Mark Guiliana | Making acoustic drums sound electronic

David Bowie’s last record needed a drummer who could sound like a machine and a jazz musician in the same bar.

There were not many candidates. Mark Guiliana got the call, and Blackstar is now the most-heard example of a thing he had been quietly building for a decade: acoustic drums played with the logic of a drum machine.

Here is the most influential drummer in modern jazz that most jazz fans have never heard of.

Who is Mark Guiliana?

Mark Guiliana was born in 1980 and grew up in New Jersey.

He started late by professional standards — around fifteen — and came up through the jazz education route, studying at William Paterson University.

His break came with bassist Avishai Cohen, and then, crucially, in the duo Mehliana with pianist Brad Mehldau — a Fender Rhodes and drums project that sounds like nothing else in either man’s catalogue.

He also leads Beat Music, his own electronic-jazz project, and the Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet, which is a much more traditional acoustic band.

Blackstar

In 2015, David Bowie assembled a band of New York jazz musicians for what became Blackstar — released two days before his death in January 2016.

Guiliana’s drumming on it is the record’s engine: skittering, broken, propulsive and human, holding together music that is simultaneously jazz, art rock and electronica.

It is, by some distance, the most widely heard jazz drumming of the last twenty years.

2024 and the awards

Drumeo’s voters gave him Contemporary Drummer Of The Year in 2024, recognising his solo album Mark.

What Mark Guiliana actually does

He plays like a programmer. Precise, quantised-sounding placement, abrupt starts and stops, patterns that repeat exactly rather than evolving. It is the aesthetic of electronic music executed by hands.

Then he breaks it. A perfectly machine-like groove will suddenly lurch, and the contrast is the whole point.

He is obsessed with sound. Dampening, muffling, tuning, hitting the drum in a different place — he treats the acoustic kit as something to be processed physically rather than electronically. There is a well-known interview where he goes through exactly this, and it is more useful than most drum lessons.

He plays a small kit. A single rack tom, a single floor tom, one ride, a single kick pedal. There is nowhere to hide.

He is a real jazz drummer underneath. The Jazz Quartet records swing properly. The electronic thing is a choice, not a limitation.

Mark Guiliana’s drum kit

A famously compact setup, and every piece is doing a job.

• Drums — Gretsch. A 12”x8” rack tom and a 14”x14” floor tom, with a modest kick. That is it.
• Snare — a Gretsch Brooklyn 14”x5.5” chrome over brass. Crisp, articulate, and versatile enough to be dampened into a completely different drum.
• Cymbals — Zildjian. 14” K Custom Special Dry hi-hats and a 22” K Custom High Definition ride, with a 19” K Custom Hybrid crash and sometimes a 20” K Custom Crash Ride.
• Heads — Remo Coated Emperor on the toms.
• Sticks — Vic Firth 85A. A light, thin stick.
• Hardware — DW 9000 series, single bass drum pedal.

Every era, with buy links, is on Mark Guiliana’s Rig Vault page.

Want the sound without the rig?

This is the cheapest great drum sound going, because it is almost entirely about damping.

Muffle everything, aggressively. A wallet on the snare, a folded cloth taped to a tom, gaffer tape on the batter head. What you are chasing is a drum with attack and almost no decay — which is what a sampled drum sounds like.

Then hit in unusual places. Rimshots, the edge of the head, the shoulder of the stick on the shell. He builds whole textures this way.

And play a smaller kit. One rack tom and one floor tom will make you a better arranger within a month.

Our drum head buying guide covers pre-damped heads if you would rather not tape everything, and the Gear Guru will build a compact kit to a budget.

Where to start listening

• David Bowie — “Blackstar” (2016). Ten minutes, and the drums drive all of it.
• Mehliana — “Taming the Dragon” (2014). The duo record, and the clearest look at his ideas.
• Beat Music — anything. Electronic jazz, played acoustically.
• Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet — Family First (2015). The straight-ahead side.
• Mark (2024). The solo album that won him the Drumeo award.

Final thoughts

Guiliana’s influence is now everywhere, and mostly uncredited. The heavily dampened, machine-precise, abruptly stopping drum sound that turns up across modern jazz, indie and pop production is substantially his doing.

He is also proof that a limitation can be a style. A small kit, a dry sound and a refusal to let the drums ring turned into an entire aesthetic — and then Bowie put it in front of the world.

See Mark Guiliana’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Nate Smith — the other great modern jazz drummer working the seam between genres.