Three glass doors barely muffled the beats thundering from Mr Er Chow Kiat's studio in a quiet corner of Katong Shopping Centre.Inside, there was just a drum kit and recording gear, but the wall outside the little glass cave told a different story. It was lined with framed media reports, accolades and, most recently, a Guinness World Records certificate.In May, Mr Er set the record for the most spin-and-strike drumbeats in one minute – 233 beats in 60 seconds, to be exact – a feat that drew in this journalist, whose jaw slightly dropped as he demonstrated it live. The 36-year-old's hands seemed to blur as he deftly performed the flashy, crowd-pleasing drumstick flourish. Mr Er, known to others in his circle as CK or Chow, has become known for this trick, having performed it while drumming for the likes of Taiwanese singers Angela Zhang and WeiBird, guitarist Paul Wong from Hong Kong rock band Beyond, and Brazilian guitarist Mateus Asato who used to play for pop singer Bruno Mars.
Besides an illustrious career as a live performer, he has spent the past decade running Drum Tutor Singapore, a drum school he founded in 2016. What first started as a home-based outfit where he taught about 30 students out of his parents' four-room flat in a public housing block has since grown to a school with 20 staff members and five outlets across Singapore that have seen more than 1,000 students. But drum prodigy Mr Er was not. He picked up his first drumsticks only at 14 years old, at a time when he was struggling with schoolwork and felt directionless in life."I wasn't a particularly great student ... I'm not the studious kind," he said. "My Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) result wasn't the best, and my parents were really concerned."He remembered the shock of receiving his PSLE result: 159 out of 300 points.
