Everyone won't agree with every single one of the following decisions, but we get a real clear picture of his thinking about it:
A four-piece drumset tends to make me play more groove conscious. Ninety-five percent of the time, I'm playing only hihat, snare and bass drum. So by not having too many other options around me, it keeps my approach more groove oriented.
I always had a problem having a second mounted tom-tom, because it never allowed me to place my ride cymbal exactly where I wanted it. I had to put my cymbal up higher and further to the right of the drum, and that's not where I like to play my ride cymbal. So by not having that tom-tom there, I actually get to have my ride cymbal in the most comfortable place for me to play it.
I also don't feel the need to play fills with lots of drums. I don't put down those who do it, but a couple of extra tom-toms tuned to various notes just don't do that much for me. I think it sounds great when other people do it, but I don't like the sound so much that I want to crowd my drumset with more toms.
I like what happens to me when I play a real basic drumkit, because it alters my approach, as it would any drummer. You have to work within limitations, and when you put governors around yourself, trying to extract the most out of a little is a big challenge. Pop music is the same three or four chords over and over again, and the challenge is to find a new way to play those three or four chords and get something new out of it. It's the same idea with getting the most out of a little drumset as opposed to having lots of drums.
An aside: I don't see a smaller set up as a limitation to begin with. Playing pop, rock, R&B, whatever, having many gradations of tom tom and cymbal sounds is not a tremendous musical advantage; having the major categories of sound— high tom, low tom, crash, ride— within easy reach is.
Also, I might add, in the studio, engineers get off on a small drumkit immensely, because it's a much more easily controlled sound. There's less spill into other microphones. It's a tighter drum sound and much easier to work with.
I play a Yamaha kit. I have a 24" bass drum for a big sound—I have a very, very heavy foot. A big part of my sound is the bass drum. I have an 12" tom-tom mounted on the bass drum, and I have a 16" floor tom. I also have a 13" tom-tom, which I sometimes will use in place of the 8 x 12, depending on what I'm doing.
Generally I lean towards the 12 , because I get a high note from it. If I'm only going to have two drums, I like a big difference in pitch, so I've got high and real low.
I have the Recording series, and I also have the same kit in the Tour series. I have a Yamaha snare drum, which is 5 1/2 x 14. I've never been able to play snare drums deeper than the regular depth of 5 1/2".
When I play live, I tune the snare drum real tight, and 99% of the time, every time I hit it, it's a rimshot, because it gives me a lot more volume and cuts through anything. With a deeper drum, I seem to lose that real sharp crack that I can get out of a 5 1/2" drum, which is a very fast response and very piercing. With a deeper drum, I tend to get a mushier sound.
I tune my snare drum tight for a high-pitched crack. It's not tuned to any kind of note. In fact, if you hit the drum softly, it won't sound very good, but if you hit it at the volume I hit it at, it works on stage. In the studio, I tune it way down and usually put a little piece of tape or a little Kleenex or something on the side just to take some of the ring out.
With the toms, I tune both sides identically, so that if I hit the top of the drum or the bottom, it's the exact same pitch. There would be no right or wrong side to hit—they're tuned the same. I tune the floor tom to the lowest possible note before the sound starts to distort and buzz from being too loose. With the mounted tom-tom, I look for the note that will ring the longest. I like the toms to resonate for the full life of the drum. So I find the note that will ring the longest on the high tom.
That's usually not its lowest note and certainly not its highest note. It's the place where the note seems to go on for the longest amount of time. I don't put any muffling on the tom-toms. I like them to be very natural and have their own decay.
The bass drum is not tuned to anything. The head is very flat. There's no pitch at all because I have a blanket inside. So I tune it down as low as I can before the head actually starts to wrinkle, and then I'll go up half a turn on each lug to take it out of that area.
I guess you can say, in the toms I look for a note that has a life to it and a ring and a decay. The bass drum and the snare drum are noteless—it's a "thump" and a "crack." I want a thump that hits me in my gut. Hopefully, people fall over if they walk in front of the bass drum when I hit it—their knees crack or demolecularize.
The cymbals are Zildjians. I use one 20" ride cymbal. I have a K., and I also have an A.—I switch back and forth. I use two crash cymbals: one over the little tom and one over the floor tom. Those two cymbals could be any combination of 16", 17", and 18", depending on the music I'm playing.
The hi-hat cymbals are the smallest that Zildjian makes—they're 13" New Beats. All of my cymbals are high pitched. The crashes are all bright, very high ended and die away very quickly—a quick explosion and it's gone. The hi-hats are small so that I get a very high-pitched "tick." The ride cymbal is also high pitched. I like to get a "ping" that is distinct so that each beat is distinguished. I find that with a lot of cymbals, if I start riding on them, they just turn into a big wash. Something else I should add is that I don't use the ride cymbal a lot because there's so much more definition in the hi-hat as far as keeping a rhythm section locked into something. The hi-hat is much more deliberate. If I do play the ride cymbal, I very rarely play in the middle or on the edge. I always play on the bell, because the bell cuts through.
For sticks I use Regal 5A wooden tip because I think that wood is more natural than nylon. When I'm playing the snare drum, I play with the back end of the stick, because it makes it fatter and bigger. I feel I'm getting more of the meat of the stick into the drum, and if you ever watch me play, you'll see that I'm often flipping the sticks; it's become a completely involuntary action now. I use the proper end of the stick on the hi-hat, but when I go to the cymbal, I usually use the back end of the stick because I get more volume out of the bell using the back end. So if you see me play, you often see the stick being flipped around depending on whether I'm coming back to the hi-hat or going up to the cymbal.
When I play matched grip, I tend to use the back end of the stick also. If I'm playing my left hand in a legitimate [traditional] grip, then I use the proper end of the stick on the drum.
There's a mentality that's woven through all that I've talked about, and that is that there's nothing in the middle in my drumset. It's either super low or super high—super bottom or super top. Everything cuts through the band. The bass drum and the floor tom are like volcanoes. The high tom is high, like a timbale. It cuts. The snare drum is a high-pitched crack, and all my cymbals are high, quick explosions. The hi-hat has definition, just by the nature of it. And when I play the ride cymbal, it's on the bell because the bell has much more punch to it. So there is an attitude here that shows through the whole drumkit, and that is that every note on the kit is designed to have an impact. There's no middle-of-the-road in the drumset.
Another aside: Note that even within that philosophy of very high and very low sounds, we are still using normal-size drums— 12 and 16" toms, 24" bass drum. 16-18"crash, 20" ride, 13" hihats. A lot of players now would be inclined to take that further, into extreme ranges, where we begin losing the normal tonal functionality of the sounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment