Guitar Center Drum-Off 2011 Champion

[Julián Fernández]

[samnmax203]

Not to be picky... but for the winner of the entire competition it seemed kinda meh to me. Usually there is some kind of "wow that was interesting" piece in these solos to me, but all I could think of whilst watching this was that I had seen it all done before (and better). Congrats for being able to pull that off in front of the crowd though; it's gotta be hard knowing nearly everybody there is a drummer!

[Gaddabout]

The intro was really interesting to me. Then it became a corny showcase of hand-to-foot fills. Kid's got potential though. I like his skills. Some of the stuff he tried was really sloppy and he doesn't own it, but it was different than what we usually see from these contests.

[janne jansson]

WoW!

I liked his drumming a lot!
Loved the snare sound...

[kinkymook]

I thought it was great. The stuff with the Roland was very cool and inspiring and his ideas were fresh and edgy. It wasn't gospel chops and it wasn't from the super technical Min/Lang school either, so I'm in. He seemed relaxed in his movements and idea pacing (which must be incredibly hard in a room like that!).
I'll watch it again for sure, and good for him!

[Steve Holmes]

He was good and different. A pleasant surprise.

[Josiah]

The forced used of the RPD really tainted the whole thing for me (judge for multiple levels). It was very obviously some backroom marketing BS from roland and GC.

Good solo and musically interesting, again the whole E-Pad thing is so evident it's just silly. Nice to see the guy on the 4 piece though.


There were plenty of players that were technically a lot better then the finalists, but such is the nature of a marketing/contest.

[Manu]

it was fun, the foot cowbell stuff, although well executed, sounded a bit weak to me.

[Phil T.]

It wasn't the usual single-stroke-a-thon I'm used to seeing at the GC events. I liked it.

[funkydrummer]

I liked it too. Quite a bit actually, because as Manu said, it was fun. I do agree also, that the foot cowbell stuff was probably the weakest part of the whole thing. But I really liked the Roland stuff (and seeing more and more cats incorporate electronics into their playing and setups in creative ways, it's inspiring me to want to experiment with it myself), and he obviously has chops. REALLY nice snare sound, too. I loved the sound of that thing. Overall? Very nicely done.