MODERN DRUMMER • July 2012

Story by Ken Micallef • Photos by Sahisnu Sadarpo

48

Matt Halpern first appeared on thecover of Modern Drummer at agethirteen. Well, sort of. When visitorsentered the after-party of his bar mitz-

vah, the first thing they saw was the young drum-mer’s face on a mocked-up cover of MD. “MattHalpern: Drummer to the Stars!” read the headline,and if the guests were lucky, they might hear theyoung lion perform a solo on his Ludwig kit. Eventhen Halpern had big goals. Fifteen years later, hismusical dreams have come true, and he’s enjoyinghis first Modern Drummer cover story, for real.

While Halpern is often lumped in with the pro-gressive metal trend known as djent (a term hedownplays—“It’s simply the sound of a certain typeof palm muting on a guitar string”), the twenty-eight-year-old Baltimore native is a fan of drum-mers as wide-ranging as Dennis Chambers, MikeMangini, Stewart Copeland, and Roger Taylor. AndHalpern’s technique is as unusual as his taste isdiverse. Watching him play his stripped-downthree-piece set, you might first notice his some-what bizarre technique. Halpern changes stick gripsconstantly, to match the music and to implementideas that blast from his kit like shooting starsacross a midnight sky. Whether he’s using aGerman, French, or American grip, he bastardizeseach for ultimate fluidity and flexibility, as hisdrumming flashes through rock, metal, reggae, andjazz styles with equal smoothness and passion.

Halpern first came to many people’s attention asa member of the progressive metal heat seekers

Animals as Leaders. His star began to rise in earnestwhen he joined Periphery in 2009, a gig that seem-ingly left every drummer who shared the stage withthe band an instant convert to his otherworldlyrhythmic ideas and unstoppable energy. Halpernappears on Periphery’s self-titled 2010 album, the2011 EP Icarus, and the brand-new long-player,which is also titled Periphery. The first two releaseswere recorded piecemeal, with Matt playing a V-Drums kit and replicating rhythms programmedby guitarist/composer/mastermind Misha Mansoor,one of contemporary heavy music’s true visionar-ies. For the band’s new release, however, the drum-mer recorded on an acoustic Mapex set.

Throughout, Halpern’s playing is an attentiongrabber. The half-time rhythmic stomp of “JI” ismatched by the tom fills on steroids of “Make Total Destroy,” where Halpern’s snare drum slapand hi-hat slash are as powerful as his double-pedal fury. “Mile Zero” begins with a nearly classic-rock groove, but Halpern’s lockstep with bassist/producer Adam Getgood—his patterns vacuumsealed and madly electronic—are anything but old-school. Elsewhere, Matt double-fists a pummelingtom-filled attack on “Ragnarok,” revs up his innerDave Lombardo for “Scarlet,” and performs a flexi-ble, extremely inspired solo within the slipperygroove of “Erised.”

MD spoke with Halpern as Periphery was puttingthe finishing touches on the album that, years fromnow, will likely be viewed as the breakout perfor-mance of a truly monstrous drummer.

With one foot in tradition and one in the future, the exceptionallydiverse, super-polished pounder is at the forefront of a scene that

shows little interest in what can’t be done on the drumset.

Periphery’sMatt Halpern

July 2012 • MODERN DRUMMER 49

MD: Periphery has a great presence on YouTube and on the Internet ingeneral.Matt: When Misha Mansoor beganwriting songs for Periphery, he’d alsobeen playing drums. Then he beganprogramming drums with Toontrack’sEZdrummer and Superior Drummerprograms. Whenever Misha recordeda new song, he would post it onSoundClick.com. Prior to the band

getting signed, Misha had released 130free downloadable tracks. That freemusic really built our foundation asan Internet band. Once the album wasreleased and we began touring, webuilt on that momentum. All of us inPeriphery [which also includes gui-tarists Mark Holcomb and Jake Bowenand singer Spencer Sotelo] are veryactive on the forums—we all teachlessons—and I am very active on my

site, Bandhappy.com, which is aboutmusicians reaching out to their fans.MD: When did you begin playingdrums?Matt: I had my first kiddie set at three;I got a Ludwig kit at six. Through acouple local teachers I learned rudi-ments, time signatures, rates, anddynamics. One teacher focused onjazz and Latin fundamentals, and theother opened me up to ScreamingHeadless Torsos and that style andfeel. I practiced the twenty-six rudi-ments and worked out of books, and Imixed and matched different handpatterns to replicate the rudimentsbetween the hands and feet.

If you play a paradiddle betweenyour hands and feet, you can turn itinto a beat. I really focused on the

MODERN DRUMMER • July 201250

INFLUENCESQueensrÿche Operation: Mindcrime (Scott Rockenfield) /// Screaming HeadlessTorsos Screaming Headless Torsos (Jojo Mayer) /// Dave Matthews Band Underthe Table and Dreaming (Carter Beauford) /// Queen Greatest Hits (Roger Taylor)/// Dream Theater Images and Words (Mike Portnoy) /// Deftones Around theFur (Abe Cunningham) /// Rush Moving Pictures (Neil Peart) /// Metallica Masterof Puppets (Lars Ulrich) /// The Police Greatest Hits (Stewart Copeland) /// JamesBrown Greatest Hits (Jabo Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, others)

“I work out ideas in frontof an audience. I’ll think

about what I want toplay, then I’ll go for it.

If I nail it in a high-pressure situation,

that proves I can do it at any time.”

July 2012 • MODERN DRUMMER 51

paradiddle; I would note if a patternsounded like a paradiddle groove or adouble accent. I also learned albumsby Queensrÿche, Led Zeppelin, thePolice, the Beatles, James Brown…. I was in a serious band on the week-ends; we played Foo Fighters kind ofstuff. Before that I played in DreamTheater– and Rush-style cover bands.Learning the music of those bands iswhy I’ve connected with the progres-sive side of Periphery. I learned how todissect rhythms and songs at a youngage. I was recording instrumentalmusic when I was seventeen.MD: What did you woodshed while inhigh school?Matt: I’d learn an entire album—DaveMatthews Band, Pearl Jam, Alice inChains—and practice soloing. I’dwatch videos by Dennis Chambers,Mike Mangini, Steve Smith, andWalfredo Reyes Jr. I tried to learnDennis’s singles technique, that sweeparound the drums between his righthand and right foot. From Reyes Ilearned how to subdivide the left hand

on the cowbell while playing a groovewith the right side of my body. And Iwas never afraid to solo and perform.MD: Why the simple setup of just bassdrum, snare, and floor tom?Matt: That began when I played inlocal bars and needed to get offstagefast. I enjoyed how easy it was—andhow my performance improved. Thesmaller set gave me more room tomove around. When you’re touring,less is more. Because I had played inclubs on a small kit, I was comfortablewith fewer toms and cymbals. I canperform all my music on this kit. In alive setting, if you don’t have a roadie,it’s hard. The smaller set allows peopleto see my emotions and my move-ments better as well.MD: There are fills on mounted tomson the new album.Matt: I used one mounted tom andtwo floors on the recording. And I hada bunch of cymbals. We wanted to getthe tones and the vibes. For theupcoming shows, I may incorporatemore into the set.

Drums: MapexA. 61/2x14 Black Panther

Sledgehammer snareB. 16x16 Saturn birch/walnut floor tomC. 18x22 Saturn birch/walnut

bass drum

Heads: Evans Black Onyx snare batter(not shown) and clear 300 bottom, G2tom batter and G1 bottom, and EMADbass drum batter

Cymbals: Meinl1. 14" Byzance Sand Hats2. 19" Byzance Medium Thin crash3. 18" Byzance Dark China/

16" Byzance Thin crash stack4. 22" Byzance Extra Dry ride5. 18" Byzance Medium crash6. 22" Byzance China

Hardware: Mapex, including Falcondouble pedal

Sticks: Pro-Mark 5B

AB

1

C3

4

5

2

6

“Bandhappycame to be outof necessity,”Matt Halpernsays of the web-site he founded,which acts as anonline market-

place for musicians who want to teach ortake live lessons. “I needed to supportmyself financially as a touring musician, so I began teaching on tour as a way tosupplement my income. On tour withPeriphery, I teach students in every city we play, all over the world.

“When I started, I noticed a few things.Fans and students previously had no otherway to sit down for thirty or sixty minutesand have a personal interaction with theirfavorite artist. In a music lesson, fans canask questions, learn directly from thesource, and build a deeper relationshipwith their favorite players, all rooted ineducation. It strengthens the bondbetween fans and musicians substantially,and that’s great for both bands and fans.”

When Halpern came off the road andcontinued his lessons with internationalstudents, including many touring musi-cians, via video chat, he found that the var-ious platforms necessary to make histeaching business work—PayPal, email,Facebook, Skype—made the process time-consuming and cumbersome. The drum-mer’s solution was to start Bandhappy.

“Whether the individual is an aspiringdrummer wanting to learn from theirfavorite drummer, an up-and-coming busi-ness mind who wants to start a recordlabel and wants guidance from a reputablemanager, a school music teacher whowants to expand their after-school lessonroster or bring international artists intotheir classroom, or a touring musician whowants to connect on a deeper level withfans and supplement their income throughteaching, Bandhappy offers those opportu-nities. We provide all of the scheduling,communication, payment, promotion, andlesson tools for students and teachers toconnect live and in person, either via ourcustom live video-chat lesson platform orface to face when bands are on tour.”

Currently Bandhappy has attractedmore than 350 teachers and 10,000 students and has lessons taking placeonline and in person in more than ahundred countries.

MATT’S SETUP

•

A Happy BandMakes a HappyDrummer

MD: On the “Improvised Grooves”video at Bandhappy.com, you playquick semi-rimclick patterns and usea fast glancing motion between thesnare and floor tom.Matt: The hand movement is left toright, right to left, left to right, right toleft. That’s Dennis Chambers’Baltimore sweep. He leads with hisright hand: snare, floor, kick, kick;floor, snare, kick, kick. Then with hisleft hand: snare, floor, kick, kick;floor, snare, kick, kick. As you do it upto speed, the wrist movementsbecome shorter between the twodrums, creating a swaying motion,allowing you to go back and forth. Itlooks as if I’m lightly sweeping eachdrum, but I’m kind of bending mywrist both ways to hit the drums.Then filling in with your foot makesthe motion more fluid.

Dennis did it as top, top, bottom,bottom. But you can also try top, bot-tom, top, bottom, or top, top, top,bottom. The trick is dynamics. Ifyou’re just playing drum fills, thedynamics don’t matter because thereisn’t necessarily a backbeat to follow.But in “Improvised Grooves” I’mplaying with a backbeat in mind. The

fills mesh well with the bass drumbecause I’m hitting the floor tom at alower volume to match the volume ofthe bass drum. And I’m playing ghostnotes on the snare, so they can bemore layered to match the bassdrum. I’m not putting a lot of forceinto it. It’s also the tone, or the ring,of the bass drum and snare mixingtogether that helps me move betweenthe drums more easily and at a higherrate of speed.MD: Your technique is so fluid, andyour grip seems to change constantly.What does that give you?Matt: It’s all out of necessity, thoughit happened almost by accident.Playing so many styles of music—metal, where you have to be precisebut you also have to hit very hard;rock, where you’re beating the crapout of the drums; jazz, where youhave to use a softer feel—it’s aboutbeing comfortable with differentdynamic ranges. So I don’t try to playwith one grip all the time; all the vari-ables make my style unique.

My focus is to use a large spectrumof dynamics. If I let the stick fall froma high place and I want it to have afree range, I hold it very loosely.

MATT HALPERN

When I’m closer to the drum, I mayhold the stick differently from the wayI would when I’m farther away fromthe drum. When I’m playing a loudrimshot, I use more of a whippingmotion, almost like a Moeller whip,and when I hit the snare drum Iclench up and use an American grip.But when I’m playing ghost notes, it’smore of a French grip, because I usefingers and a looser wrist bounce.When I’m playing the right hand onmy hi-hat and accenting an 8th-notedownbeat, I may use my shoulder to push it and have my hand in aFrench grip—it depends on the velocity [at which] I’m pushing thestick into the hi-hat.MD: Do you use a click live?Matt: Yes. I use a 16th-note click,because that way, whether I’m playingin four or five, it’s very easy to countand feel the different changes andfeels. Playing ghost notes is also agreat way to feel the spaces betweenthe larger quarter or 8th notes.MD: You’ve explained before that youlearned polyrhythms by singing themto yourself first. Did you approachother drumming principles by inter-nalizing them?Matt: Often I can’t sleep because Ihave rhythms in my head or I’mgrinding my teeth to create grooveswith my mouth. I don’t count themout first; it’s a feel thing. Often I’ll havean idea and tap it out with my hands.If I can tap out a full song on my steer-ing wheel, then I can apply it to thedrumset. With one hand on a table Ican copy a bass drum and a snaredrum and put it all together and makea groove. If you ask me to play agroove on a book, I can do that.Sometimes it’s easier to learn some-thing on a small scale.MD: When recording, does Peripherygrid everything? Do you do any livetakes? And are you replicating MishaMansoor’s programmed drum parts?Matt: On the new album we trackedeverything separately with real drumsand real amps. We wanted to do a fulllive album, not in terms of us record-ing live in a room together, but sepa-rately the performances are live.

Whoever writes the song usually hasan idea for the drum part. Misha uses

Toontrack’s Superior Drummer toprogram a basic drumbeat. So he’llgive me a full demo with a drum part and fills and groove ideas andsectional ideas that I then make myown. There are songs where I com-pletely composed the drum ideas, and on other songs I embellished theother songwriter’s ideas and made itmy own feel. The final takes are medoing three or four passes and gettingcomfortable and then compiling adrum part from the best takes.MD: So you assembled your drumparts.Matt: I’d punch in and redo a section,or I’d redo the entire take to get a bet-ter feel. We didn’t cut and paste drumparts in Pro Tools. “Mile Zero” wasone take, start to finish. I hadn’tplayed it before we recorded it. We didquantize the drums after that, liningthem up on the grid. That’s a big partof Periphery’s sound, being very tightrhythmically.MD: You’re very precise, but yourrecordings sound like an actual drum-mer. Some progressive metal drum-mers sound too mechanical, too calculated. You sound natural.Matt: That’s a great compliment.Thank you. I hope that comes across. Irecorded the first Periphery album ona V-Drums kit, then we edited thetakes in Superior Drummer. So it’s myfeel, but with sounds from SuperiorDrummer. It was important this timeto get all live drum tones. We wantedit to sound as natural as possible.MD: Do you lock in your bass drumpatterns with the bass guitar in a tra-ditional sense?Matt: The bass is all played, not pro-grammed, and we lock. And we havethree guitar players. Two play a rhyth-mic part, then the other will play amore melodic harmony or layer. On“Erised,” I’m following the bass part inthe first verse, but in the second verseI’m accenting the vocal lines. In othersongs it’s about being truly tight withthe guitars and bass. That’s a staple ofour music.MD: Are there multiple meters in“Make Total Destroy”?Matt: It’s all in four. If you listen to thedownbeat of the cymbal, you’ll hearthat it’s 8th notes all the time. But we

MATT HALPERN

MODERN DRUMMER • July 201256

play around with different rhythms tomake it sound like we’re playing withthe feel.MD: Periphery plays a lot of odd time signatures.Matt: Watching Dream Theaterrehearse on this latest tour we didwith them, we’d see them messingaround with twenty-six and elevenand nineteen. We like to incorporatethose ideas into our music too, andwe want it to be digestible so that theaudience is always bobbing theirheads. It’s putting odd meters into acertain master rhythm.MD: “Erised” has shades of AllanHoldsworth, as well as killer 32nd-note fills and a drum solo. Matt: The solo was one pass. Nothingwas planned; it was improvised. I likethe randomness of it.MD: What do you practice now?Matt: I’m always working on creatingnew grooves. Mike Mangini can playwith his left hand in one meter whilehis right hand and right foot are inanother. Then he subdivides moremeters between each limb. That’sinspiring to me, so I’m working onthat. I have an upcoming Meinl clinicthat will include Benny Greb, MikeJohnston, and Hannes Grossmann, so I have to pull something out tohold my own. I’m conceptualizing aperformance—there will be a start, amiddle, excitement, peaks and val-leys, and a finish. It’s more eventfocused than technique focused. MD: What do you do to maintain your technique?Matt: For speed I’ll play on pillows orwork on wrist exercises. To practicesubdividing hands and feet I work ondifferent patterns where I don’t needa drumset. I take a basic rudiment orpattern and apply it to each limb,then combine all that. I work on play-ing linear grooves with one hand. Onairplanes I place my feet in front ofme at a 90-degree angle, so they’reflat. Then I pitch my heels as high asthey’ll go, so I’m flexing my calves.Then I simultaneously drop down theheels on both feet. I do that as fast aspossible, for five minutes. After fiveminutes I move my feet back one inchand repeat. Doing that for forty min-

utes, you’ll find that for every inchyou go back, the harder the exercisebecomes. That really builds powerand agility. I always work on the feettogether, because you never knowwhen you’ll need that.MD: Some of your recent YouTubevideos, such as “Improvised Grooves,”are as informative as the Peripheryrecords. One thing is obvious: Youdon’t always rely on double pedal.Matt: During high school I was in aband playing reggae, acoustic rock,and dance music, all of it on a simplekick, snare, hi-hat setup. I reallyworked on my single-kick techniqueto play a dynamic range. I practiced inlive situations playing bass drum pat-terns alternately with my left and rightfoot. I never enjoyed practicingmonotonous things like RRRRRR,LLLLLL. I’d do it live in front of anaudience. That forces you to get itright. You have to figure it out, andyou can’t screw up.MD: You didn’t drill Stick Control witha metronome?Matt: No. I’d always play songs oralbums or work on freeform soloing,as opposed to reading a chart orworking with a metronome. I workout ideas in front of an audience. I’ll think about what I want to play,then I’ll go for it. If I nail it in a high-pressure situation, that proves I cando it at any time. Then I go back andwork on it. By improvising I come upwith things that I can use in songs.MD: That’s risk taking.Matt: I was talking to Mike Manginiabout this. He spends a lot of timepracticing, but he really implements it in front of an audience. Now, Iwouldn’t try to play a really crazyHoracio Hernandez left-foot-clavesolo in front of an audience. I don’t gooff on a tangent and throw people off.It has to pertain to what I’m doing.But if you have a way to accent abrand-new rhythm that incorporatessome of the things you’ve worked onbut isn’t run of the mill, then go for it.If it steps on the band or confuses theaudience, don’t do it. I improvisewhere it’s appropriate. But the bestdrummers are risk takers; you have totake the risks to get the rewards.

MATT HALPERN