Developing Good Sound and Touch on the Drum Set
“There’s an art to playing quietly.”
It is true that it’s very difficult to manage low dynamics for an entire gig. As a drummer that has done this many many times though, I do get many calls backs but! The audio recordings I have of those gigs I’m barely a ghost in those tracks. And for me I’m not audible enough to justify drums being present at all. So here I offer a dynamic this drummer here doesn’t address. Playing quietly gets you gigs. But playing quiet to the standard of the people who hired you doesn’t mean you have an audible contribution to the music. The best gigs I’ve been hired for was bands that wanted the sound of drums behind their music. The worst gigs I’ve had were bands that wanted time keeping that in the end only they could hear on stage and in front of house nothing! Also, on the idea of playing quietly on the loud instrument called the drums! When I play at my most quiet, all I sound is the batter head drum skin. Like micing an A4 page leaf. But once you start giving some real volume, you initiate the drum shell and the drum body. The thing about the acoustic drum set, it needs decent sounding in order to feature the drum shell quality at all. In studio work you can play the drums fully and the engineer will mix you appropriately. In live settings this is true too but in big venues. In small venues you can be too loud in nature. This is where the drum heads are paper towels that the band ask you to play with no respect for the richer tonality of the wooden drums in the end. As a drummer I’ve no wish to be the loudest in the group. But as a drummer I’ve no wish to be inaudible especially when what rhythm I can give to the song is more creative than what that band asks of me. When you want a drummer,know why you want a drummer and not just include one from habit.
