Okay, they really did themselves in by mentioning examples because all I can think about now are some of my favorites they didn't mention. One of my favorite breakdowns of not only drums but also the writing and recording process is Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, and Bernard Purdie talking about the drums on "Home At Last" off the Aja album[0]. Not going to debate if Aja is actually a rock album in the classic School of Rock sense but, my god, what a great track and drum part.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ldtieSEyQM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ldtieSEyQM</a>
>>>> How much do drums cost?<p>Not much, until you get to the cymbals.<p>Most of the drummers I've worked with are willing to put up with pretty much any drums, but always bring their own bag of cymbals. I don't think it's just a portability issue.
I'd like to see some more science behind the claims about frequency responses of different types of wood. While they must resonate differently, I'm very skeptical of the claim that this leads to a qualitatively different sound.<p>edit: I will say there is an obvious influence of the wood type on the drums' response to temperature changes, and thus their tuning, so to the extent that that influences things, yes, there will be a difference. I'd like to see experiments controlling for all except wood type, however.
Drums really fascinated me since the first day I got to sit behind a kit that one saturday morning in october 2002 and ended changing my life.<p>It's a "meta-instrument" instrument that has a level of customization to the individual that no other instrument goes near - in many cases you can tell a famous drummer just by looking at the disposition of their set! In many other instruments it's the player who has to adapt to said instrument, but with drums it happens quite the opposite.<p>Despite its avant-garde and ever-evolving nature, sometimes it baffles me that it's us players who sometimes haven't kept "in time" (no pun intended) with the instrument. I find it weird that the main reason people play hi hats cross-handed it's because a limitation in the hardware, namely the hi hat stand. Granted, there are now remote stands and you could place it almost anywhere, but they are still quite rare (and apparently even more expensive) and people just got along with the idea of having to play one of the most used pieces in the kit, precisely in rock styles, in a counter-intuitive place.<p>I think Bill Bruford could solve that drum layout issue perfectly, having his hats exactly on front on him and allowing him to be easily reachable with both hands without something else getting in the way (like Danny Carey). Alas it hasn't catched on because, again, people got so used to have their hi hats in a weird place that I bet many think that _it's the way we are intended to set our drums_.<p>Other of the head-scratching issues that even a century later is still alive is the stick grip thing. For many years they taught people traditional grip and told them that's the intended way to play drums (there's a funny rant from Buddy Rich around youtube about that matter), but as with the rise of rock styles people found that playing with a matched grip allowed them to play with more power, now they are telling people that playing matched is _the superior way_ to play drums (people of the likes of Thomas Lang, Matt Gartska and even the youtuber "the 80/20 drummer" are behind that idea).<p>But in reality even that comes down to the individual. I for one played with matched grip for 16 years and despite how much I did for my weak hand at the end I found my body is just not symmetrical. There's some tension in the tendons of my left hand it won't ever let me go anywhere near the flexibility of my right hand and feeling tension even when playing double strokes, no matter how relaxed. Re-discovering traditional grip was a moment of enlightenment for me and now I can't understand why people try to impose things as a grip as some sort of universal condition in the world of one of the most (if not the most) customizable musical instruments.
Most of the time, the rock drums you hear are recorded in the studio. This will sound different from live drums.<p>My experience mixing drums is limited… the way I’ve done it is by starting with overhead microphones to capture the sound of the full kit. This sounds kinda like what you hear live. I then mix in kick mics and snare mics, and run those through compressors and EQ. The compression you put on the kick and snare is a big chunk of the formula for getting drums to sound like rock drums. I was shocked the first time I heard it, because it goes from sounding like drums to sounding like <i>rock</i> drums.<p>Rock and roll has a very compressed sound to it. In the 1960s and 1970s it was a matter of necessity—you compressed so you could record a clean signal on tape, and then compressed some more because you liked it. Nowadays we use software to get similar results, either through emulations or new designs.
Turning up the volume a whole lot can help a mediocre guitar player sound somewhat competent.<p>This does not apply to drums.<p>(source: crappy drummer me)
> I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
— Bill Bruford
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