Rattlebrained

Two years ago I was able to set up my drums in the corner of a friend’s music space; which has been great. Amazing how being able to play loud without bothering anyone really changes the game! I practice daily, an activity that could be resumed as playing stuff (rudiments, exercises.. ) with a metronome, and playing along with the songs the bands I play with perform.

I used an Art USB Dual Pre computer interface to power some cheep overhead mics and a PW-1 Personal Wedge to feed my in-ear headphones. It has a mini jack input which makes it easy to add the signal from either a mp3 player for the songs, or an old 7” tablet with a metronome app, to the headphone mix.

However, last fall for an unrelated reason I needed a tablet with a more recent version of android.

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A few years ago I wanted to put the logo of my band on my kick drum but wasn’t thrilled with the idea of painting it. After giving it some thought I wondered if using permanent markers would do the trick. It did for me, so after using the same resonant head for 3-4 years I decided it was time for a change and figured I could document the process. So here is how I added my band’s logo to the new skin. But first things first:
I can’t be held responsible if you try this and mess up your kick drum resonator !
Try and draw on an old discarded drum skin first

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I don’t know about you, but when I don’t like the sound of something in my drumset I tend to not use it. So it’s important to me to have drum stuff that have sounds that I like.

When you first start playing the drums you usually don’t have the experience to know the difference that different materials can make sound wise; a metal or wood snare for instance. And if you don’t have a drummer friend or a teacher to guide you can spend hours on drum forums trying to get an idea of where it would be best to invest your hard earned cash.
I was fortunate to be able to borrow the basics of an old drumset when I started: a brandless metal snare, a kickdrum, high-hat and a bunch of cymbals. And with hindsight I believe anything better would have been wasted, but after a year or so of practicing I became more acuity aware of two factors: one – my wanting technique made it difficult to fully exploit the equipment I had, and two – even so, as my playing improved I became less than happy with how parts of my equipment sounded.

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Although at first I played my small drumset and washboard combination with my hands (wearing my washboard gloves), over the winter I hurt my middle finger joint banging on the heavy old ride cymbal I picked up last year and as I’ve already mentioned I’m sure, began to experiment with various multi-dowel drumsticks which have considerably changed the way I’m playing; possibly not only for the best, time will tell…

In both cases however there have been

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Brushes are great with washboards! The only downside I can think of is that the metal ones can get stuck between the wood and the metal rubbing surface when you play which is a nuisance since that can damage the brush as well as screw up the song you’re playing. For that reason I’ve been using nylon brushes because they aren’t as fragile; they don’t sound quite as nice but close enough. I’ve also put tape along the bottom of certain washboards, covering that gap.

However once you’re playing with…

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This week I made a suitcase kick drum, something I’ve been wanting to do for sometime but kept on putting off since I didn’t have a suitcase. However just last week the art gallery I work with in Zürich asked me if I could come play for their open house (next week – more on that soon), and it seemed the perfect type of event since a drum set is pretty much out of the question.

I was fortunate to find a perfectly sized suitcase at only the second second hand shop I visited which gave me time that afternoon to figure out how to attach the old broken kick drum pedal that I had recuperated some time ago. The first step was to give it a decent batter since the synthetic fur of the original was worn through in 3 spots. I tore that off, exposing the cork interior but wasn’t that keen on how that sounded..l.

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