to my website about Neil Peart's Modern Drummer Ask a Pro columns.
Go to the Ask a Pro section of my site to see these columns.
Labels: drums, Modern Drummer, written by NEP
On Friday, April 11, Rush began its 2008 leg of the Snakes & Arrows tour in Puerto Rico.
As with the 2007 part of the tour, I'll be following all the action on my Snakes & Arrows page. If you want to see the Snakes & Arrows tour blogosphere on one handy page, including concert review, blog reviews and stories, interviews, articles, and CD reviews, see my category page. I'll continue to add to this page as the 2008 tour gets ramped up.
SPOILER! Rushisaband had up-to-the minute coverage of the first show, including the new setlist. It's amazing to live in a wired world.
The Snakes & Arrows Live 2 CD set will be released on tax day (U.S.), Tuesday, April 15. If you'd like a preview of the CD packaging, CygnusX-1.net has a scan available here.
Here's a photo of Neil Peart on opening night (from Rush.com).
If you want to see the Rush press conference in Puerto Rico on April 9, here's the embedded video:
Labels: Rush SnakesArrows, Snakes 2008
Even though it's not official yet, I've confirmed from bigdrumthump.com and Alfred.com that Neil Peart has won two 2008 Modern Drummer Reader's Poll awards. It appears bigdrumthump got this from Sonor.com, who has since taken down their posting.
The full results will appear in Modern Drummer's July 2008 issue, which hits newstands on May 30. Congrats, Neil, and all the other drummers!
The 2008 awards include:
ROCK DRUMMER
1. NEIL PEART
2. Chad Smith
3. Stewart Copeland
4. Alex Van Halen
5. Jason Bonham
RECORDED PERFORMANCE
1. NEIL PEART (Rush): Snakes & Arrows
2. Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree): Fear Of A Blank Planet
3. Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater): Systematic Chaos
4. Jack DeJohnette (Michael Brecker): Pilgrimage
5. Roy Haynes: A Life In Times
He also came in fifth in the Progressive Rock category:
PROG
1. GAVIN HARRISON
2. Virgil Donati
3. Mike Portnoy
4. Danny Carey
5. Neil Peart
For those who are counting, this gives Neil 14 awards in the "Best Recorded Performance" category and 8 awards in the "Best Rock Drummer" category. As most of us have seen, Neil doesn't take these awards for granted (read the October 2006 letter from Neil on this page).
Labels: awards, Modern Drummer
According to the KVR audio forum, a company called Sonic Reality recently completed a Neil Peart drum sampling session, engineered by Nick Raskulinecz. It appears the session started on March 18 in Los Angeles, and the final product is scheduled to be released by the end of 2008.
The end result of this project will be a "Neil Peart Studio Profile," most likely a complete sample of Neil's Snakes & Arrows DW kit and his V-drum sounds -- and possibly Neil Peart loops. Sonic Reality has produced other Studio Profiles on such drummers as Cheap Trick's Bun E. Carlos and Yes/Earthworks/King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford.
If you're curious about what this all means, you can basically buy professionally-recorded sampled sounds of drummers that you can use with music software on a computer -- or plug these samples into keyboards or electronic drums. Studio Profiles cost around $79.00.
In addition to this exciting news for drummers and other musicians out there, there are a few tidbits in the forum write-up by Squid (in several posts, which I edited a little). One thing that he writes about is the DW Snakes & Arrows kit will be available to buy in the near future.
March 18
Squids and Co in LA right now. We're doing a session with Neil Peart today! It's more than just me sampling but yes we are sampling his drum kit too! I will reveal more about the project when I am able to.
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March 19
So... I am at The Foo Fighters' studio right now. We just listened back to the tracks with Neil. HOLY S#$#*(%*#T!!!!!!!! There is this SEISMIC floor tom in his set that is the most massive boom! Wow. Explosive! Can you imagine playing Neil's kit? I can't WAIT until this is mapped. But, that is just one part of this session we did. There's more to it than that... very cool. Nick Raskulinecz who I think did a phenomenal job producing the last Rush album is co-producing this particular project with me (his studio is the Foo one... he mixed a bunch of Foo records) and it's really amazing that Neil and everyone are up for it! Very exciting.
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March 21
... Anyway, I was talking to Neil about playing his own kit from V-Drums after and he wasn't as interested in that (as say Omar Hakim was). So I think Neil is more just open to the idea of everyone else getting a chance to play around with his drum kit sound (and the rest of the project)... which is surprising and very cool. He's never done anything like this before.
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March 23
I was tempted to ask Neil about Rush lyrics. It's incredible that he's such an amazing drummer and writes those complex lyrics as well. I've always been curious what some of them mean or why he chose certain words that you don't commonly hear. But I wasn't sure if he'd want to talk about it or not so I didn't go there. I asked Nick if he ever talked at length to him about it and he hadn't either (with some significant hang time having produced the last Rush album). Neil is very comfortable with Nick so it was a good thing he was there. Plus Nick is a fantastic engineer. It was a very interesting mic set up. Two RCA ribbons for one room set and two U67s plus a Telefunken 251 mono room. 3 C12's for overheads to capture Neil's enormous kit.
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March 25
Anyway, here's a cool pic of Neil Peart, Terry Bozzio, me and Nick Raskulinecz. Nick was amazing in the session. He's one of the hottest producers around right now. He produced the last Rush album and three Foo Fighters albums and a bunch of other stuff. Cool guy and fun to work with too! Terry Bozzio is another really cool person who came by when we were recording Neil Peart. We have sampling session coming up with Terry recreating the sound he got with Missing Persons and producer/engineer/manager Ken Scott! Me, I'm just weaseling my way into a pic with these legends.
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March 30
... Apparently this "Neil Peart Kit" spec is or will be available to buy from DW! You wanna hear something totally cool? Neil liked Nick Raskulinecz' work so much on the last Rush album that for Nick's birthday a truck showed up at Nick's door with that DW kit as a present. Nice present huh? Shows you the kind of guy Neil is... and the kind of people the whole band and label are. Very grateful and generous.
When we were done, Neil signed a drum head for me wishing us success with the project. ... So... okay, yeah we're doing a Neil Peart Studio ProFile. But there's more to the session than that... quite exciting stuff! More news later.
Labels: drums, Neil Peart Studio Profile
