Back when I was a teenager, I had a habit of going to YouTube and punching in the name of a drummer from my embarrassing list of players I need to explore more. Late in my freshman year of college, I came across this video of Ray Luzier that was released in the summer of 2015:
Ray is probably best known for his drumming for Korn, a gig he’s had since 2007 (he’s also known as the best musician in Korn). However, the song in this video is from another project that Ray started in 2013 called KXM. “Stars” comes from the self-titled debut, released in 2014.
The song is mostly a straight-ahead rock number, with some lyrics that are a bit… mawkish (“you don’t see the stars, ’till it’s really dark outside, oh noOoOOoOoOO”). “Stars” has a pronounced Latin feel, however, driven by the seemingly ubiquitous tresillo rhythm, although Ray plays a rather unusual groove over it, featuring rim clicks and hi-hat barks.
When the verse starts up, you can hear a call-and-response thing going on: Ray uses the rim clicks for two bars with the vocals, before switching to the floor tom for two bars when the vocals drop out:
Things continue to get interesting during the chorus when Ray uses a pretty busy Songo-type pattern:
I should probably talk about the toms. As you can see from the video, Ray has quite the setup! Thankfully (for me) most of it isn’t used for this song. I’ve notated the two rack toms and the first floor tom on his right as normal. Ray has an 18-inch floor tom on his left (what I call Keith Moon-style), which I have notated as the lowest floor tom.
For the bridge, Ray does another Songo groove. Notice how he only hits the bell on beats two and three, while he hits the ride on one and three. Very conspicuous:
Ray saves the double kick for the fills, where the name of the game is 32nd-note quad fills (RLKK). I’ve described the quad fill and the tresillo rhythm as being occasionally overused and even abused. But they’re both dependable, so they’re popular for a reason. Ray gets a bit creative with the orchestrations — I’m a big fan of these two fills:
One of the highlights of the performance comes at the end of the bridge when the song features a big vocal build-up. On the album, Ray uses his rim click groove, but on the video, he uses the section as an opportunity for a drum solo:
While most of the licks are built around quad fills, you should be able to spot some six–note patterns played the same as the triplets from earlier, RLRLKK.
The last chunk of “Stars” I covered is the outro, which features some more outrageous fills that aren’t heard on the album. Here, Ray milks the quad fill for all it’s worth. It’s a lengthy barrage of notes, and it’s impressive that Ray doesn’t get lost in his own playing.
Nowadays, when I find a playthrough on YouTube, I’m usually drawn to the album version since that’s what I value most as a musician. Aside from the wild fills, it sounds like Ray plays things pretty close to the original. Truth be told, if I didn’t have the video, I probably would’ve had a much harder time figuring it all out.
