Interview: The Drummer Who Composes the Band’s Songs on a Glockenspiel

In a Montreal rehearsal room filled with cables, battered amplifiers, and the faint rattle of a broken window, Maya Desrosiers begins a song with eight bright notes. They come from a glockenspiel balanced on a folding chair beside her drum kit. The melody is delicate, almost childlike, until her kick drum enters and gives it weight.

Desrosiers plays drums in the independent quartet Paper Cinema, a female-fronted band whose songs move between indie rock, dream pop, and chamber-folk textures. She is also the group’s primary songwriter, though her composing process rarely starts with guitar or piano. Instead, it begins with tuned percussion, a pair of mallets, and an instinct for rhythm that turns small sounds into emotional architecture.

The arrangement challenges the familiar image of the drummer as the person who arrives after the song has already been written. For Desrosiers, the beat is not decoration added to a finished idea. It is the place where the idea takes shape.

The Instrument Behind The Pulse

“I bought the glockenspiel at a thrift store because I liked the case,” Desrosiers says, laughing. “It was this ugly brown box, and when I opened it, the bars were completely out of order. I had to tune my ear to it before I could write anything.”

That awkward beginning became part of her method. She started recording short patterns on her phone: two notes before breakfast, a descending figure after rehearsal, a rhythm tapped on the kitchen table while waiting for coffee. The fragments eventually formed the skeletons of Paper Cinema songs such as “Blue Hour Transit” and “Static Garden.”

The instrument gives her a restricted set of pitches, which she considers a creative advantage. A guitar offers endless ways to fill space, but the glockenspiel makes every note feel exposed. “You can’t hide behind a chord,” she says. “If the melody is weak, everyone hears it immediately. That forces me to listen harder.”

Her approach recalls the intimacy of a homemade folk recording, where a simple arrangement can reveal the grain of a voice or the hesitation inside a lyric. Lady Indie’s review of a small-town folk record captures a similar attraction to unvarnished details: songs that allow ordinary objects and local landscapes to carry serious emotional meaning.

Writing From The Backline

Desrosiers composes in layers. First comes the glockenspiel melody, usually recorded without a metronome. Then she adds a rough drum pattern, often played on a practice pad because she writes late at night. Only after the rhythm and melody begin to argue with each other does she bring the idea to the band.

“I need the song to have a physical problem,” she explains. “The melody might want to float, but the drums want to pull it down. That tension is where the arrangement starts.”

Her bandmates have learned to treat those early demos as complete musical statements rather than sketches waiting for guitar parts. Guitarist Elise Roy often responds with sustained, shimmering chords. Bassist Talia Singh searches for the low note that makes the glockenspiel sound less sweet. Vocalist June Park writes lyrics around the spaces left between the percussion phrases.

This process also changes how the band rehearses. Instead of beginning with a click track, the musicians gather around the original melodic figure. They listen for its pauses, then decide whether to preserve them or make them uncomfortable. The resulting songs feel carefully arranged without becoming polished smooth. There is a sense of movement, as if every instrument is trying to understand the same small object from a different angle.

A Different Kind Of Percussion

The glockenspiel is not used as a novelty or a cute accent. Desrosiers treats it as a harmonic instrument, a source of counterpoint, and sometimes the emotional narrator of a song. On “Northbound,” its melody repeats unchanged while the rest of the band grows louder and more distorted. The bright notes become almost defiant against the wall of sound.

That contrast is central to her songwriting. She likes instruments that carry conflicting associations: a toy piano that feels eerie, a tambourine that sounds lonely, a drum machine that suggests warmth when played at the wrong speed. The glockenspiel works because listeners bring expectations to it, and the band can then quietly disrupt them.

“I love the moment when something sounds innocent and then you realize the lyric is devastating,” she says. “The instrument doesn’t have to announce the sadness. It can make the sadness sharper by refusing to sound sad.”

Her drumming follows the same principle. Rather than filling every measure, she leaves deliberate gaps. A snare hit may disappear before a chorus, while a floor tom enters beneath a quiet vocal line. The restraint gives the music room to breathe and places unusual emphasis on touch, dynamics, and silence.

Montreal Rooms And Homemade Sound

Paper Cinema developed its sound through small Montreal venues, basement shows, and informal bills assembled by friends. Those rooms encouraged experimentation. A glockenspiel could be heard in a 40-person café, while a dense drum arrangement might collapse in a concrete basement. Desrosiers learned to write for the physical character of each space.

Setting	How The Glockenspiel Functions	What The Drums Emphasize
Small Café	A clear melodic hook that carries without amplification	Brushes, soft kick patterns, and negative space
Basement Venue	A piercing counterline against distorted guitars	Heavy toms and sudden dynamic shifts
Recording Studio	A precise layer for harmonic and rhythmic detail	Subtle accents, room sound, and controlled decay
Outdoor Show	A repeated motif that remains recognizable at distance	Broad grooves and strong downbeats

The city’s independent scene also shaped her sense of collaboration. Desrosiers points to sound engineers, opening acts, poster designers, and volunteer promoters as part of the creative ecosystem around a band. “You learn quickly that a song doesn’t live only in the rehearsal room,” she says. “It changes when the room changes, and it changes again when the audience brings its own history.”

That community-minded perspective keeps Paper Cinema’s music grounded. Their songs mention bus routes, corner stores, winter sidewalks, and apartments with thin walls. These details never function as local-color wallpaper. They create a map of private feeling, showing how a city becomes part of the emotional vocabulary of an independent band.

The Space Between Fragile And Loud

The band’s newest material is quieter than its earlier work, though it is not less ambitious. Desrosiers has been experimenting with bowed cymbals, muted mallets, and glockenspiel parts played through a small guitar amplifier. The amplified bars lose some of their sparkle and gain a grainy, almost electronic edge.

One new song, “Inventory of Rain,” began with a three-note figure she played while packing away her kit after a show. The notes were repetitive and unresolved. She built the verses around that uncertainty, then wrote a chorus in which the melody finally climbs.

“I used to think a chorus had to be the biggest part,” she says. “Now I think it can be the part where the song understands itself. Sometimes that means getting louder. Sometimes it means repeating one tiny sound until it changes meaning.”

That philosophy explains why her work feels emotionally direct without becoming predictable. The arrangements are full of contrast, yet the contrasts are earned. Bright percussion meets bruised vocals. A steady beat supports lyrics about instability. A fragile melody survives a noisy ending.

Small Details Worth Following

For listeners discovering Paper Cinema or other rhythm-led independent artists, Desrosiers recommends paying attention to the decisions that are easy to miss:

• Follow the instrument that appears before the vocal begins; it often reveals the song’s original idea.
• Listen for changes in drum texture, such as sticks becoming brushes or a full kit narrowing to one repeated pulse.
• Notice how a band uses silence before a chorus, bridge, or final lyric.
• Revisit a song after hearing it live, when the room and physical volume may change its emotional balance.
• Support local bills, independent releases, and artist-run spaces that give unusual songwriting methods a place to develop.

Desrosiers is careful not to present the glockenspiel as a secret formula. The instrument matters because she has built a disciplined relationship with it. Another songwriter might find the same freedom in a cheap keyboard, a field recorder, or a battered banjo. The essential practice is listening to an unfamiliar tool long enough for it to stop sounding like a gimmick.

Near the end of the interview, she returns to the kit and plays the opening phrase from “Northbound.” The melody is still bright, but it no longer sounds delicate. After years of being struck, repeated, recorded, and placed against louder instruments, it has acquired a history.

Find Paper Cinema’s music, seek out the drummers and composers working beyond familiar formulas, and give your attention to the small sounds that make an independent song unforgettable.