Travis Barker is personally one of my favorite drummers and one of the main reasons I started playing. He has great musicality and knows what fills and beats to play in songs to fit and elevate the song. Below are some of his quotes on practising and playing drums and producing music in general-
“I practice every day, I warm up before I play.”
“I’m a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you’d tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.”
“I try to do an hour of cardio on the days that I have off, and then I’ll do 30 to 45 minutes on show days. That’s the first thing I do when I wake up, I have breakfast and then I’ll hit the gym.”
“I want to keep pushing the limits for drummers and expressing myself.”
“I was super serious about practicing and rudiments, and still am. I still have all my books.”
“It’s all about being creative and figuring out- for this song this kind of fill makes sense; and maybe the fill doesn’t exist but that’s your job to make it up you know.”
“I’ve realised over the years that my job isn’t to be the fastest drummer in the world or the most flashy drummer in the world or the best drummer in the world. It’s to be able to be creative and write creative parts and be a little bit of everything. Be flashy enough to have fun and keep people’s attention.”
“Playing my drums is therapy.”
“Put me up in front of a million people and ask me to speak. I’ll flop. But put me behind my drums and I’ll always go with it.”
“The whole time after you record an album, you’re just waiting for the release date. You’re waiting for fans to hear it and stuff.”
“When I look at music, everything is blurred, and I like it that way. I grew up like that, hanging out with different types of people who listened to so many different types of music. I never wanted to be part of any one clique. I loved it all.”
“Writing great drum parts is the most important thing especially if you’re gonna be in a band.”