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The timekeeper
A rather interesting interview with Ian Paice appeared almost a year ago in a watchmaking blog Quill & Pad, of all places. It was prompted by a Swiss watchmaker Corum releasing a limited edition of their Bubble model co-branded with another Swiss company — Paiste.
Sometime around Baselworld 2015, an employee of Corum – who also happens to be a drummer – saw an ad for a Paiste cymbal in a music magazine. The ad compared the precision of the Swiss-made music instrument to the precision of a Swiss-made watch movement, and a light bulb went off in his head: wouldn’t a cymbal look great as a dial on a Corum watch?
This idea born of passion became a reality when both the watch company’s upper management and Erik Paiste, owner of the century-old cymbal maker based near Lucerne, concurred.
The connection with Paicey is actually a rather tedious one — he’s been using Paiste cymbals exclusively since 1971, and ended up being the recipient of one of the 350-piece limited watches:
However, the first two editions of this tempo-loving wristwatch went to two very special people: Erik Paiste (naturally) and Ian Paice, the iconic drummer of Deep Purple.
But we got an interesting interview out of it, so we shan’t complain. And kudos to Quill & Pad for doing a better job than some of the music publications we know (and which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty).
I try and find a swing in everything. To do that, you have to understand some of the technical aspects of drumming: it’s no good just going one, two, three, four and thinking that’s all there is to it. So I would watch the very best guys from that style of music and I would listen and I would watch their hands and find out what they were doing. If I’d had a teacher, it would have been easier. But there was nobody there teaching drums and obviously within 12 to 15 months [since picking it up] I was the best drummer in the area, so there was nobody to go to.
A drum kit is sort of impersonal, so if you can impart your personality in what you play and the sounds you create, then that’s much more difficult. And if you can do that, people remember you and not just ‘the drummer.’ I’ve always found that the luck of learning to play drums from a totally different point of view from most other rock and roll drummers has been a great benefit to my career.
Read more in Quill & Pad.
Thanks to Yvonne for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
This is the best Paice interview I have seen and read for some time. Go and read the WHOLE interview at the Quil & Pad.
November 1st, 2016 at 15:23Great time piece, trouble is I’ll have to take out a small mortgage on my house to afford one…
December 19th, 2016 at 02:52