E' la pagina pubblicitaria del sito della DWdrum, il negozio dove Shannon si fornisce delle pedaliere e degli Hardware per la sua batteria.

Meeeeee.....le so tutte!!!!

Shannon Leto - Homemade Hugeness (Drum! Magazine, January 2010)


by Jared Cobb/www.drummagazine.com


"I remember my mother pressing the record button on one of those big ol' tape recorders and me hitting the bottom of a potato chip can while my brother was hitting the guitar and babbling. That's the first time I can remember us playing together. I was probably seven, he was like five. I actually have the recording."

Since that day, the brothers Leto and their band, 30 Seconds To Mars, have rocketed to multi-platinum status, complete with three acclaimed albums, two Top 5 singles, and more than 500 live performances. Younger Jared handles the songwriting and frontman duties, while big brother Shannon keeps the planets aligned from the drum throne.

We got to taste snippets of their upcoming release, This Is War, and it's big, big, big. But that should come as no surprise. It seems everything these guys do is big. From shooting videos in the People's Republic of China to enlisting taiko drummers and Tibetan monks, Shannon Leto and company always go big and never back down.

"We do what we do and we like what we like," Leto shrugs. "Some of my favorite bands - Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, so many others - are big. And our experiences, things we've done in our lives, contribute to the album. It's hard tu explain, but I think it comes from me and my brother's upbringing and our perception."

That could be the case, but they're a long way from the tambourine-shaking hippie communes where they grew up. These guys go epic or go home, and War, seems to be no exception. Come on, the album took two years to make. They started with what Leto recalls as "a couple hundred ideas" and whittled them down to one record.

A quick listen to any tidbit of the material and you're sure it's monster-budget, megastudio, ride-the-machine stuff, created in some planet-sized battle station with technology we don't even know exists. Or, er, what's that? ... Wrong.

"Everything you hear on the record is real," reveals Leto. "We recorded it at our house, including the drums, so all the sounds you hear are unique sounds. No one else has ever recorded at this house. The sounds that come out of that house are pretty amazing."

Shut. Up.

"Yeah, me and my brother's house. There's a little studio with a vocal room and board and we built it out, took a lot of the furniture out of the house. We put the drums in the centre of one big room and we just tried it. As soon as we listened back to the test recording, we were all blown away. So I recorded a lot of drums in the big room, did some in the kitchen - mostly snares - and recorded some more drums in my closet, which has cement walls and ceiling and gives a real dead sound. We did some drums in the hallway with mikes everywhere. We'd mike the windows, everything. We took a lot of time to get the sounds we wanted.

And a lot of the kit you hear is live. There are no samples, no manipulation. It's all real. It's all the room. What you're hearing is the actual room, which is pretty amazing. Everything else ranges from tapping on a bucket to hand claps, and on and on. Then we'd tweak those sounds electronically to sound the way we wanted."

By recording the album in their house while essentially living in the studio for two years, Leto and the guys could approach things as they never had before.

"It was like writing pre-production in the studio," he says. "We've never recorded in a house like this, in the this type of environment. It allowed us to record as we were coming up with ideas, and just log them in. It adds spontaneity and excitement to the songs. It's refreshing. I like to capture the raw, the real, and the honest while playing. How I prefer it is to have a general outline, then go in and play and interpretation of that outline, for that moment."

And he used the essentially unlimited time schedule to its fullest. One track in particular, "Night Of The Hunter", hosts a tom part that makes Phil Collins sound like Dr Phil on toy bongos. Big and epic are vast understatements. Leto took ten days to get just that one part the way he wanted. He wasn't shooting for perfect - perfect isn't real or honest - he just wanted it to sound right.

And think aobut how much you could learn with two full years to sit in your house and mess with your music. Leto did think about it, and yes, he did learn a lot about himself and his drumming.

"Playing drums on this album, I learned a lot about myself. I learned that there are more sides to my playing. I learned to trust people's vision and to develop a relationship with that vision as well as with my own. I learned I can combine those visions and make a sound out of it.

This album is the most honest work I've been a part of. I wanted every drum, every sound, to be as real as possible. I wanted the drum to sound like the drum. No samples on any of them, no masking with digital trickery. Everything was well thought out. Nothing was rushed. Everything is just...real.

And I learned the importance of space. Not just the logic of it. I learned to internalize it and sit with the space, instead of filling it up with a guitar or drums or vocal melodies. I learned how important that space is. You can say a lot in that space.

And patience. I learned that patience is very important to creating. I think our first album was everything I ever thought I should play. Everything I've ever experienced or witnessed. The second album is more me fitting in what was going on around me and not really developing a relationship with what I'm playing. This album shows my voice. Here's the real Shannon Leto and here's what I have to say. It's a nice evolution and that's what I hope to do: Evolve and change and grow and have an open mind."



"Kings And Queens"
Shannon Leto's driving grooves push his brother's emotive compositions over the top on This Is War. Leto spares nothing for the soaring "Kings And Queens", delivering strokes on his hi-hat atop the relentless pounding of eighth-notes in his right foot. The passage is executed with the unwavering steadiness of a drum machine, yet the unmistakable feel of a human being.

INSIDE TRACKS:
30 Seconds To Mars
This Is War
VIRGIN

Emotionally intense, possessed of material that's sophisticated in essence yet tribal in its appeal, 30 Seconds To Mars maintains these qualities throughout This Is War. From the drum throne, through, the focal point is the pure sonic power of each track. "Escape" opens the album quietly, but Shannon Leto's drums forecast the eruption to come, with a thundering gallop buried behind ominously hushed electronics. This sets up the impact he makes with a similar pattern, this time at the top of the mix, on "Night Of The Hunter". When not playing accents and letting the song move on the flow of his brother Jared's vocals, Leto recalls Big Country's Mark Brzezicki - for example, the last seconds of "Steeltown" - though Leto's playing varies more to fit his band's more complex material. From the emphasis on the toms to the booming resonance of each hit, Leto recalls the best of that era - the inventiveness as well as the aggression challenging dynamics, nuance and passion.

by Robert L. Doerschuk

Modern Drummer (may 2010)

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grazie mille Irene

di nulla

Interview with 30 Seconds To Mars’ Shannon Leto

StarShine Magazine posted an interview with Shannon.

Twelve years and three albums later, 30 Seconds To Mars has solidified themselves in the music industry as musically dynamic and a band that fans all over the world connect with on many levels. StarShine’s editor-in-chief, Sandy Lo had the chance to speak with founding member Shannon Leto a couple of weeks ago to discuss the band’s message and their current Into The Wild Tour.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Hi Shannon. How are you today?
Shannon Leto (30 Seconds To Mars): Good. How are you Sandy?

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): I’m doing very well. Thanks for speaking with me.
Shannon Leto: Of course.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): How’s everything going with the tour?
Shannon Leto: It’s going really good. It’s our third show with this tour. We haven’t played in America in three years. It’s exciting to be sharing this album with our country.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): How is it different playing for American fans than the rest of the world?
Shannon Leto: It feels like home, ya know? It just feels comfortable. First of all, we all speak the same language, but the energy is really amazing. There’s nothing like playing for your home country. It’s hard to explain. The energy is just different–more rowdier, just more excitement.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): I’m sure that gives you more adrenaline.
Shannon Leto: Absolutely, I feed off that–the energy of the crowd.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Is there a song that still remains a fan favorite when you guys perform?
Shannon Leto: “The Kill”. People love “The Kill”. “A Beautiful Lie”, “From Yesterday”. And this new album people are responding a lot to “This Is War”, our new single that’s out now. “Kings and Queens”. “The Kill” is always the crowd favorite, it will always be, you know?

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Yeah. I put it on every mix CD that I make. [laughs]
Shannon Leto: [laughs] There you go.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): So you guys just finished filming the video for “This Is War”.
Shannon Leto: Yeah, we did. We just finished filming that a few days ago.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): I saw some of the pictures on MTV and obviously there’s a war theme. Could you tell us a little bit more about the video?
Shannon Leto: Nope! [laughs] It’ll come out soon and we’re trying to keep things under wraps, but it does definitely reflect a war time. It’s something we’ve never done before from the location to the content. I really can’t wait to see the finished product. The making of it was actually really, really cool. I got a chance to become a soldier. I BECAME a soldier. [laughs]

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Well, see now you’ve accomplished almost everything in life. [laughs]
Shannon Leto: You know what I mean? Except for maybe going to the moon or mars and hanging out, but yeah.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): That is something you should do as a band.
Shannon Leto: Maybe that’ll be our next video.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Now you guys took a long time over the past couple of years with this album because of the lawsuit and everything. What would you say the key to surviving in this music business is?
Shannon Leto: The music business has changed so much. You really have to look at the bigger picture and see where everything is falling into place, and then flow with that. There are other ways to go about making music. I think it’s not there yet, but it’s well on its way. I mean the internet is a huge, huge marketing tool. I think utilizing that helps. It’s a big question; it’s a really big question. Stick to what you believe in. Fight for what you believe in. Have people on your same team that are believing in what you believe in and just kind of go from there. But it’s a big question and it’s going to take some time for anything…I mean the record industry is collapsing. The old way of thinking is dying. People are going to have to start thinking about the new way of doing things, so…big question.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): How would you define Thirty Seconds To Mars’ message to the world?
Shannon Leto: Good questions!
Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Thank you!
Shannon Leto: Really good. I think it’s more than just guys playing their instruments on stage. It’s more than just going in and recording your instruments and putting a CD out. It’s more about a shared experience. It’s more about everybody participating if they want to participate. It’s like a big art project. It’s about community. It’s about expressing yourself any way you see fit–through the arts, through visually. It’s like one big art project. That’s kind of like the way it’s been. We have this communal aspect about the band. We share the experience with our audience, with our fans and our families as much as we can. With this last album, This Is War, we had people flying to Los Angeles–thousands of people–they sang, they chanted, they stomped, they clapped, they beat on things, and we put that on the album. So you can hear that throughout the album. It went really well. Then we did it digitally as well. So we have eight or nine different countries singing and chanting on the album. And then we had 2,000 different album covers as well–with different [fan] faces–the faces of mars, we call it. It’s more about sharing an experience. I think these days it’s important to do that, especially when you have the internet and your BlackBerrys and your iPhones and you’re always glued to that. I think there’s some experiences that aren’t shared as much as they used to be–even though they’re being shared via internet and all that. Just the physical aspect is not there as much. We’re not doing that purposely, but I think that’s how it’s going naturally. We bring people on stage as well to help sing “Kings and Queens”.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): That’s great. I love when artists do that. I’m actually a big Thirty Seconds To Mars fan, and I’m a novelist. The last book I published, “Dream Catchers“–the whole time I was writing it, I listened to your music.
Shannon Leto: Oh!

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): And there’s a band in the book and I kind of modeled them after Thirty Seconds To Mars.
Shannon Leto: Very cool, thanks! That’s VERY cool.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): No problem. I even put you guys in the acknowledgments for inspiring me.
Shannon Leto: Aw, thank you!
Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Thank you guys.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Has there been any really rewarding moments on this tour, so far? I know the American leg just started, but overall has there been one specific show where something amazing happened?
Shannon Leto: Well, I don’t think there’s one specific show. I think the whole thing has been rewarding. I think being able to make another album and finally having it come out. And booking the tour dates and being able to share the experience, I think that’s the overall reward. Something that comes from your soul and something that comes from, who knows where? Some celestrial place maybe…and to record that and to be able to express that to people and share that, it’s pretty amazing. It’s something that really can’t be put into words.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): What’s in Thirty Seconds To Mars’ future?
Shannon Leto: Who knows? We’re really concentrating on the tour right now. We’re really concentrating on reintroducing ourselves to America. We haven’t toured here in three years, so it’s really exciting to be able to be back home and tour again. We’re just really focusing on that and if we feel like we want to continue expressing ourselves through vehicles of music, we’ll continue to do so. If not, we’ll do something else. I think it will always be a form of expression through the arts in some way or not. Expressing yourself this way does something that conversation lacks. It does something that fulfills me personally. I’m compelled to do it so I think I will always be doing something like this.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): For my last question, if you could dedicate any song in the world to your fans–it doesn’t have to be your own, but can it be–which song would you pick and why?
Shannon Leto: I would dedicate [sings] we are the world, we are the–no. [laughs] You know what? We would make a song with the people. We would collaborate with the people so we could all have ownership in it. It would be special. I think that’s what we would do.

Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): Sounds good. Well, thank you so much Shannon for the interview. I look forward to seeing you guys in concert on the 24th in Philly.
Shannon Leto: Yeah! Come and say hi.
Sandy Lo (StarShine Magazine): I will, definitely.

credits jared leto online

Shannon leto interview - GUITAR CENTER
sabato, maggio 01, 2010

Drummer Shannon Leto wasn't concerned about all of the attention his brother, lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist and actor Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream, Fight Club), attracted when their band 30 Seconds To Mars released its eponymous debut album in 2002. He was right, as the focus quickly shifted from Jared's celebrity star power to the band's well-crafted songs, dynamic, emotional performances and dedicated musicianship. Music critics quickly realized that 30 Seconds To Mars was a bona fide band, and they were quick to praise Shannon's taut, driving rhythms and sophisticated, inventive patterns.

After releasing three albums, including their latest effort This Is War, and selling more than 3.5 million albums worldwide, 30 Seconds To Mars is now one of the most highly regarded new bands to emerge during the first decade of the new millennium. This Is War debuted at #19 on the Billboard 200 album chart, and the band has become a top-drawing live act. In some respects Shannon has become as big a star as his brother.

Music has always been in Shannon and Jared's blood, even long before Jared started to pursue an acting career. "Jared and I were always playing instruments when we were growing up," says Shannon. "We didn't have a plan to become musicians. The instruments were always there and we just played them. Then one day we decided to make a CD together. It sounded so good that we decided to share the experience with people and play out. The rest is history."

Shannon was drawn to the drums from the moment he and his brother started playing music together at ages seven and five, respectively. "I started banging away on pots and pans in my grandmother's kitchen," he recalls. A few years later when he was 10 years old, Shannon got his first drum kit: "It had huge, massive toms. Here I was, this little kid sitting behind a grown-up's kit. I banged on it all the time and drove my neighbors crazy."

Shannon's drum kit has grown considerably over the years since he started playing, and it has gone through numerous changes since 30 Seconds to Mars released its first album. These days he plays a hybrid kit that combines both acoustic and electric elements. Basically, his drum rig consists of a large acoustic kit and a full electronic drum setup, which allows Shannon to play either type separately or combine them as he pleases. Shannon used to set up his electronic drums to one side of his rig, separate from his acoustic kit, but his drum tech, Joseph Ciccone (better known as Kentucky), built him a custom mounting rack that combines the electronic and acoustic drums together.

"I love acoustic drums, and I love electronic drums," he says. "I like to have the freedom to play whatever sounds I want."

Shannon's main acoustic kit is a custom maple/birch set decorated with RockenWraps drum skin artwork that features photos of over 400 of the band's fans, which the members of 30 Seconds to Mars call "the Echelon." The acoustic kit consists of ten pieces—a single 20x19" kick drum, 18x18" and 16x16" floor toms, 14, 12, 10 and 8" rack toms (all eight inches deep), a 14x8" 23-ply maple/birch hybrid shell snare and two auxiliary snares—a 14x6" snare with a bronze shell and black chrome hardware and a 13x5" snare with a 27-layer beech shell and gold hardware. All of his drums are fitted with Remo heads: Pinstripe (top) and Ambassador (bottom) on the toms, Emperor X (top) and Ambassador (bottom) on the snares, and a PowerSonic on the kick drum.

"I especially like the way the short stack toms sound," he says. "They have a very fast attack that works really well with our music."

Cymbals in Shannon's kit are all made by Sabian and include a 21" HHX Raw Bell Dry Ride, 20" AAX Stage Crash, 19" AAX X-Plosion Crash, 19" AAX X-Treme Chinese, 14" AAX Mini Chinese, 10" AAX Splash, 8" Chopper, 8" AA China Splash and 14" AA Rock Hats. Shannon says that he thinks his cymbal setup is somewhat small compared to the overall size of his kit.

Shannon augments his acoustic kit with a Roland TD-12 V-Drum module that he bought from Guitar Center, and he has a KD-7 kick trigger pad and eight PD-8 dual-trigger pads spread out amongst his setup. "I like the rubber pads," he says. "They're smaller so I can tuck them perfectly between my acoustic drums just the way I want them. Other electronic drum kits have really big pads that are just clunky. I have pads to my left, pads on top of the toms and a kick drum pad. I used to have two acoustic kick drums because I like to play two kicks, but I got rid of one so I could have the electronic bass drum."

On the first self-titled 30 Seconds To Mars album, Shannon played electronic drums almost exclusively, and on their second album, A Beautiful Lie, he switched to a mostly acoustic setup. Because This Is War features an abundance of electronic sounds and synth textures, he was inspired to bring back the electronic elements in his drum kit, but he didn't want to abandon the acoustic sounds he grew to love as well.

"We wanted both this time," says Shannon. "I'm changing all the time, and I don't think I ever want to sound the same. That's evolution. I don't want to limit my thinking and end up stuck in a box with a narrow-minded point of view. That doesn't satisfy me.

"My drum playing is always evolving," he continues. "For this record we wanted both acoustic and electronic sounds, but we wanted it to sound as organic as possible. The electronic sounds you hear are either samples we made ourselves or else they came from really rare synthesizers. I recorded sounds like handclaps or banging on various items in the house and then we treated them electronically. It was very important for us to record and create our own samples. We wanted this album to reflect each of our personalities and the best way to do that was by creating our own sounds."

Shannon used his main acoustic/electronic stage setup along with several other acoustic drum kits to record This is War. The band recorded the album in a house that he and his brother both share. "We recorded everything there," says Shannon. "It was just me, my brother, Tomo, and our producers—Flood and Steve Lillywhite. We wondered how the drums were going to sound in the house, but as soon as I started playing we noticed that the live drum sound was just amazing there. It sounded even better when we recorded it. No one has ever recorded there so it has a unique sound. We recorded everywhere in the house. I recorded snares in my bathroom and the kitchen. I played drums in my closet and even outside by the pool and across the street in the woods. The hawk that you hear at the beginning of ‘Kings and Queens' lives in those trees and he's always making noise, so we recorded that, too.

"It took me ten days to get this one drum sound for the intro to ‘Night of the Hunter'," he continues. "There was a feeling that had to be present and the drums had to have this particular sound. I had the guys try different things over and over, and on the tenth day I finally nailed it. I couldn't have done that in a commercial studio where you have to pay for each minute. Recording at home gave me the freedom to express myself the way I wanted to with no time restrictions or pressure. This album is all about total freedom and pure emotion."

While the overall production of This is War is absolutely massive and includes touches like children's choirs, lush beds of synthesizers and sampled loops, Shannon says that the band tried to keep their performances sounding natural. "Sometimes it's just blistering and bombastic," he says. "Other times it's raw and really personal. Jared and I grew up listening to really progressive bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin who had eight- and ten-minute songs, so that was a natural thing for us to do."

A lot of the raw emotion was inspired by a tumultuous lawsuit. "Our record label was suing us for 30 million dollars," Shannon laments. "As a result of that this record took us a couple of years to complete. A lot happened during that time. A new president was being elected, and during recording we'd often stop to take breaks and listen to the presidential debates. It was an exciting time, but it was a hard time as well. The world was falling apart economically, and we were going through personal challenges. We captured all of that in this record. If we didn't go through all those experiences, the record and the band wouldn't sound the way it does today."

The band's fans and their support provided considerable inspiration and support throughout the recording process as well. They frequently communicate and interact directly with their fans via Facebook and Twitter, which they used to invite their fans to participate in the album's creation. To thank their fans for their involvement, 30 Seconds to Mars printed 2,000 different covers of This is War featuring individual photos of the first 2,000 fans that sent pictures to them.

"I don't like to call them fans," says Shannon. "They're more like our family. We never started this band as a selfish endeavor. It was always about a shared experience. We found more and more ways to incorporate family into 30 Seconds to Mars. On this album we had people come in and sing. We came up with this event we called ‘The Summit' where we had a couple of thousand people come to L.A. We recorded everyone singing, chanting, stomping, clapping and banging on boxes. After that my brother got a Twitter message from someone in Iran who couldn't be there and Jared came up with the idea of the digital Summit. He sent out instructions to people, so on some songs there are people from eight different countries doing chants. It's amazing when you blend accents that come from all over the world into one unison accent.

"It's important for us to be a part of the people who are listening to our music," he concludes. "Being able to share the experience with people is the greatest thing. Nothing beats it. Nothing. It's amazing when something really comes from your soul and you're able to share it with someone who reaches out, grabs it and makes it their own. That's pretty magical."

Edit: 2 Maggio 2010
Shannon Leto on RYTHM

Link:
http://de.zinio.com/reader.jsp?issue=416122597&o=int&prev=si&p=47

credits:webteam30stm

Shannon in Rythm Magazine UK – maggio 2010
(purtroppo non si legge bene l’articolo)



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credits jaredleto.net

At: Guitar Center Magazine - May 2010

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credits jaredleto.net

credits jaredleto.net

Shannon Leto @ Sziget 2010


credits jaredleto.net