Matt Halpern Mapex MyDentity Drums
Have you heard of Matt Halpern?? If not, leave my website and go to google now!!! Dude is the drummer for the progressive metal band Periphery. I was fortunate enough to work on some stuff with those guys when I was freelancing for the magazine. During that time one of the most apparent things was that Matt was the real deal.
In prog music there are a lot of great drummers. But, IMO many of them tend to be mechanical. I don’t know that I would call that a bad thing but lets just say it’s something that I pick up on. In all reality a lot of prog music is rooted in mechanics be it odd meters or blazing speed, or blazing speed in odd meters!! For some making music that complex and unnatural sound natural is a more difficult than just mechanically learning the tunes.
But when I first saw Matt this dude was touring with the Goodwill drum kit. Busted up cymbals and hardware, drums looked like they had been on tour without cases since the 80’s but you didn’t notice once he played. He’s still pretty much a minimalist with his set up but does 10x’s more than most drummers using 10x’s more. And he does it with buckets of feel. Don’t take that as my saying he’s missing technique because that’s certainly not the case. Just think of it more as a huge blend of technique and feel. It seems when watching him play he’s not really thinking of what he’s going to do next he’s just playing his instrument with a massive amount of understanding.
Anyway enough stroking, Matt is using Mapex drums now, which IMO has always been one of the most underrated drum companies out there. I’ve played their stuff and known lots of people that have and I’ve personally never really heard a bad thing about them.
They have a really sweet line called MyDentity. Basically you can go out to the Mapex website and assemble your own kit, pick shell type between birch or maple, wrap types, hardware colors and hardware set up. And it’s really at a decent price. The coolest thing is in the end you’re getting what appears to be a great kit at a playable price. I’m looking at replacing my recording kit as life may allow me to start recording more drums live than programming. And I just miss playing!! I would love to try out a set of these!! Below is a video of Halpern talking about the MyDentity line.
If you want to visit Mapex there is a link HERE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AqB-yBv6To
