Nout Arends is a musician who started playing the piano at the age of 8. Playing the drums has always facinated him, but at home this was no subject of discussion. When moving out to a student appartment, he buys a synthesizer to be able to continue playing music. He joins a band with some old high school mates, but the drums continue to appeal to him. At the age of 25, time has come to rent a rehearsal room with a drum kit to really start experimenting with this instrument. After 9 straight hours of drumming it has become clear: this is really the intrument for Nout.



The very same day his first drum kit is purchased, the first rehearsal takes place of a band called "Touchdown". This band consists of Nout, his brother and some old friends. Diana joins the band in 1994 and 6 weeks later Nout plays his first gig ever with Touchdown as a support act of "The Radios" in front of a couple of thousand people.



Nout starts taking drumming lessons with Anthony del Monte (Herman Brood, de raggende manne) and later switches to lessons at the 'Rhythm Factory'. He plays live shows with Touchdown for a couple of years but leaves the band in 1998 to start playing in 'Lime', the band that will later become GRAZE. By playing in a number of projects and with different musicians, he develops his drumming in different musical styles, but keeps mainly focussed on rock and funk.



Equipment

Nout Arends' drum kit is a Yamaha Recording Custom kit with a 22" bass, 10", 12", 13" and 16" toms and a Mapex 14"x5.5" phosphor bronze snare from the black panther series, customized with Maple wooden rims. He also plays a Pearl Maple de Luxe piccolo snare. The hardware is also Yamaha. The bass pedal is a Premier twin pedal, used single. All heads are by Remo, Pinstripe on the bass drum, Emperor coated on the snare and on all toms. De cymbals are all by Zildjian: 14" K-custom Dark hi-hat, 8" K splash, 10" K splash, 16" K-Custom Fast crash, 16" Oriental china trash, 17" K-Custom dark crash, 18" K-Custom Session crash and a 20" K-Custom medium ride. The drum stool is by Roc 'n Soc and Nout plays with Vic Firth American classic 5A sticks. He uses Westone in-ear monitoring, connected to a Spirit Folio Notepad, on which he receives his monitor line and to which also his Tama Rhythm Watch is connected.