Chad Smith

Playing well with others is important - not being too flashy, just keeping good time and of course coming up with cool beats. A good snare drum, kick drum, high hat. Just getting good at the hand feet coordination.

We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.

I took a private lesson, but it didn't really work out, so I went back to playing along with records. That's really the thing that got me into playing a lot - getting excited about playing along with my favorite bands like Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.