“Most drummers end up with tinnitus,” Avinash Ramachandra casually informs us as he gives us a beat. Stating that drummers have the tendency to lose their hearing if they don’t protect their ears, he adds that he learned this the hard way when he couldn’t hear a certain frequency during an audio engineering class. “I didn’t know how crucial ear protection was,” he says.
The 28-year-old drummer and producer from Bengaluru, who is currently based in Los Angeles, USA, has been drumming for over a decade. A graduate of the Musicians’ Institute in Hollywood, California, he has played in iconic clubs in the city such as Whiskey a Go Go, which has hosted The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Guns ‘n’ Roses (to name a few), The Troubadour and The Viper Room. Avinash’s passion for drumming started while he was in class VII (he studied in St Joseph’s Boys High School). He was given a DVD of Iron Maiden in concert. Transfixed by the music, he knew he had to get to the bottom of it. “But I had to wait till I finished class X before I could start drumming lessons,” he says.
His parents thought it was just a hobby at first. But after he got his degree in Computer Science from St Joseph’s College of Commerce and a degree in Engineering from CMRIT, they knew he had something to fall back on. Avinash then took a year off to hone his craft, practising every single day and learning different genres from funk to Motown.
It was then that he decided to apply to the Musicians’ Institute in Hollywood, California, getting two scholarships and moving there in 2015 to study drums as well as audio engineering.
To the question of what it is that he loves about drumming, Avinash says, “The drummer is the backbone of the band. Right now, I play a lot of pop shows. So, when you’re holding the groove, you see the crowd dance and you know it is mainly because of the drumming. You are holding everything together: you are the tempo and the metronome. That can’t be replaced by electronic instruments; it has to be real sound.”
And yes, the spotlight is usually on the lead singer and lead guitarist, but that doesn’t bother Avinash.
“The focus is not on you, but that is not the most important thing. I’m having fun at the back, I’m keeping the groove going,” he laughs.
Avinash says he prefers working as a session musician. “I get to play a lot more music. It is not like I’m playing the same set of songs for a long period of time. “As a session musician, I get to mix and match and play a lot of different genres. It also means that I have to constantly be at the top of my game.”
As for his future plans, Avinash says that he will be touring Japan with the band Ziion next year and recording two albums — one with Only On Tuesdays and the other with Bulat.
