When photographer Scott Kincaid shot Municipal Waste drummer Dave Witte for the October issue of Modern Drummer, he brought along his video camera and filmed Dave playing along to two tracks. Here Dave gives us the rundown of his approach to tracks by Municipal Waste and Burnt By The Sun:

Municipal Waste: “The Divine Blasphemer”

This song has a ton energy and catchy riffs. The main goal here was to support the song energetically with fast beats, while not getting in the way.

Hanging back during the mid-paced section really makes the hook stand out, so I did that and accented the riff every other measure to add dynamics. The fills are structured to help move the song along to get maximum impact during transitions. The intro needed to be strong and powerful right off the bat, so I used simple quads to fill of the space without overdoing it.

View the video clip here.

Burnt By The Sun: “A Party To The Unsound Method”

This is a very aggressive song with a lot of groove as well. The riffs are gargantuan, and Burnt By The Sun tunes to C, so in the studio I dropped all the tuning down and used bigger drums to match the heaviness of the band. Advertisement

As always, I have the riff in mind, so in order to achieve maximum impact for the song I don’t overdo it with the drumming. At the beginning I’m doing a traditional 1-2 thrash beat, but playing the hi-hat in half-time so that the beat takes on a swing feel. Then I double up the kick to increase intensity. It sounds crazier than it actually is and has a great effect.

Double kick is always good for intensifying “the next part” in my mind. I ground the tune with groove to support the riff between fast parts, then propel with double kick to transition to the big part. Lots of pounding, spacious drumming here, a.k.a. “the big beat,” with lots of crash cymbals. The chorus is a monster of a riff, so I hang back big time. Towards the end of the song I use some dynamics to make certain parts of the song/riff stand out more, to achieve more emotion

View the video clip here.

The music of Burnt By The Sun has a lot of emotion to it, so the drumming is heartfelt and not clinical. (Look for the mistake, ha ha.) The end of “A Party To The Unsound Method” required the heat to be turned up full-blast, and what better way to that than to use the blast beat– one of my favorites! Advertisement

For more on Dave Witte, visit www.myspace.com/davewitte.