Dominic Howard
Dominic James Howard, better known as Dom Howard (born 12 July, 1977 in Stockport, England), is the drummer for the British band Muse.
Biography
He was born in Stockport, not far from Manchester. When 8-9 years old he moved with his family to Teignmouth, a small town on the Devon 'riviera'. He plays just one instrument within the band's music: the drums. He began at about 11, when he was struck by a jazz band performing at school. He can also play a little bit of guitar. He also tried his elder sister's electronic keyboard at the age of 5. Through his sister, who was attending a School of Arts, he begun to have his first contacts with the world of art, although it wasn't at all related with his future job. As he says in an interview, "When I was a boy, music was something I heard on TV."
Dom's first band was named "...'Carnage Mayhem' and this is a Michael Jackson song", at school. Meanwhile he befriended Matt Bellamy, who played guitar but hadn't a stable band. Not long after, when the old guitarist gave up, Matt was faced with the chance of entering Dom's band. After two years of drop outs, only Dom and Matt remained - apparently the others gave up because of the latter two. Chris Wolstenholme then entered the scene, who played drums in Fixed Penalty, and with a great "spirit of sacrifice" he began to play bass.
Muse work
Dominic is inspired by drummers like Stewart Copeland, Dave Grohl and Buddy Rich. His taste in music is wide: he loves as much Jimi Hendrix, Pavement, Radiohead, dEUS and The Smashing Pumpkins, as Primus, Rage Against the Machine and Limp Bizkit.
In the first months of 1994 "Gothic Plague" were born, followed by "Rocket Baby Dolls" (Dom: "They all had death metal names but we all played cheesy pop!"), and then finally Muse. From then on, things got more serious for Dominic and the others. See Muse for further details on the band's history.
Tragedy struck Dom's family in 2004. His father Bill, being one of the band's greatest fans came to watch their performance at Glastonbury 2004, a concert which lead-singer Matt Bellamy described as "The best gig of our lives!". Just after their performance finished, Bill Howard collapsed from a heart attack and died. This pushed the band to the verge of breakup, but through support from his family and fellow bandmembers, Dominic recovered, and Muse managed to continue its tour.
Dom's kit
Dom uses Tama Starclassic Maple Drums finished in blue sparkle with chrome hardware and (more recently) custom chrome with black hardware. The sizes are 22x16" kick drum, 12x10" rack tom and 14x14" and 16x16" floor toms. As well as alternating between using mainly Tama Starclassic Maple 14x6.5" and Ludwig Black Beauty 14x6.5" snare drums, he has a number of less prominent snares used for recording and video clips (for example the shallow snare used for recording "Fury" and the brass snare in the "Time Is Running Out" video clip).
As Dom is left handed he sets his drums up with the hi-hats on his right and floor toms on the left.
Dom uses a selection of Zildjian cymbals. Over the years his tastes in cymbals have changed somewhat. For example, on the Hullabaloo DVD he uses 13" A Custom hi-hats, 8" A Custom splash, 11" FX Oriental Trash Splash, 18" and 19" A Custom Crashes, 18" FX Oriental China Trash and a 22" K Custom Ride, whereas more recent performances have seen the addition of a 20" FX Oriental Crash of Doom, hung above his hi-hats, and 14" K Custom Special Dry Hi-Hats replace-and starkly contrast-the A Customs.
For recording he uses darker K or K Custom crashes while he often retains the brighter A Customs in live performances for their increased "cut" (Ks were used at Live 8).
Dom employs such exotic percussion pieces as Rythmtech ribbon crashers (used in songs such as "Apocalypse Please", "Time Is Running Out" and "Megalomania") and a Balafon (in "Screenager").
He uses a Tama Iron Cobra Hi-hat pedal stand and an Iron Cobra double bass drum pedal. However, he very rarely uses the extra beater, only the odd now and then in introductions or solos and has recently omitted the double pedal in favour of a single.
His hardware is Tama Roadpro, his stool is a Tama First Chair with back-rest and he has used Zildjian Dennis Chambers signature series drumsticks, Shaw 5BN drumsticks (Hullabaloo) and Promark 5BNs (Live 8).