Take a stroll through the  drums section of today’s modern music superstore, and as you peruse the variety of cymbals you will no doubt conclude “These are not my grandfather’s cymbals.”  The striking variations in the shapes, sizes, and colors of available cymbals is truly profound!

Of course the most popular seem to be the more traditional round perimeter, brass, sloping, with the hemispherical bell, type of cymbal.  These include the typical, heavy, 22″ Ride Cymbals formed from a heavier gauge piece of brass.   But this general description can also be used describe crash and hi-hat cymbals.

These are usually left unfinished with a very shiny brass look just like they did after being ‘turned’ on the lathe.  Some manufacturers finish theirs with a protective ‘clear coat’, preventing (or at least delaying) the need for actual cymbal polishing, a chore few drummers relish the thought of.

In recent years some manufacturers have created a colorful variation of the clear coat; a protective color coating.

They even come in beautiful black finishes.

I love the look of this black beauty!

Some have left areas of the cymbal dull and unfinished, and other areas shiny, creating a look with striking contrasts.

Then there are ones with a pattern of large holes that vary in hole size, placement, and quantity.

Some are hammered and contain holes.  (Not sure that’s proper English.   Can “holes” actually be “contained”?)

Others have been stamped out into strange shapes, some with holes, even slots too!

Some consist of two or more layers of brass stacked on top of each other, making for a unique, metalic ‘clack’ with a quick decay.

Some have been made flat and have attached “jingles” or “zils” similar to a tamborine.

Then there is the matter of flatness:  Whereas most are sloped to some degree, others are intentionally made completely flat, no bell intended.

Then there is the “china” variety, with its distinctive curled outer edge.

Some “Chinas” also have a unique conically shaped bell.

And of course, I would be remiss if I left out the “Gong” family of brass bangables!

And just when you thought there could not possibly be a further variation in the family of ‘suspended pieces of metal to hit’, here comes the . . .  whatchamacallits!

Yes, there continue to be no rules even when it comes to cymbals.  (After seeing some of those last ones, I don’t think a couple of rules would be too restrictive.  Do you?)

We carefully cut the laminate into pieces wide enough for each drum shell and long enough to wrap around each one with just enough to overlap.  Then they were laid out and spray adhesive was applied.

The first time we laminated drum shells, there was a slight misalignment at the seam where the laminate wrapped around and butted up against the starting point.  Despite the best of care taken to exactly align the starting angle, it will never be perfect.  This misalignment  is not visual with the drum heads on anyway, so it was not a big deal.  But it would be a real problem if the laminate wandered so much that it obstructed the shell area where the drum head  contacted the shell.  And the larger the diameter shell, (a bass drum for instance), the more critical this wandering problem would be magnified.  To ensure that this problem would not ruin the project, we devised a way to allow the laminate edge to be trimmed and excess removed, even after the laminate had been applied.

The photos below show a half-inch margin of duct tape being applied to mask the spray adhesive so that excess could be trimmed and removed after the fact.  Note: This was only done to the sides of drum shells where heads would be used.  (I have sometimes heard of single-headed drums being called “Melodic” drums, or “Concert Toms”, I believe.)

Alignment lines were made to mark where on the drum the laminate seam would be and to aid in starting it at a 90 degree angle.  When the seam is located inline with the attached drum hardware it helps in preventing the laminate from pulling loose.

Now came the time to spray the shells with adhesive.

Then the masking (duct tape) was removed.

Using the alignment marks, the laminate was carefully lined up at the starting point.

Then it was carefully rolled by hand using much pressure to ensure adhesion.

Another concern that had to be addressed was accurately cutting the seam-edge of the laminate.  In order to get a good measurement without completely gluing the entire sheet to the shell, a piece of poly sheeting was used to cover the final area of  adhesive, allowing the drum to be rolled, and trimming marks to be scribed.

This cut is somewhat critical:  Unlike the typical original drum fabric that most manufacturers use that wraps around the shell and overlaps, this must be is a butt-joint, and this seam will show!  The better the job, the better it will look.

Erik used a cutting tool he had that was not actually made for laminate, but it worked quite well.

To further touch up the seam, we used a fine file on the cut line.  Once the laminate wrapped around the shell and fit together well, the poly sheeting was removed, and a slight mist of spray adhesive was added.  Then the last of the rolling was completed, leaving a tight seam.

The side of the drum shell not needing a head, (for those drums with a head on only one side), we used a router to trim the laminate to the shell.

For the drum head side of the shells, we used the router as above, but then used a table saw with the fence set to allow only 1/2″ of laminate to be trimmed off the edge of the shell.  (Of course the blade was set to barely cut through the thickness of the laminate as the shell was turned.)

Because the shell edge had been masked when the adhesive was applied, the trimmed pieces were easily removed.

After all the laminating was complete, the edges were cleaned of any adhesive residue.  Then the hardware holes were carefully drilled from the inside out, using my angle drill motor, using the original shell holes as a template.  Then the hardware was re-installed, and the drum kit was reassembled.  The operation was a success!!!

Timbales

Timbales also make a nice addition to the conventional drum set, enabling the drummer to throw in the occasional, more metallic sounding, ‘Latin flavored’ fill.

Typically Timbales  are found in the arsenal of a percussionist, along with Congas, Bongos, Cowbells, Tamborines, Woodblocks, Claves, Windchimes, etc.   They are almost always found in pairs, but again, there are “No Rules”, remember?

Timbales are available in a variety of sizes and depths too.

No Rules for Drum Sets means you’re free to build your Percussive Playground however you want.  The designer of this drum kit (shown below) has utilized Octabons, Timbales, Rototoms, Windchimes, a Tamborine, and no doubt other percussion instruments into his kit:

The flexibility in customization of the modern drum kit is only limited by your imagination, (and your budget of course).

Rush’s Neil Peart (on one of his smaller drum sets)

A kit more typical of what Neil Peart uses (Below)

And so far we have only discussed the acoustic percussive building blocks that can be used!

No Rules means you’re free to create your own hybrid drum set, a mixture of acoustic and electronic drum sounds, as Neil Peart has done with this Hybrid drum kit (Below).

No Rules = No Limits

Additionally, electronic drums can be played by hitting the drum ‘pads’, or alternatively they can be played, or ‘triggered’, by installing small piezoelectric triggers to your acoustic drums!  And since the electronic drums can be programmed to playback virtually any recorded sound, where does it all end?

That’s the point to all of this:  It Doesn’t End.

NO RULES means NO LIMITS!

Even though the modern day electronic musical keyboard is arguably the most flexible and versatile instrument ever created, and although it would probably not be considered a restriction, I have never seen one with anything except the standard octave key spacing format.  Likewise when it comes to ordering woodwinds, the saxophone player is not asked how he wants his new baritone sax ‘keyed’, or what geometric shape he prefers.   Likewise, professional basketball players have little worry that the courts they will be playing on will be consistent in their dimensions.

Drum and Percussion Sets are Kind of Like Golf Courses

On the other hand, no two golf courses are identical.  Despite being made up of certain general elements that they all have  in common, each one is different, but can be uniquely designed and laid out according to the needs of the players, (golfers & drummers).   Drums as a musical instrument are comprised of many individual things that make different sounds when struck.  There seem to be no cardinal rules, (or even city ordinances for that matter), that are broken when it comes to customizing drum sets to the need and preference of the modern drummer.

Back in the Day

Traditionally a ‘trap set’ consisted of a Bass Drum with a Tom mounted to it, a Floor Tom, a Snare Drum, Hi-Hat Cymbals, and typically a Ride Cymbal, and possibly a Crash Cymbal.  As simplistic as that might sound, it is incredible just how much sound a good drummer could derive from it.

But today it is not uncommon to find sets with multiple Bass Drums, multiple Floor Toms, multiple Snare Drums, and a virtual constellation of Mounted Toms in varying styles and sizes.

Octabons

Groupings of small diameter single-headed drums of varying depths (notably Tama “Octabons”) are often included in some of the larger drum kits. 

Drummer Stuart Copeland (of “The Police”) made extensive use of them in his performances.

Rototoms

Remo “Rototoms” continue to make an interesting addition to many drum kits.  Besides taking up precious little ‘percussion playground’ space because of their having no actual shell, they are unique in that they are tuned simply by hand rotation.  Drummer Danny Seraphine (of “Chicago” fame) was known to have an onstage assistant turn his Rototoms during his solos that featured them. Some drummers use Rototoms almost exclusively for their drum kit.  (You can’t ask for a much easier way to tune them!)

I also ran across this variation:  Rototom mounted (acoustically open) on top of same sized drum shell.

The most unusual use of the Rototom I’ve seen is by Drummer Terry Bozzio, who uses two of the Rototom frames without the drum heads:  He has them attached to a Hi-Hat stand in place of the cymbals! (No Rules, remember?)

(Continued on No Rules for Drum Sets – Pt-2)

]]> http://circuit33.com/no-rules-for-drum-sets-1/feed/ 1 http://circuit33.com/drums-inherently-different/ http://circuit33.com/drums-inherently-different/#comments Sat, 09 May 2009 22:37:17 +0000 Brad Kunz http://circuit33.com/?p=528 Drums are Inherently Different

When you stop and think about it, the drums are inherently a very odd instrument.  And it’s not because drums are played by striking them with sticks either.  Playing the xylophone or vibraphone, (sometimes called ‘Vibes’), with mallets does not seem odd to me.  And playing the different hammered out tonal areas of steel drums, (sometimes called “Pans”), seems right to me too.  So what is it about a drum set that seems so unconventional to me?

In trying to understand and put into words why it is I feel so strongly about drums being odd in relation to other musical instruments, I’m thinking it must be in the fact that,  even though you tune them, they have little to do with the actual melody of the music.  I mean, at the end of a song, nobody turns in disgust to look at the drummer and say: “What key were you playing?  Dude!  You need to tune those things!” Don’t get me wrong:  The drummer can get himself into trouble just as easily as any other musician, although for completely different reasons, none of which will be because his bass drum was tuned a quarter-tone flat.

Rhythmic, Not Melodic

So if the drums are not contributing to the melody, why are they there?  If the drums are taken out of the equation, the melody continues, the harmonies still blend, the guitar solos still impress the listener, but there is a definite void that cannot be filled simply with more melodic instrumentation.  Why not?  Because drums supply drama!  Drums provide dynamics!

But drums are also like an audible beacon, providing a rhythmic signal to the other musicians navigating along the song’s blueprint, providing the framework that the  melody is interwoven through.  This is true even in songs not known for exceptional drumming, as well as in music where the song has an extended break.

The Perfectly Placed Beat

An example that comes to mind is:  “I Will Always Love You”, sung by Whitney Houston for The Bodyguard movie soundtrack.  This song does not exactly ‘feature’ the drums, and yet you can imagine how hollow sounding it would  be without them.  If you are familiar with the song, can you imagine how it might sound at the break, the part right after she sings “But above all this I wish you love”, and before the ‘change in key’ that brings in the final chorus, the most emotional part of the song, but without drums?  What a letdown! The suspense would still be there in anticipation of the crescendo, but it would never arrive!

I Will Always Love You (Whitney Houston)

For me, that one essential drum beat on the ‘toms’, marking the end of the break as she sings, “And I . . . will always love you . . .”, that is crucial to the power of the whole song, not because of melody, but because of rhythm.  It reestablishes the song’s emotionally slow cadence, which serves to frame the perfect foundation for her powerful ending chorus, with its sweeping falsettos!

One simple yet essential, perfectly placed drum beat!

Am I saying that no music is dynamic without percussion?  No, not at all.  Nor am I saying that it is solely to the credit of the drums that music is dynamic.  There are many dynamic pieces of music that have no drums.  But I do believe that when the music calls for it, there is no truly satisfying substitute for properly played drums.

And although I believe that to be true, I certainly do not want to imply that I think I am that ‘proper drum player’ in all cases.  Just because a doctor knows what the patient needs, does not mean he thinks he is always the best physician to provide the cure.  If I were to find myself someday in the position of being a musical “Surgeon General”, I would be writing out a veritable font of Percussion Prescriptions, fillable only by the most qualified of drummers:  Steve Gadd, Harvey Mason, Dave Weckl, James Bradley Jr, Jeff Porcaro, Steve Smith, Richard Bailey, etc.  Of course I would be honored to occsionally ‘scrub up’ so that I might make myself available to hand them their sticks, or replenish their favorite beverage.  (I would be a musical Surgeon General with a realistic sense of modesty . . .)

I think my earliest recollection of being fascinated with drums goes back to when I was about eight years old, becoming intrigued as I stood near a drummer playing in a band at a wedding reception my parents took me to. This was the first time I ever got up close to a drum set. It had all those big, loud, sparkled drums, and several shiny brass cymbals to hit with those long wooden sticks! Sometimes they would make a metallic ‘ping’ sound, and other times they would make a loud ‘crashing’ sound! Plus there were two other ‘cymbals on a stick’, and the drummer kept moving one of them up and down with his foot! He kept hitting the top one with a stick, making one sound when they were opened, and a different sound when they closed.

Sometimes he held the handle of a drumstick to the head of the drum and tapped the drum rim with the other end, making a sharp ‘clacking’ sound. Then at other times he would put the sticks down and start hitting the drums and cymbals using these other things that had a bunch of thin straight wires fanning out from their handles, (I later learned were called ‘brushes’). And when he would swirl them around on top of one of the drums, (the ‘snare drum’), they would make a soft ‘swishing’ sound. Then, on the same drum, he would get completely different sounds by going back to using the sticks. What a crazy musical instrument! So many neat things to hit! Who came up with this crazy contraption? (I didn’t understand it, but I wanted to shake his hand.)

I have no idea what music they were playing, but the audience danced to it, and I was mesmerized by the actions of the drummer, probably because there were so many different things the drummer did to make the music. In my youth I took piano lessons for a couple years. I was not very good at it. There were so many things I tried to learn that were completely foreign to me, like chords, keys, sharps, flats, etc. But this drummer did not seem to be concerned with such things. He just had to hit things with sticks and swirl things with brushes while pushing on pedals with his feet. How did he know which thing to hit, and when to hit it, and which way to hit it? It proved to be quite intriguing to this eight year old, (as much as an eight year old can be intrigued, that is).

Little do they know that when they ask a question like that, I’m likely to bore them to tears with answers such as the following:

I didn’t have actual drums when I started playing at around 11 or 12 years of age.  Buying a real set was out of the question at the time.  So I made my own drum kit out of different sized coffee cans, and using a piece of wire I tied it all onto a small wooden chair.  I put a handful of nails in one can and called it the snare drum.  I cut the bottom out of one can and taped it to the top of another to make a deeper floor tom.

Apparently my grandfather, who died long before I was born, used to play the bass drum in a marching band.  My father still had the tarnished old cymbal that had been attached to that bass drum, so that became my one and only cymbal, attached to the back of the chair using a nail.  I remember holding paint brushes (by the bristle-end) to use as my drum sticks.  (We really were not that impoverished, although my saga implies otherwise.)

Sure!  Go ahead and laugh!  Get it out of your system.  But I was a kid on a without a budget, and had an overactive imagination.  There was junk available and I had nothing but time.    What can I say?  (It was the “perfect storm”.)  And besides, I just discovered that I am not alone in this.

There may have been a connection between me purchasing real drum sticks and the fact that I used to routinely break through the plastic coffee can lids I used as drum heads.  Since my parents selfishly  refused to drink coffee  at a pace consistent with my need for replacement drum heads, I was forced to patch the broken areas by melting pieces cut from other lids.  In the process I found that I could get different sounds by making some ‘heads’ thicker than others.

That was my first ‘drum kit’.  That is what I used to learn the basics of drumming on.   That’s where I learned to make basic crossover moves and associate different sounds to different sized drums, (or in my case, cans).  That lasted me until I was about 16 years old, at which time I managed to scrape together $150 for a cheap, used, 5-piece set, complete with some of the worst sounding cymbals I have ever broken.

It was at that point that I came to realize just how different playing a real set was:

1. These ‘real drums’ were tunable.  (What a concept!)
2. They were much louder.  (My parents rejoiced!)
3. They were much larger and therefore further away from each other, requiring me to move quicker in order to reach from one to another.
4. These drums provided more of a stick bounce which, in time, made  actual drum rolls possible.
5. Although they were junky, there were more cymbals to hit.  (The classic “More Cymbals, More Fun!” point of view.)
6. The biggest difference was that they required my feet to do something!  (I had no prior experience using pedals, except those attached to my bike.  Yikes!)

So just when I thought I could drum, reality set in, showing me in no uncertain terms that I was only using a mere half of my limbs, whilst real drummers ‘fired on all four cylinders’.   (It may have been at that lull in my self esteem that I discovered the blues . . .)

I mainly played along to records and tapes.  I guess my enjoyment for making music by drumming along to the music I loved, kept my interest in drumming alive and well, to the point that I stayed with it and saw my own gradual progress.  I’m not sure I would have had the same  enthusiasm  or sticktoitiveness in taking lessons if I felt I was being burdened by rigidly having to practice flams and paradiddles everyday instead of playing along to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida just for the fun of it.  On the other hand, seeing what truly great drummers (such as Dave Weckl) can do seemingly effortlessly, builds a strong case for the structured learning that comes only with years of drum lessons.

Would I recommend drum lessons for beginners?  Absolutely!  There is no substitute for professional training by those that already know what their doing.  And I’m sure that had I taken professional lessons I would have been greatly benefited.  But I loved playing drums and learning in my own way, and at my own pace.  So even though I never had lessons, all things considered, I think I do fairly well despite the fact that I’m self-taught.

Brad Kunz