The Band Member Biography (Dominic Howard)

Dominic Howard

Background information
Birth name
Dominic James Howard
Born
December 7, 1977 (1977-12-07) (age 29)Stockport, England
Genre(s)
Alternative Rock
Occupation(s)
Musician
Instrument(s)
Drums
Years active
1988 - present
Associatedacts Muse
Dominic James Howard, better known as Dom Howard (born 7 December 1977 in Stockport, England), is the drummer for the British band Muse.

Biography
Dominic was born in Stockport, not far from Manchester, in England. When he was around 8 years old he moved with his family to Teignmouth, a small town in Devon. He began playing drums at about the age of 11, when he was inspired by a jazz band performing at school.
Dom's first band was named 'Carnage Mayhem', which he was in at school. Meanwhile, he befriended Matt Bellamy, who played guitar but didn't have a stable band. Not long after, Matt was faced with the chance of entering Dom's band. After two years of drop-outs, only Dom and Matt remained. Chris Wolstenholme then entered the scene, who played drums in Fixed Penalty, and with a great "spirit of sacrifice" he began to play bass.
In the first months of 1994 Gothic Plague were born, followed by Rocket Baby Dolls and then finally Muse. From then on, things got more serious for Dominic and the others.
In 2004, Dominic's father William came to watch Muse's performance at Glastonbury 2004, a concert which Matt Bellamy described as "the best gig of our lives" Just after their performance finished, William Howard collapsed from a heart attack. This pushed the band to the verge of breakup, but through support from his family and fellow band members, Dominic recovered, and Muse managed to continue their tour.

Style
Dominic is inspired by drummers like Stewart Copeland, Roger Taylor, Buddy Rich, Nick Mason, Tre Cool, Tim Alexander, Dave Grohl, and many more. Grohl can be outlined as a significant influence to Dominic. He has a wide taste in music - he is known to like Jimi Hendrix, Pavement, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen, dEUS, The Smashing Pumpkins, Primus, Rage Against the Machine, Green Day, and Nine Inch Nails. He is also left-handed, so his drumset is "reverse", arranged for his left-handedness.

Equipment

Drum kits
Dom has an exclusivity contract with Tama. He has had several kits, many of which have been destroyed during performances. More recently he has famously used one of their transparent drum kits made from acrylic shells. Some of these drum sets include:
British racing green Starclassic Maple kit with chrome hardware.
Brown fade Starclassic Maple kit with chrome hardware.
Blue sparkle Starclassic Maple kit with chrome hardware (destroyed at the conclusion of the 2001 Origin of Symmetry / Dead Star/In Your World EP support tour, as seen on "Hullabaloo" DVD).
Grey kit (unknown composition) with chrome hardware (as seen on the "Top Of the Pops" live performance and recording of Origin Of Symmetry). Its fate is unknown.
Blue sparkle Starclassic Maple kit with chrome hardware (used during 2002 tour and Absolution recording). Its fate is unknown. At least one rack tom survived until 2003 as it was used at the Grouse Lodge sessions of the Absolution recordings.
Silver sparkle Starclassic maple kit with chrome hardware (as seen in music videos for Hyper Music, Feeling Good, Plug In Baby and Dead Star).
Custom chrome finished Starclassic Maple kit with black nickel hardware (as seen on the Absolution Tour DVD). At least four different instances of this kit have been acquired and subsequently destroyed by the band at the end of live shows, at the conclusion of the Earls Court 2004 performance, at the 2004 Glastonbury Festival and on two other occasions.
Crystal ice (transparent) Starclassic Mirage kit with white nickel hardware. This kit is still in use.
He has also played a Starclassic Bubinga kit supporting MCR in Williamsburg USA.
For recording he has used a blue DW kit.
During 3 songs (Soldier's Poem, Unintended, Blackout) at the band's performance at Wembley Stadium he used a Vintage Gretsch Jazz Kit in a Champagne Sparkle Finish.

Drum sizes
He previously used a 22x16" bass drum, 12x10" rack tom and 14x14" and 16x16" floor toms.
His new chrome kits have a 22x18 bass drum, 12x8 rack tom, 14x12 and 16x13 floor toms with the last being a custom size.
His newer still acrylic kits have a 24"x18" bass drum, 12"x8" rack tom, 14"x12" and 16"x14" floor toms. Also he uses a matching 14"x6" snare, sometimes a 14"x6.5" Tama power metal snare, a 20"x14" gong bass drum. The rack tom, and bass drum are custom sizes.

Snare drums
As well as alternating between using mainly Tama Starclassic Maple 14x6.5", to match his chrome kit and Ludwig LB417 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, the Starclassic Maple 14x5.5" that matched his silver sparkle kit used for the recording of Ruled By Secrecy, the brass snare in the Time Is Running Out video clip).

Cymbals
Dom uses a selection of Zildjian cymbals. Over the years his tastes in cymbals have changed - for example, on the Hullabaloo DVD he uses 13" A Custom Projection 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 contrast - the A Customs. Lately the A Custom splash has been changed out in favour of an 8" A Splash. He has discontinued using the Crash Of Doom as of the Black Holes period, and now uses a 22" K Custom Medium Ride in live situations (and for recording).
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).

Hardware
He uses Tama Roadpro hardware.
His drum stool is a Tama First Chair with back-rest.
Sticks
He has used Zildjian Dennis Chambers signature series drumsticks, Shaw 5BN drumsticks and Promark 5BNs, as well as many others. Currently, he uses Vater's New Orleans Jazz sticks.

Drum heads
As with most of his equipment Dom rarely sticks with any particular brand of drum head for very long. At Hullabaloo his toms have clear Remo Emperor batter heads while the Black Beauty snare has an Aquarian Hi-energy batter. His Ayotte kick has a Remo Powerstroke 3 batter and the Starclassic snare usually has either coated Emperor or coated Controlled Sound heads.