Part 2: “De Slagwerker” Drum Solo Neil and I often talked about improvisation. He told me why his solo in “De Slagwerker” was so important to him. What follows are some of Neil’s own words, taken from his Drum Channel course “Frontiers of Composition and Articulation.” “When this solo was conceived,” Peart explains, “I wanted to make as many changes as I could for the next tour and recording. I had decided that as a soloist I was more of a composer as opposed to an improviser. I wanted to be an improviser, so having drawn that paradigm for myself I was determined to push myself to improvise more in my solo. “I decided that the opening large part of the solo on the acoustic drums would be improvisational. I would deliberately start with a different figure every night. Sometimes during my warm-up before the show, I would come upon […]

October 2020 Issue