Vital Drums

... An insight with Jean-Luc Payssan through the various devices used in the band to fulfill the lack of a drumer in the trio formula.

When we decided to renew MINIMUM VITAL as a trio format without a drummer, we had of course to deal with the delicate problem of lack of percussions.

As I’ve always been involved in this field, I naturally chose to play the bass drum, the Hi-hat and the guitar at the same time, whilst leaving the possibility open to play additional percussions.

Although there is possibilities for us to play again with a drummer in the future, I’ve always loved the idea of a guitarist playing many instruments like a “one-man-band”.

We tried this formula with VITAL DUO and it worked very well, so we took up the idea for MINIMUM VITAL. But while my percussions set for VITAL DUO consisted in a real bass drum and a Hi-hat, I prefer now acting on a digital set, which allows a more precise playing and a wider range of sounds.

I use a Roland SPD20 percussions pad which offers many bass drums and Hi-hat sounds (controlled by two foot pedals) and varied percussive sounds (cymbals, chimes, gongs, skins…) that can be played directly on the pads.

To “break” with the digital setting, I added a darbouka (a percussive instrument mostly used in the Middle East), which allows me to sometimes leave the guitar to concentrate on percussive playing.

We can find an example of this in this live video of "Chanter Toujours", a composition by Thierry :