Misha Mansoor

 

You can keep up with Misha here:

www.myspace.com/periphery

www.myspace.com/iambulb

www.myspace.com/bulb

 

My name is Misha Mansoor and I am from Washington DC.  I have been playing drums and guitar since I was 14.  As long as I can remember I had always had a huge fascination with drums in general (especially the kit), but it wasnt until that age that I was able to convince my parents that I would be serious enough about it to warrant actually going out and getting one. Until I was 17, I focused entirely on drumming, strumming the guitar in my downtime from practicing, but once I went to university I started focusing almost entirely on guitar since I had no kit to play there.  That was also where I started getting into programming since that was the only way I could get drums on my riffs and songs.

 

 

Since I was a drummer, the technical and mechanical side of programming came rather easily, I basically just programmed the way I would play it, oftentimes air drumming a certain part or fill slowly so I could analyze what I was doing up close and recreate it. As soon as I got my hands on Toontrack's Drumkit from hell, I was able to make very realistic beats and sounds in my mixes and most people assumed it was a drummer.  Because of the control programming gave me over the beats, I could write these very complex/difficult parts (but still technically possible with 4 limbs), and then as a challenge I would learn them later. This is something that REALLY helped develop my style and playing further. Each song I wrote would be way out of my league but it would be my goal to learn how to play the drums the way they were programmed.

My current band Periphery was the project that my singer Jake Veredika and I started 2 years ago based off of the more heavy, tech, and progressive ideas I had been working on and we eventually found members who would allow us to play the music live in the DC/MD/VA area.  Since it was exceedingly difficult to find a drummer who could play our music in our area, I sat in on the kit for the first set of shows instead of playing guitar. By utter chance we stumbled across nothing short of a drumming genius named Travis "The Orbinator" Orbin who took everything that was complex about our music and twisted it a step further.

Periphery's music is most easily described perhaps as polymetric metal, though as with any band who attempts to pin their music into a made up genre, you really need to hear it to get a feel for what it is like. It is quite simply, musician's music for the masses, somthing both music geeks and
passive listeners can hopefully enjoy!  Right now I am working on recording a studio quality 4 song Ep for Periphery, though the entire first album and  most of the second album have already been planned and written.

I also have a solo project under my stage name "Bulb", which tends to explore the more "out there" ideas and rhythms.  The drumming is especially intense and complex in this project!  These songs are mostly instrumental and usually have many layers going on at once for a "big wall of sound"  effect.  Once again, however, hearing the songs yields a much better description of the genre but it is safe to say that most drummers would  enjoy these songs!