Jay Jericho - Drums

What gear/settings/effects do you use?
Zendrum ZX, Roland TD-8 Drum Module, 2 Roland KD-8 trigger pads, FD-8 Roland hi-hat controller, Pulse and Pearl foot pedals.

What is your musical background?
I've always tapped out beats and rhythms, but only came to actually play drums in the past 6 or 7 years.  Oddly enough, at the age of 9, I narrowed down my choices of instrument for school band to either percussion or French horn, and my music teacher convinced me to play French horn.  I quit playing French horn the next year.

How long have you been playing?
I started dabbling in hand percussion while I was serving in the Air Force in Okinawa, Japan back around 1999. After coming back to the states, I offered to play hand drums to fill out the sound of the band we were then working with, Revel Moon. As I became more competent, the “hand drum kit” I utilized for shows became more and more complicated and elaborate.

When we started Cassandra Syndrome back in late 2005, I realized we were going to need a much heavier and aggressive sound, so I made the transition to electronic percussion and utilizing a Zendrum.

Where do the bulk of your musical ideas come from?
I play rhythms while doing other things on whatever's available …waiting for the computer to load, driving, talking to people, whatever.  When something in particular strikes my ear, I'll transcribe it into kick and snare parts in my head, then try to replicate it.  So that's one way.  The other is I just jam along with what the guitar, bass, or vocals are doing, and try to find interesting ways to fit my drum lines in.

If you could learn to play any other instrument, what would it be and why?
Keys.  I've screwed around on a keyboard a lot, and there's just so much range and versatility there.  I've learned some basics and can write some basic melodies and rhythms, but someday I'd like to really delve deeper into it.