ZAYNE THOMPSON.

I’ve been drumming since age 9 in 2015. It all began when I was staying at my aunt & uncle’s house for the weekend and discovered they had a drum kit in their spare room upstairs. I was immediately drawn to it. I had a deep love for and connection to music already but hadn’t truly considered playing an instrument until that day. My enthusiasm must have been extremely evident—I got a snare drum for Christmas that year. My family wasn’t convinced of my dedication yet, but when I played that snare drum nearly every day that year, they pitched in to get me a full drum kit the next year. I still use that kit, though it’s hardly recognizable with how many pieces I have inevitably swapped out over the last ten years. I took basic lessons for a short while that first year, but since then everything I know was learned by playing along to my favorite records :)

Though I was given a red Jay Jr. acoustic guitar for Christmas when I was 6, it wouldn’t be until I was nearly 13 that I finally set out to teach myself to play it (properly, anyway—somehow, before that managed to play basic things on it with only my left thumb, the guitar flat on my lap like a slide guitar. The thought makes me shudder now). It was a long process figuring out how to fret chords and play cleanly, but I really enjoyed surprising my parents every morning before school with the newest song I’d learned. I don’t consider myself a great guitar player, but I’m a stubborn one—I will bash my fingers into the damn thing until I’m able to at least mostly realize whatever is in my head.

The natural follow-up to picking up the six-string guitar is to want a bass. I had been playing guitar for a year or two, and I must have mentioned bass enough for my mom to gather leads on where to acquire me one. Luckily, one of her co-workers was getting rid of one. Bam! I’m a… bassist, kind of? It was daunting but extremely exciting to pick up for the first time. The very first thing I played on it was Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust”, and the first song I learned immediately after was “Money” by Pink Floyd. Flash forward a few years and bass is second only to drums in my book. I’ve more recently been working on fingerpicking and slapping as I’d previously only used a plectrum when playing. Some of my favorite artists to play bass along to are The Cure, Rage Against The Machine, and Radiohead.