Event Review

Visiting China for the first time, Marco felt very excited to hold clinics in China. Prior to the visit, he searched for information about the Chinese cities on the internet and he was delighted to have the opportunity to explore the cities’ culture in person. The clinics he hosted in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou received positive feedback, and the response was encouraging. Just like the audience he met in Argentina and North American region, the German drummer strongly agrees that the mainland audience had the same degree of passion and curiosity to know more his music- and Hong Kong is no exception.

The multi-instrumentalists’ love for different kinds of music was shown in his Hong Kong set. Ranging from traditional Buddy-Rich inclined Big Band Music, to heavy Speed Metal and Trance, Marco’s musical adventure is just as inventive and experimental as a lab scientist’s work. His stamina, imagination and expressionist style of work topped with organization had constructed a solid and one-of-a-kind musical identity.

Speaking of drum hardware, Marco’s ideal drum set would be a symmetrical set, finishing off with a warm and quiet set of Zildjian cymbals. As he engines his own recordings, he prefers drumhead made by EVANS, as they produce less harmonics and prevents leakage to the tom’s microphones.

To date, Marco has already had ten years of experience in hosting drum clinics. As a result, he could describe and present abstract ideas with concrete, down-to-earth metaphor. When the innovative drummer was asked to give some advice, he stressed the importance of musical vocabulary with an example of food preference. "Music is about fun and excitement. A tip for younger players is to learn how to prepare different kinds of food, and make it good and tasteful. Use the right ingredients and work it through so that you are capable to play the things in different environment."

Apart from the distinctive musical gift that Marco was born with, like many drumming giants, one of his approaches to develop his drumming skills is to practice often. He firmly believes that if one is willing to put efforts into music, music will reward the musician with improvement.

In explaining the objectives of writing music, Marco said, "Music is about fun. As long as I think it’s fun, regardless of what the result would be, I would give it a try." Such philosophy was executed in the live demonstration of What have the Romans, a song written to play along with a short movie clip extracted from "Life of Brian". As the movie rolled, Marco synchronized the beat of the drum to the actors’ each and every word. Whenever a word, or a phrase was repeated, Marco would follow and execute the same pattern on the set, activating the laughter reflex of the audience. Marco’s endeavor to match the dialogue’s intonation with his perfectly tuned drum-set yielded incredible results. Not only had it enhanced the flow of emotions of the scene, it had also integrated the liveliness of a live comedy club into the performance space.

An Excerpt from Interview

1) Who are your major music influences?

My big influences are Frank Zappa, Queen, Led Zeppelin, the Police. And I like Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music very much. And anything that’s original.

2) Where does your inspiration & motivates for writing come from?

From everything I experience, topics you went through. It’s like talking, you can’t talk with topics you haven’t experienced. For most of the time, I try to play two to three hours of drums a day, and spend the rest of the day writing music.

3) What has get you started on four-limb independence?

The book called STICK CONTROL started me on that, because the book has all kinds of patterns, and I want to be capable to play these patterns not only with my hands but also with my feet. The left side and the right. Then I ask, “What if I play both at the same time, but different pattern, and form a composition out of it?” So basically that book, gave me the idea.

4) Apart from the drum-set, you can play several melodic instruments too. How has that make you become a better drummer?

Oh, big time. It’s because you learn to listen to not only rhythmic values, but also to melodies and dynamics, and their space relationships. It’s like “there is the guitar thing here, so don’t play drums”. With drum solos, it’s the same thing but the difference is I’m applying the same philosophy onto one instrument. So I would have questions and answers among cymbals and drums, that sort of thing.

5) Let’s talk about your drum’s set-up. How does your array of pedals reflect your drumming style? And do you have a favorite groove or pattern to play?

First of all I came up with this pedal idea, I’ve always liked to play the kick drum with my right feet. And I wanna create a stereo set of Hi-Hat, on both sides and I want to be able to play it with my feet. I thought this sounds interesting. And I replace the kick drum with a bigger drum, which is a gong drum, which I don’t have here today but an 18" inch on the left side. That’s why it brought two additional pedals; they’re for the hi-hats. At the beginning I was only messing around with these things. It sounded nice, so I kept them. The good thing is, a lot of players do incorporate these things into their sets. So I wrote a book about all these independent things, and a lot of players today are getting big and famous are learning from this. So I thought, "Wow, it’s quite an honor to define something".

One of my all time favorite groove is the para-diddle groove I did on a Kraftwerk tune called "Numbers". That is the first time I got into this multiple Hi-Hat thing, like 12 years ago, and today it’s still my favorite groove. And people still like it. It’s like a sign that you did something timeless. It feels good. It’s almost a signature groove!

6) What are your recent projects?

I’ve released a crazy CD project called "Normalizer Two", which is based on a one-minute-long drum solo. I sent this to different artists to write to this drum solo. And that’s a great project because it’s very new and it’s a very experimental way of writing songs. If you listen to the five CDs, you can’t tell that it’s the same drum solo at all. That’s so different!

- Francis Fu -

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http://www.tomleemusic.com.hk/specialpage/DrumExtravaganza08/index_en.htm