I was wondering, I'm kind of at a halfway point between being mediocre, and being good. The problem is, it's just me at home with my set. My percussion director doesn't know how to play drumset, so I can't ask him for help.
I keep practicing, I just don't get any better. I'm just kind of stuck in zone of mediocrity. Any hints?

If your percussion director doesn't know how to play a set, he's not very good...

try learning something thats challenging to you, just practice it over and over again, slowly, and then build up the speed

He's actually a REALLY good musician and teacher, he's just more snare and drumline oriented. He can play a little I guess, what I meant is that I'm just better at it than he is, and that doesn't do me much good .

Haha that's why I need sheet music in the first place
I dunno, the only thing I really have trouble hearing and recognizing are the fills. (And that's my main problem when it comes to playing)

Wow this is way off topic.

Chris, just because someone is more percussion oriented doesn't mean they suck. All drumset playing is built around rudiments anyway. Every fill you've ever heard on a kit is a combination of rudiments, whether they're traded between hands and feet, or whatever.

Geoff, the best way that you can improve is to practice to a metronome a CDs. I've got 3 things for you:

1 - Play along to bands that you're familiar with and learn to play in time with the song. that will get you more accustomed to playing in a band and playing with more instrumentation than just yourself.

2 - Practice your rudiments on a practice pad with a metronome. This will help you learn your tendencies (when you want to rush/drag, etc). The rule is: if you can't play it on one drum, you can't play it on 4.

3 - When you do feel like just grooving with no music, put on the met and wail. Practicing beats and grooves in tempo will help you get a feel for how it's supposed to sound, and once more, learn you drumming tendencies.


All of this needs to be done with good isolating headphones. I'm sure you've learned from being in drumline that your greatest asset is not your hands, but your ears. Go to Guitar Center or Radio Shack and get some good full isolation headphones that you can plug into your stereo or your metronome. That way you're cutting a lot of drum volume, and you don't have to turn your music up as loud.

why do you think 95% of drummers today use in-ear monitors live? lol

Thanks. I'll try it.

You know, recently I've been trying to play diddles on my bass drum, but I CAN'T DO IT! They're freaking impossible lol

Try sliding your foot. It should be a very fluid motion. Almost like a down and up stroke...

when would you ever need to play a para-diddle with your feet though?

not a paradiddle, just a diddle. instead of alternating 32nd notes like RLRLRLRL, you'd play them like a double stroke roll, RRLLRRLL. think of NFG's old stuff. all that fast pop-punk stuff uses diddles. it sounds like they're using double bass, but it's just two notes played quickly one after another.

ohhhhh, ok


Another question, i'm using a double pedal but i still can't get both hits to sound the same, the left beater bit always sounds deeper (and better i may add). I'm using a pillow and some shirts for muffling and my right (center) beater is a good inch, or so, above the middle of the head.

Would a self muffling head help to get both hits sound the same?

It sounds like the muffling is uneven. I'd use a towel or something that you could roll to be consistent, and use that. self-dampening heads work great, too. i recommend and Evans EMAD with the smaller ring.

i use an aquarian superkick 2 on the batterside and felted my stock premier head and cut a hole in it. My kick sounds pretty legit.

I just bought the Evan Emads about 2 weeks ago!!! TRUST ME, it's worth the purchase, LOVE LOVE LOVE the noise that it puts out, and I just saw alex on friday in Roseville Cali, and he was pretty much dead on with pats old drum fills!! he brought the beef thats for sure!!!

Hey, Jesse, my kit is a piece of crap and I'm in need of a new one, how much do you think it would cost for me to buy a new, good one? Particularly that ttn kit.

(I know you said it's all about tuning, but it's kind of a fan thing)

I can almost guarantee you that the TTN kit is long gone. It was a maple Noble & Cooley kit, which means it's going to run for about $2500-3000 for the shells. I'd eBay it, bro.

my best advice on a cheap decent kit is a Gretsch Catalina Maple. I have one as my second kit and it sounds pretty damn good for the price I payed for it.

Edit: I don't know why you are so concerned with buying such a specific kit (noble & cooley maple). You can make almost any half decent kit sound huge in a studio. You just have to know how to tune and know what heads sound best. What is the most important thing about drum tone in my opinion has little to do with the drums themselves... mic choices, mic placement, preamps, compression, reverb, EQ

I have a Gretsch Catalina Maple 4 piece and it's awesome, definitely consider buying one.

And if you do, get it off ebay. The Catalina Maple's come as shell packs, but if you buy them from a liquidator off ebay, you can get the shells and hardware, new, for the same price you'd get from a dealer for just the shells.


And what would you need a preamp and reverb for, for recording drums?


Edit: Alex should really post here, i'm sure he'd enjoy himself

Monty, just tonight I recorded drums for a project with a pearl export kit and it sounds so freaking boss. Part of that is because I'm a killer engineer, but after tuning and micing it up, it sounded great.

What drum mics do you use?

Last night I only used 4 mics on the kit. I used an Audix D6 on the kick, a Sennheiser MD421 on the snare, and a pair of Neumann U87s (set up mid/side) as overheads.



edit: sorry i edited the fool out of everyone's posts, i had to cut the bullcrap from the original topic. we should be good now...

i bought my catalina maple 6piece for $550 new. I guess I'm just a baller. Anyways every mic needs a preamp, and reverb if dialed in correctly can definately increase the tone of the kit by miles.


yeah. Over the summer we made a Yamaha stage custom sound huge on stage even though the drummer was an awful tuner.

Nice

And can someone explain a preamp to me again? How are you supposed to have a preamp for a drum mic? I'm assuming u don't run it threw a guitar head...

*bump*

So I'm pretty sure that I finally got the hi hat/ride part down in They Perched

The part in the very beginning when the vocals first kick in

Good, now throw in the doubles on your feet.

I pretty much have those down too, they're just kind of hit and miss.

Consistency. Damnit haha

That's the key. Can you play it without the CD and still do everything like Pat?

Pretty much, my double pedal's kinda shakey occasionally though. I can play double pedal pretty clean heel down, it's just not as loud and I can't sustain them as long. I first learned heel down, I started to try heel up a few months ago.

It's kind of hard to play every note accurately heel up (for me at least).

a lot of drummers play heel down since their kick drum is mic'd live. jordan from as i lay dying is a perfect example.

i play heel up a lot of the time, but that's because my kick sounds better if i put a little more "umph" behind it.

I also play heel up. But ever since being in college my double kick consistency has decreased due to being away from my kit for months at a time. The only time I can really play now is during the summers :[ And every time I feel like I have to retrain my legs/feet to keep it steady. Hopefully next year I'll have enough room to have my kit in my apartment.

i had a kit in my bedroom in newport last year for a while, but the cops kept coming...at like 7PM telling me the whole street had called. super lame.

i've now trained my fingers to be as fast as my drumming on a midi controller

Man I can never do the double kick thing. you either slide or tap or somehing and i can never get it. : (
also, anyone know how to do those super fast nofx/punk beats?

That?

Yeah, that. I don't have an orthodox way of doing that. Most people use the "slide technique" but i'm just trained my leg to do doubles really fast.

no, its most likely the placement of the beaters.

i have no muffling in my bass drum, and the slave pedal beater doesnt sound as deep as the right pedal.

he probably just has to shift his pedal over, or evenly tune

there's no way to shift the pedal over and have it perfectly even on the head, dude. pedals are not designed to line up like that. if you were to move over far enough to line it up, it would be sideways on the hoop.

Im personally a bigger fan of heel down drumming because it allows for a little more dynamism. You have a more subtle control over the beater because you are using you ankle instead of your entire leg. Then for accented notes ill use heel up.

PDP are great drum kits also, excellent price for such a great great sound, couldnt recommend them more!

Yup, especially the LX series. When DW shells don't meet standards, they use them for the PDP line.

enough for it to be on the sweet spot, which is not dead center

it doesnt have anything to do with muffling

try it yourself, it will sound "tighter" and not as deep then where it was before

im talking about a double bass pedal btw





DW use keller shells. and there are usually a lot of problems with DW drums, such as plies ungluing etc.

i wouldnt ever buy anything from dw

Jesse's right, even if you were to shift the pedal over, the bottom of it would be to an angle, not flat on the grounf, and in from there you moved the whole thing so that it WAS flat on the ground, you'd be exactly where you started, it's a circle dude.

I have all of my cymbals on individual stands, what are some other ways to mount them?

it's douchebags like you that make guitarists like me have to turn our amps up wayyy too loud.


just teasin. but i hate quiet drummers.

Yeah, you're right. Drums are the most important, so they should be heard more

dude, i'm not trying to argue, but this is my profession. i get paid to make drums sound good live and in recordings, and i PROMISE you that the most effective way of altering a kick's sound (aside from tuning it) is to adjust the amount of muffling inside the drum. now, changing the beater also has a huge effect on it as well, but i'm assuming he's using a hard felt beater like 75% of the drummers out there.

The "sweet spot" would be having both beaters evenly lined up on the head. This is impossible to do if you want your pedal flat on the ground. Period.

It's ok jesse, i'll argue for you...

hey, Some guy

you're wrong


sweet, now lets get back to talking about drum set ups that are actually possible...

Gibraltar Grabber Cymbal Arm

or just start paying your friends to hold their arm out and to try no to flinch

Yeah, I prefer the DW stuff, but they're hardware is the most heavy duty junk in the entire world. That and the new Pearl stuff. You can buy DW stands that have 3 full size cymbal arms on one tripod. It's $200+ but whatever...

You honestly think heel down means Im a quiet drummer, it may be quieter relative to heel up, but my kick sound pretty beefy. Plus, playing heel up can reduce the resonance of the batter head if you keep the beater pressed up against the head at the stationary position. (which most drummers do, it also means that on your next hit, you have to go nearly twice the distance, as the beater must go back and forwards.)

just saying what bob gatzen said, who seems to really know what hes saying

plus ive tried what youve said before, and it doesnt work at all.

and ive heard lots of problems with dw hardware..

Video/link?

all live boards have live preamps in them so you dont have to worry about preamps for live drums since the venue will already have them. Studio drums require a preamp for each mic. Preamps smooth out the sound of the mic and make it sound much more pleasing and such, its just like the difference between plugging your guitar straight into a power section of a guitar amp or going in through the input for cleans. I wouldnt run drum mics through a guitar head, that would just be retarded.


i play heel up. my leg starts spasming if i play heel down for too long, i dont know why though. I can also play faster heel up. I've also gotten so good at heel up I can play pretty quite if I want too...