TOP 20 DRUM INTROS OF ALL TIME

Coming up with a drum intro or a signature that actually is worthy of being out in front of a song by itself is even more difficult I would say than with a guitar part or a piano part. But when you come up with a great one like the ones you'll hear in this video today they usually tend to become really big songs. In today's video I'm going to count down my top 20 greatest drum intros of all time. When I did the acoustic guitar intro video a lot of people asked me what I was recording through and I was answering in the comments you know what microphone and mic pre. So I want to talk about real quick what I'm using to record the drums. It's a very simple setup. The microphones we're using for this session are a stereo pair of AKG 414 BULS from the mid 80s and then for our mono mic I have a Royer R122V. It's a tube mic. It's a really great sounding mic and it'll sound great when I want to bring the drums to mono. The mic pre's for the AKG mics are BAE 1073s and the mic pre I'm using for the Royer is a BAE 1066. I'm also using a stereo compressor on the room mics. It's a Tagler audio compressor called the Krem. Since these drum intros span many different genres of music I thought I better bring in a pro drummer so I brought in my friend Jack Jones to play drums and I'm going to accompany Jack on the guitar and bass and keyboards when necessary to give you context as to how these intros work with the beginning of the song. Here we go. Coming in at number 20 is a song that was released in 1990. It's from the grunge era but it's not a grunge band and it's one of my favorite drummers of that era. Song number 19 was produced by Daniel Lenwa and Brian Eno. It has an instantly recognizable intro and is from one of the biggest records of the 1980s. Song number 18 was released in 1979. It was the band's debut single and it was a six week number one. Coming in at number 17 is the drum intro from a record that was released in 1971 and is one of the biggest rock albums of all time. The introduction also shares a very similar groove to the Little Richard song Keep on Knocking. Check it out. Song number 16 was an intro that all the drummers when I was growing up learned to play. It came out in 1976. Here it is. Song number 15 was released in 1973 when people used to use cowbells. Check it out. Song number 14 is by a drummer that's been in two huge bands. There's actually a few different drum intros that I could have taken of his but I really like this one even though it wasn't as popular of a song as the other one I was gonna take. Coming in at number 13 is a song where the drummer and singer are the same person. In fact it takes two of us to play the intro. Song number 12 is from one of the biggest bands of the late 70s and 80s. This happens to be the shortest intro on the list but as soon as you hear it you know what song it is. Song number 11 is from my favorite band and favorite album of all time. I think you can guess who I'm talking about. Okay now we've hit the top 10. This is actually the first song that's in an odd time signature which happens to be in 7-4. You can probably guess what band I'm talking about. Song number 9 was played by one of the biggest session drummers of all time. It's instantly recognizable and one of my favorite things about it is that he's from my hometown of Rochester, New York. Song number 8 was released in the year 2000. It's from a band that gets mentioned in the comments section on this channel constantly. As a matter of fact I'm going to do a what makes this song great about this song. Check it out. Coming in at number 7 is an intro by my favorite Canadian three-piece progressive rock band. You probably can't guess who it is. Song number 6 was the second song I thought of when trying to come up with a list of the top 20 greatest drum intros. It's actually been a hit song twice. Once in the 70s and once in the 80s. Here it is. Okay now we're down to the top 5. Really any of these songs could be in any order here. This particular song is not really played on a real drum set. I think it's actually played on Simmons drums. At least the kick and the toms. But Jack is going to play it on the real drum set. Here it is. Song number 4 was in the comments section of the top keyboard intros of all time video. Except for the fact that the song doesn't start with keyboards. It actually starts with the drums. Here it is. Song number 3 is one of the most original beats and recognizable intros that I can think of. It came out on an album in 1983. Here it is. Okay we're down to the top two drum intros of all time. Coming in at number 2 is a song that's based on a shuffle. In fact it's based on the Purdy Shuffle. It's instantly recognizable and it's a very hard groove to play. Here it is. Okay before we get to the number 1 drum intro of all time, we're going to do our Honorable Mentions. The first of these is actually a song that I wish was famous enough to actually be in this. It happens to be in 9.8 and the drummer is Billy Cobham. Here are the Honorable Mentions for top drum intros of all time. Okay coming in at number 1, just like in the top acoustic guitar intros of all time, it's the same group and everybody knew this was going to be number 1 from the beginning. Here it is. That's all for now. Please subscribe here to my Everything Music YouTube channel. If you're a first-time viewer on this channel, don't forget to ring the bell. If you're interested in the Beato book or anything from my store, t-shirts, coffee mugs, beer steins, go to my website at www.rickbeato.com. That's how I support my channel. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at rickbeato1. I do a lot of new content there almost every day, a lot more guitar-oriented content. 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