Circuit-33 (The Band)Not to be confused with circuits of any other variety

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)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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 . . .)

Childhood Fascination

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).

When the time came to dismantle the drums I was a bit apprehensive about what difficulties I might encounter in removing the old covering.  I would first have to remove all of the attached hardware to find out.

The closer I looked at them, the more I realized that I was making the right decision.

Since I would be working on many different drums from varying manufacturers, I brought several heavy duty poly bags to separate the hardware as I removed it from each drum. I also brought my Ryobi angle drill which allowed me to easily reach in and remove the lugs and other hardware from even my smallest drums. I don’t know what causes it but the discoloration was pretty bad. Once the hardware was removed I was relieved to see how easily the old drum covering came off.  I had imagined that it was glued on but instead, it was merely held in place by the lugs and other hardware.  Even the matching strips on the bass drum hoops came off without a struggle.

Now there was no turning back!

(But you saw the photos.  Who would want to go back?)

Would we be able to successfully replace the original drum shell covering with a new durable counter top type of laminate?  We were about to find out.

(To Be Continued on Extreme Makeover – Drum Edition – Pt-4)

Before I go on, I feel that I must give you fair warning:

There are a few things that you must keep in mind about recovering drum shells with this sort of laminate:

• You only get one shot to get it right. Once the laminate is glued on, it’s not coming off.  It is very likely that any attempts to remove it will result in layers of plywood tearing off before the laminate will come off.  So make sure you are completely satisfied with whatever laminate color and pattern you choose.  If you have wooden drum shells, and apply the laminate as we did, you will not get a second chance!
• If you are afraid that by gluing a very thin but hard layer of laminate to your drum shells might change the sound of your drums, you might be right.  I had a mix ‘n match drum set,  so I was not worried about it because I knew that if it changed, it would probably change for the better.  You’ll notice that in the Before and After photos I also removed the bottom heads, which I knew would have an even greater effect on the drum’s sound than adding a layer of laminate, which it did.  I think they sound fine, but if you’re worried, you may not want to attempt this.
• You must be able to do some fairly precise measurements and cutting of the laminate because, unlike the original drum shell fabric that slightly overlaps itself around the shell, the laminate must be precisely trimmed to allow for the two edges to butt up together where they meet.  If you do a bad job the seam will show.

Now, with that out of the way . . .

You might think that the decision to use a countertop-type of material for re-covering drum shells would substantially limit your color and pattern choices.  Au Contraire! Compared to the choices I saw available for the actual replacement drum shell fabric kits, there were far more to choose from in laminates.  And I’m not just talking about minor variations of wood grains either.

Here is just a sample of what I found available from Wilsonart that I thought would make for some interesting, even bizarre, drum kits:

Unfortunately, I was under pressure to get mine finished in time for a gig, so there was no time to special order anything not already in stock from the local distributer.  I chose an exotic woodgrain style from the laminates in stock, and I have been satisfied with that choice.

(To Be Continued on Extreme Makeover – Drum Edition – Pt-3)

Occasionally someone will ask me how long I’ve been playing drums. (Poor suckers!)

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