Me? A Drummer?

Young me practicing my paradiddles.
Note the jazz grip and my trusty cassette deck, at left.

I wasn't the guy who pounded rhythms on his desk or cafeteria tray, geez, I barely tapped my foot. But rock and roll is a powerful magnet. The idea of playing in a band was loaded with all the potential cool a freshly minted teenager could imagine and some friends happened to be forming one. They needed a drummer, so I got me some lessons at the local music shop.

My teacher, a jazz guy, was delighted that I could read music. I'd taken 5 years of classical piano lessons, and the drum charts he put in front of me were a piece of cake. I had a good ear and it turned out I was coordinated too. I started on a practice pad and soon I was begging for drums of my own.

Before you knew it I had my nose in the want ads looking for used kits – I found one across town. To me they were amazing: $125 of chrome, twinkle and marble-look laminate. In reality they were a little 4 piece kit with crappy, dull sounding pie tin cymbals, some no-name cheapo brand. Excitedly, I took them home.

Within a few months my buds and I had recorded a noisy cassette (I still have it) of "Sympathy for the Devil," "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Honky Tonk Woman." I wasn't that great, but I was keeping tempo and singing at the same time, to boot. I had taken to it. I was becoming a drummer.

I carried on practicing and jamming. I got better cymbals, added cowbells and blocks, experimented with tuning and muffling heads. I took my lessons but really learned by playing along with the greats on my trusty cassette deck. I broke sticks as I dueled with Moon and Bonham and absorbed Ringo and Charlies Watts' patient competence.

Those drums played exactly one paid gig: I was hired for the pit orchestra for an 8th grade catholic school production of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes." But playing rock with my friends was much more satisfying.

I became known in my little circle as a pretty good drummer. I felt cool and got some needed teenage cred. But drumming did more than that. Drumming is humbling. One must support and be never waver. I learned I could be dependable.

Sure, there was room for powerful showboating. Being a drummer was decidedly macho — important for a guy growing up in the estrogen bath our home had become with the departure of my father (two sisters a mother and me, the male minority). The emotional turmoil and angst every teenager feels was given a primal voice though rock and roll.

More importantly, I learned how to improvise and go with the flow. Something my classical music training did not teach me. A useful skill in life.

Soon I felt limited by those drums and after a summer toiling as a messenger in Manhattan, I'd saved enough to purchase a a beautiful cherry red Premier kit.

I ran my own classified ad and the first looker took them away for a paltry $75. I was sick with a fever and too weak to bargain. But that was fine. In the exchange they only cost me $50. And what I gained from those drums can't be measured in dollars and cents.

20 Inch Zildjian Ping Ride

This is a stock photo, but you can see mine in the kit pictured here.

In some basic ways, a drum is a drum. As a kid, I figured anyone could buy the same drum head heads as Bonham used with Zeppelin and get the same basic sound, maybe fill in for him once in a while. Well, maybe not quite, but I do still believe you can get a decent boom out almost any drum if you tune it right.

Case in point: my first kit. It was a four-piece, $125, no name, purchased used from a newspaper ad. After some tuning, it sound fine. The cymbals it came with were another story. They were stamped out pieces of junk. They basically sound like ka-ka.

There's a lot of centuries old alchemy in the making of a good cymbal, and even an idiot can tell the difference between crap and the sustained ring, rich with overtones, of a nice forged and hammered Zildjian, Paiste, or even Sabian.

The year I got that first drum kit, cymbals were on my Christmas list. My dad went to Manny's and got me some high hats that were pretty good. They an identifying stamp that said "MANNYS," and the guy behind the counter told Papa they were Zildjian seconds. I don't know about that, but at least they were cast and hammered. They had that CHICK! sound, and when closed down, that PSHTT! that you wanted. They were decent.

Eventually I saved enough money and went shopping for a real Zildjian ride cymbal. A fresh faced kid, 14 or 15-years-old, I approached the counter. The guy asked me what kind of music I played. "Rock," said I. His face lit up. That was apparently enough unique information for him to immediately produce a recommendation. "I have a really nice one in here," he said, and pulled out a 20" Zildjian Ping ride, second from the top in a stack behind him. He played a few strokes on it, gave me a knowing nod and a wink. "Nice, right?" It sounded so different than the junk I had at home. Who was I to argue?

I wouldn't think of buying a cymbal now without auditioning at least a couple of dozen and even then I had the sense that I should have. On the subway, heavy cymbal in tow, I chided myself, "I acted so young, so dumb and shy in there!" I was sure I had a lemon under my arm. "That jerk was just waiting to for a sucker like me to pawn this thing off on."

Once at home, I played my way through a Doors tape. A warm feeling of contentment slowly washed over me as I floated through "Riders on the Storm." I'd been wrong. People weren't bad. The guy was an angel and this cymbal rocked. I loved it.

I was also an instant hit with my buddies in the garage. The signature "Ping" tone cut through the guitars with it's namesake sound. It was super thick and produced a great gong sound when hit with a mallet neat the edge or with a stick on the edge itself.

As I could afford it I purchased a 16" crash, then an 18" crash. After comparing my no name high hats with those in the store costing hundreds, I realized they were pretty good too.

I used the ride for about 10 years. My Ping never cracked, it never failed me. Today, when someone IMs me, "I'll Ping you later," I hear a sound effect in my head. It's my cymbal.

Before I sold it with the rest of my kit, I sampled the thing on my TX16W for posterity.

Good cymbals are essential to a kit and they are what really can help give you your signature as a player. Choose carefully.

Or maybe just get lucky like I did.

Ludwig Ghost Bass Drum Pedal

Back in the 8th grade, when I first started playing the drums, I sat in with a friend's band practice when their drummer didn't show. I broke his pedal in about 30 seconds. That's when I realized I had a heavy foot.

I broke through my own first pedal, which had a leather strap connecting the footbed and the the beater. A few flimsy chain drive pedals later and I invested in the Ludwig Ghost.

It had a radical design, seen at left. No chain drive, nylon or leather straps, but a metal mechanism. Those large cylindrical shapes on the sides contained enclosed spiral spring mechanisms (0r maybe there was one on only one side). The idea was to minimize moving parts and avoid squeaks and rinkatink chain noise, but rather provide silent movement, like a ghost.

It took some getting used to. The footbed didn't have a hinge above the heal, but rather was one piece. Different action but I liked it well enough. I kicked this sucker pretty hard and it never gave way. It lasted me through a decade or so.

Later it did start to squeak some and after trying some higher end chain-drrive pedals in the store I realized I was missing a lot of speed and fluidity. I moved on to a Tama or Pearl or some such new treasure.

Gear Purge

Creative space, with the emphasis on "space."

Gearchild has had just about enough, um, GEAR. It's heresy, I know. After all, I've been into this stuff since I was a kid, poking around my fathers Telefunken reel to reel in 1968. But something has happened. The gear has ceased to be fun, and the music has faded behind the clutter. True, I've been winnowing my possessions down already, and it may be only temporary. But I decided to undergo a major purge.

What it boils down to getting realistic about what I'm able to do in my life. When "stuff" becomes something I'm responsible toward rather than something that's a help to me, it's a problem. And I'm not just talking about music gear either.

PERSONAL STATISTICS I have a more than full-time job, a spouse and three children. By the time I got to my studio after work, I was usually so tired that I resented my equipment.
Like that annoying kid down the block, it kept looking at me with its blinking red, green and amber eyes and repeating "Wanna play? Why don't you play with me? Here I am." "Get out of my face!" I shouted back and proceeded to log onto ebay.

THE DRUMS Read Garbage Drum Set for the history, but when it came down to it I wasn't playing or recording these drums. I used to be a drummer back in the day, but years operating a computer mouse has left my wrists and soft tissue tender. An afternoon pounding the kit felt great, but I paid for it the next few days. And drums are too loud to not bother my housemates and my kids show no interest in playing them or using them to jam with me or their friends.

So I sold the cracked Zildjian New Beat high hats, the Sabian 20" ride cymbal, the Tama Pedal, the 1970s 16" Paiste crash cymbal, the Tama high hat stand, and the two cymbal stands. After alot of packing tape and trips to the post office, what was left was the "garbage" part of the kit, the drums themselves. They are sitting in my garage. One is a Ludwig floor tom, I think (the badge is missing). The rest are no-name junky brands that have pretty much no value on the used market.

Come and get them.

KORG MICROx I wrote about my love for my latest synth recently. It interfaced well with my computer DAWS and had heaps of sounds. But getting at it all was sort of like looking for ants with a magnifying glass from an airplane. If you are over 40, do not even attempt to read the text on the front panel of that thing. Don't get me wrong, it's a great synth. But with the time I have for it, I just was scratching the surface. When it comes down to it I can make just about any sound I want on my Mac virtual synths. So up on ebay went the MicroX.


PHONIC FIREWIRE MIXER/AUDIO INTERFACE A grossly underestimated piece of equipment. A few years ago, for $300, I got this 12 channel firewire audio interface that is also an analog mixer with great effects. But I also have an Mbox for ProTools. I've gotten into Protools because that's what I use at work for editing audio for web multimedia. When it came down to it I figured I could do everything I needed with the Mbox. So some lucky camper picked up the used firewire mixer for about $100. If you want a firewire interface/mixer, I'd check these out. Not quite a Mackie, but it does a lot of the same stuff, and it's much cheaper.


RODE NT1A Microphone
A great condenser mic. Quiet and wonderful for voice or whatever. But when it comes down to it, I can do what I need to, get a basic idea down, with my Shure Sm58. Someone picked it up for $100.


CAMERAS AND BRIEFCASES
I rounded out my purge by looking beyond my music gear to my other valuable stuff. Saddleback Leather makes these amazing bags. Thick leather and cool basic styling. They are designed to last 100 years and cost at least a few hundred bucks each. I got one a few years ago. I loved it, the way it smelled, looked and was built. But it was too heavy to carry. It was breaking my back. Picked up $400 for it on ebay, almost what I paid. Someone got a great bag.


Finally, I got rid of my Olympus E-500 digital slr camera. A great camera, yes. I take lots of pictures, and always have. A camera is almost always with me. But this camera was about 2 or 3 years old and I figured it was going to break sooner rather than later. So I sold it too. A wedding photographer in Ohio picked it up with the lens and a bunch of extras and got a great deal at that. I took the money from all this stuff and got the new SLR I'd been wanting.

My music studio now boils down to this:

• My Mac laptop
• M-Audio Prokeys Sx keyboard.
• Mbox Mini.
  
• A bunch of virtual synths, notably ImpOscar.
• My Garbage Guitar (read about it).
• $200 Fernandez strat.
• Edirol powered speakers.
  

And I'm thinking of making it even simpler. Meanwhile I have room to breath, I can just sit down and play without getting strangled in wires or demanding lcd screens.

And, importantly, I have a little more peace, which is just what I need right now.



--

Garbage Drum Set

Garbage Drum Set, 2008.

If you read my previous post on the AMPEG REVERBEROCKET 2, you know I like to rescue musical instruments from the landfill. It's amazing what people will throw away.

But drums, I'm not surprised people chuck them. Here's a typical scenario:

Teenage boy, let's call him Boomer, begs for a drum set. It's appears under the Christmas tree and everyone is so happy. But that fades, at least for the parents and siblings, when it becomes clear how LOUD drums are in real life. Sound like I'm talking from personal experience? Well, maybe a little. click for more info on my teenage drums.

Boomer spends a few years making obnoxious sounds in the cellar with his buddies. Then maybe he loses interest, goes to college, moves out, leaving the drums at home with the folks. (Not personal experience).

Eventually the folks decide to clean up their empty nest. You can bet those drums are among the first things on the curb: Associated with headaches and those wonder years when Boomer's parents wondered if their boy would ever amount to anything. On top of that, drums take up a lot of space better served by a new home theater!

Here's the history of my Garbage Drum Set:

FIRST The beat up gold glitter Ludwig 14" floor tom seen poking out below the mounted tom in the photo, found sitting on the curb. The Ludwig badge was missing, but I recognized its ghost around the air hole.

THEN A tiny silver Rogers tom, 12", again out on the curb. I put it on ebay expecting $20. I shipped it to the lucky winner in Puerto Rico who paid me $240! The profits are shown in the picture: A used cheapo snare, no-name, red glitter, $35 on ebay. The cymbals: Paiste 16" crash and Zildjian New Beat High Hats, small crack, $75 for the bunch, also on ebay. The hardware and Sabian ride I bought new with the rest of the $240.

NEXT A 22" bass drum (not shown) and the black toms, 13" and 14" and 16" (floor) in the photo. Later I found a better bass drum on the curb, and that's the one you see here, but it was missing a hoop out front.

ESP Call it a hunch, call it crazy — all I know is that I got in my car with a sense of certainty, and within 10 minutes found a hoop, the right size, in somebody's else's trash. It's the white one in the picture.

These drums are not precious. But they are certainly loved, maybe more than Boomer was.

Cherry Red Premier "Resonator" Drum Kit

Premier Resonator kit, in the backyard, 1978.

These drums represent a true turning point for a young Smokotalky. For the first time, I set a goal, and met it. And what was that? To get myself a off of the crappy beginner drum set I'd started on (no-name, $75 used) and into a heavy duty rock monster, able to cut through during those ear-ringing basement jams.

So, into Jack Spurt Messenger Service (the owner's real name) I walked, a clueless 10th grader with his earth shoes and surfer hair. I took a seat beside a dozen or so young inner city teens (a few of whom where pregnant) and awaited orders to pick up or drop off packages around midtown Manhattan. The pay? Minimum wage circa 1978 = $2.65 per hour.

At first I was an office curiosity: ("Yo, what the f*ck you doin' here?"). But my coworkers and I eventually became friends. I got the long runs and the pregnant girls were treated more gingerly, given easier deliveries.

I didn't mind. I liked walking around the city, watching the people and I enjoyed the clang of a pocket full of quarters against my thigh (provided to us for phone calls back to the office). I got to know Manhattan, street by street, and got to move within some of the great architecture of the city. I loved it. If I was careful not to buy hot dogs and soda from the street vendors, thus instantly killing an hour's wages, I was o.k. I might add that as a young virgin I experienced a guilty excitement in the proximity of my female co-workers, many of whom had obviously "done it."

By the end of August I'd gained an appreciation of the pleasant, middle class suburban Queens neighborhood I returned to every night. My coworkers were at Spurt Messenger Service because they had few other opportunities. I, on the other hand, was simply clueless. Ccushier options must have been available. College application rich summer internships or working at some wholesome summer camp, for example. Even the local Carvel would have saved me subway and bus fare.

At the end of my last day I walked into Sam Ash Music on 48th Street, and there, up on a riser, was my shiny red Premier Kit. I'd saved up about $500. It was on clearance, I had just enough. I put a down payment on it, and the next day my dad and I drove the drums home to Queens. I photographed them in the backyard late that very summer.

24" bass drum, 13", 14", and 16" toms and a chrome snare.

I loved them so. They played in many a garage, attic and cellar, and on even on a few stages in New York and Boston while I was in college. Eventually I stripped the red wrapping off for a funky home brew natural finish. When I moved to apartments and got married, they followed, but always in the closet or attic. They eventually got sold, amazingly, for the same $500 I'd paid, to a newly divorced thirty-something who was "trying to get back into playing weddings."

Interesting, I thought, for a newly divorced guy.