John Paul Andrade

It seems like I've been playing on the drums since I was born. According to my parents, I was always hitting literally everything, trying to make sounds with what I could find. After a failed attempt at playing the guitar, my mother got me a small drum set at the age of 5. It wasn't until I was in the 3rd grade in which my friend actually pressured me into going into the band and playing the snare. We played everything from the triangle to the bongos! After learning my basic rudiments, I was playing the snare at school. Around this time, I was given an actual drum set. It was a "Century" brand and I destroyed that thing until I was a Sophomore in High School! Freshman/Sophomore year(s) was also when I was getting into Metal so I formed my first band, which was a Thrash/Death Metal band. Playing Rock and Jazz was able to make this big transition into extreme music easier for sure. Any who, I was able to save up some money and thanks to mum (again), I bought a Premier Cabria Fusion kit with a Zildjian starter pack and a set of Pearl Eliminators! I finally had a set that I was proud to take out to shows and felt very inspired to bang on it everyday. So you could say that I was about 13 or 14 when I was getting into the extreme side of Metal. I felt like I was so far behind other drummers in the scene but I was thankful to have a good sense of timing and my rudiments down. I began to just play them as fast as I could. Playing out at a young age helped a lot. I would stand right on the side and watch other drummers play and say to myself,"Ok, I need to learn this but not this, this is good, eh I don't like that." Just picking up little things along the way. I'm 22 now and I still do that. I feel very happy with what I have achieved and with how my I perform on the set yet I still practice like if it was day 1. My goal as a drummer is to be a World Class Drummer and Musician.