Drumception 2020 is here, and it features some of our biggest and boldest metal musician collaborations yet!
Every year since 2016, we’ve partnered with the audio software wizards at Toontrack for Drumception, which pairs a well-known metal drummer with several famous guitarists. What would happen if Gojira drummer Mario Duplantier wrote a song on the drums, then sent it to the likes of Brendon Small (Dethklok), Testament’s Alex Skolnick, Code Orange’s Reba Meyers and more, so they could each write their own song on top of it? The fun comes in hearing how each guitarist interprets the drum track in a completely different way to make an entirely unique final song. The following year we enlisted Megadeth’s Dirk Verbeuren on drums before flipping the script on its head in 2018 by asking fans to write their own drums to a guitar groove by TesseracT’s Acle Kahney, and then we returned to the original concept in 2019 with an in-house drum track programmed using Toontrack’s new orchestral percussion pack (the results were epic).
This year’s drummer is Will Putney, who needs no introduction, but we’re gonna give one anyway: besides being a founding member of and primary songwriter for Fit For An Autopsy, Will has produced hundreds of records for metal bands you know and love, including Body Count, The Acacia Strain, Pig Destroyer, The Ghost Inside, Psycroptic, Thy Art is Murder and on and on and on.
Our guitarists this time around come with no less impressive resumes: Jeff Loomis (Arch Enemy, ex-Nevermore), Robb Flynn (Machine Head), Kevin Antreassian (ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan) and Aaron Marshall (Intervals). Each will be writing their own song over the same drum track provided by Will.
Today we’re pleased to unveil Will Putney’s collaboration with Jeff Loomis, which you can stream at the bottom of this post. Stay tuned each and every Monday of November for a new Drumception entry!
To cap it off, we’re inviting fans to write their own guitar song over Will’s drums. We’ll choose our favorites and award prizes as follows:
Grand prize: EZdrummer 2 + one EZX of your choice + EZbass + Toontrack mystery box
Runner up: EZdrummer 2 + one EZX of your choice + Toontrack mystery box
Second runner up: EZdrummer 2 + Toontrack mystery box
You can download Will Putney’s drum track for your own use RIGHT HERE. The only rule is that you can’t change the drum arrangement at all. Entries will close on November 30 at 11:59pm EST. Submit your entry using the form at Gear Gods!
