Just in case we were in any doubt of the globe-trotting world of Josh Dun, we quickly learn of the Twenty One Pilots drummer's rammed schedule as we're told that our phone interview will be delayed as he hasn't quite made it through airport security yet.

An artist handling press interviews the moment they land for the latest leg of their world tour (in this case Josh has just touched down ahead of the band's batch of Canadian shows) is admirable, but it also demonstrates the whirlwind that the drummer is currently in the thick of.

Since joining forces with Pilots frontman Tyler Joseph in 2011, Dun has enjoyed a rapid rise, culminating in the band's second full-length record, 2015's Blurryface shipping north of three-quarters of a million units in less than a year. Stressed Out, the infectious third single from the album, has clocked up a jaw-dropping 250 million plays (and counting) on Spotify, and while that may not translate into the big bucks that you might initially think, it's fair to say the band is doing something right.

For Josh his journey to the globe-covering adoration that he is now experiencing began with, er...the trumpet.

“I don't really know what it was about the trumpet that I loved but the church I went to with my parents growing up was traditional where they'd have an orchestra with brass and woodwind instruments,” he says. “For whatever reason I was always so drawn to the trumpet.”

Josh's jazz-loving grandfather would take him to performances when the genre's big names rolled into town, allowing the youngster to witness some stunning shows. Inspired, Josh picked up trumpet lessons at school, but looking back today he admits that the whole process of regimented learning eventually left him cold.

“I played trumpet for three or four years and I got okay at it, I was never awesome at it though,” he admits.

“I got into sight reading and near the end of my time playing trumpet I realised that all I could really do was read notes off a sheet of paper. There wasn't anything really special about that to me. I had learnt a very specific way and I didn't know how to take that and be creative with it and create my own songs or music because all I had learned was how to read it.”

Here's when the drums enter the picture. In search of an instrument that he could take the self-taught route with, Josh turned his attention to the kit.

I wanted to get to a place where I could create my own way of playing and not having somebody telling me what was the right and wrong way to play the instrument

“I became really interested in drums and I think it was important for me that I taught myself how to play drums because of this realisation that somebody else teaching me how to play an instrument in my mind at the time was kind of prohibiting me from being creative,” he explains.

“I wanted to take it on myself and I wanted to define my own style. I wanted to get to a place where I could create my own way of playing and not having somebody telling me what was the right and wrong way to play the instrument.”

The way that Josh set about self teaching was through devouring video upon video of drumming's great and good, studying and picking apart every last beat.

“I would lay in my bed every night with sticks and hit my knees trying to figure out what they were doing, like, 'Okay, now they're hitting the ride cymbal, and now it's the snare and now the crash.' I would dissect everything that I watched or listened to.

"Every day I would walk to the local music store and play their electronic drums until one of the workers would be like, 'Hey, we have people in here that actually want to buy stuff so you've gotta go.' I did that for about a year and that's essentially how I learned to play some basic beats.”