The snare drum. Our best drum friend. Sits there, in front of us being all awesome every time we hit it. Metal, wood, acrylic, no matter what the material, we easily get very attached to our snare drum sound. It’s one thing we spend time trying to cultivate.

But every once in a while we get a customer who has come to the point where they want their drum to sound a little different or their bored of the sound their drum makes.

Let’s look at 3 ways we can give your drum a new lease of life!

Heads
Hoops
Wires.

Heads

Drums, for all intents and purposes, are simply chambers that move air. They don’t make the sound. That’s done by the combination of heads and bearing edges.

Heads can make a world of difference to how your drum sounds. The difference between a Coated Ambassador, a Genera Dry and an Emperor X is vast and so is the sound difference.

Single ply heads typically make a drum open and bright sounding. Usually the drum will ring out at the top end if it’s tuned tightly. If this is a sound that you’ve played for a while – a tight, highly tuned single ply head, then changing to a heavier head will really bring out different qualities in the shell.

A double ply head with a dampening ring will remove the majority of the overtones at the top end and therefore you’ll get way more of the body of the sound. The pitch of the drum will drop and it’ll be able to take heavier hitting and hopefully be more durable!

Thicker heads will also greatly change how a drum sounds when tuned low. They will typically be drier and much lower in pitch than if a single ply head was on the drum.

Obviously this a very generic overview and with the number of different heads on the market, there are a vast range of sounds you can go for. Single ply heads with dots underneath/on top will give you the sensitivity of a single ply head, but with a little more low end due to the thickness in the middle of the head being greater.

Try out different things and see what works. It’s also worth remembering that live and recording are very different so if you have a recording session at some point, you’ll want to think carefully about how bright your drums sound, as that will no doubt either be captured by the mics or be problematic for the engineer.

Hoops

This sounds a bit like witchcraft but I promise it’s not. Hoops can fundamentally change how your drum both sounds and plays.

Switching from say, triple flanged to die cast, will add more weight onto the shell, therefore changing the way the drum tunes. I find that die cast hoops need a lot less work to change the pitch of a drum than triple flanged do. A quarter turn on a die cast hoop can really change the sound way more than on a triple flanged.

To me, die cast hoops tend to focus a drum a lot more and give it (in my experience) more crack and a whole load more volume when you rim shot. I have a Yamaha 14 x 5.5 Bamboo drum that sounds totally different when I put die cast hoops on.

S Hoops are a great combination choice if you can’t decide which you prefer. They give the stability of tuning that a die cast will give you due to the added steel which improves rigidity, however tension wise, they behave quite like a triple flanged. Their edges also turn inwardly which decreases stress on the wrists, especially when rim shotting.

Wires

A recent change in snare wires for myself led to a fairly obvious lightbulb moment that hadn’t occurred to me before. The wires of a snare drum are the most stressed part of the drum. They are under tension nearly all the time. Even in the case. If you are like me, you NEVER loosen them when you put your drum away. So they can lie under tension for the length of time it takes me to remove it from the case, and not even be played. (Months in some cases).

So as you can imagine, this will tend to dull the wires down and probably fairly quickly (much like guitar strings).

I have a 13×6.5in brass shell, which has die cast hoops and a Powerstroke X (14 mil single ply with a 2 mil underlay to dampen the overtones). Recently I switched my wires over to a Puresound Custom Pro 20 strand wire. It’s a steel wire which is remarkably articulate and just the right amount of dry for me. It’s instantly revived the drum to be much more lively and responsive and has added a little extra projection – which is never a bad thing.

I have also recently switched out some wires on another drum to a Puresound Equalizer 16 strand wire. This wire has the middle 4 wires removed in order to eliminate as much snare buzz as possible whilst still retaining a strong snare sound (it works in conjunction with the snare’s natural acoustics or something). Again it’s totally revived an old drum to sound fresh, articulate and it responds under my hands like never before.

So there you have it. A few different ways that you can spice up your snare drum sound, without going too crazy. Try them out, experiment with different head/wire choices or hoop choices. Stuart Copeland famously had different hoops top and bottom of his drum (die cast top, triple flanged bottom). See what works for you. You never know what lease of life it’ll breathe into your drum and your playing.

Drumming education has come a long, long way since the birth and continued evolution of the instrument. An instrument that was designed for jazz music, drum set language was developed in the military snare drumming that preceded it. It’s education was traditionally aural – passed down from the elder statesmen to the younger generation.

 

While that tradition still exists and drummers continually trade information and patterns, licks, ideas etc, the market for education has grown considerably. With that growth has come a vast library of drumming books, which deal with just about every conceivable topic and style out there.

In this post, I’ll attempt to outline some of the books on various styles that I think are important and that should be in your library. It’s worth noting that list is by no means, definitive/exhaustive and contains nothing more than my own opinion, garnered through my experience of teaching/studies. Please feel free to investigate either all or none but please do investigate the wealth of knowledge that is available – you’ll be undoubtedly a better drummer for it.

 

ROCK

Ultimate Realistic Rock – Carmine Appice
One of the first books to really crack open and deliver a method for teaching Rock, Carmine Appice’s book continues to be a staple used to teach the style today – dealing with everything from basic rhythms to polyrhythms, linear phrasing, hi hat and double bass drumming exercises,shuffles and syncopation exercises. Well worth a look.

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The Roots Of Rock Drumming – Daniel Glass.
Whilst not a method book, this book provides a wonderful insight into the development of the style and more importantly WHY certain players played certain things. Some wonderful interviews with legends of the instrument.

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FUNK
Advanced Funk Studies – Rick Latham
Latham’s classic first book, Advanced Funk Studies, was named by Modern Drummer magazine as one of the 25 greatest drum books ever published. In it, he teaches essential hi-hat, funk, and fill patterns—with ideas taken from some of the most famous and proficient funk drummers in history. It’s also available in DVD form.

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Future Sounds – David Garibaldi
Tower of Power’s Garibaldi has always been revered as a funk pioneer and his books and videos are nothing short of awesome. He is a fantastic player and teacher and Future Sounds provides and insight into his unique style and his permutation ideas. The book is broken into chapters that deal with his ‘Two Sound Level’ concept. There are 15 Groove studies available and 17 Permutation studies that follow studies on Four-Bar Patterns, Groove Playing and Funk Drumming. A must for all funk fans. Below is a lessonon Permutations taken from his ‘Breaking The Code’ DVD which will highlight the concept explored in the book.

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Groove Alchemy – Stanton Moore
Described by Moore as a ‘Groove bootcamp’ it features a wide array of grooves and exercises, that Moore himself went through in order to develop his groove ability. Highlights include transcriptions of classic James Brown grooves, Led Zeppelin grooves and many more, with over 600 examples being outlined. Also available as a DVD.

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JAZZ

 

The Art of Bop Drumming/Beyond Bop Drumming – John Riley
These were originally written as one book which would have been a behemoth. They focus on the evolution of jazz drumming from Bebop onwards, with a really comprehensive breakdown of studies – everything from comping ideas, solo ideas, how to play the ride cymbal, how take phrases and orchestrate and develop the phrases through different subdivisions. It also includes a detailed and comprehensive listening list with a breakdown of various recordings and the features of the drummers and the band.

Advanced Techniques For The Modern Drummer – Jim Chapin
One of the original jazz books to be printed (1948). One of the reasons that the book has endured is it has very little text but hundreds of comping examples. It deals primarily with snare drum comping and snare and bass drum comping through both triplets and semi quavers. It pulls all the info together with solo exercises.

 

The Drummers Complete Vocabulary, as taught by Alan Dawson – John Ramsay
This is one of the most elaborate methods to ever be brought to the drumming pedagogy (yes I did just write that). It has come from Ramsay’s studies with Dawson whilst at Berkeley. The book is separated into 4 sections. One is the rudimental ritual – a detailed routine of all 40 rudiments plus around 4o or so more o top. It’s to be played over a samba bass drum pattern and with brushes in order for the student to develop finger control.
The next section deals wth Ted Reed’s Syncopation book – predominately the pages between 33-45. It takes the rhythms provided in these pages and shows different ways to comp them. Dawson had around over 40 different ways to play the exercises.
Section 3 deals with speed exercises for the hands and section 4 deals with soloing – using various linear exercises to be played whilst singing the standards over the top. An amazing, yet frustrating book.

 

Other
Rather than break these ones into styles, I’ll list them as other, simply because they may cross genre or they cover more specific things and don’t necessarily focus on a style.

 

Patterns Series – Gary Chaffee
These books, for some, are the paradigm of top end education. Chaffee is famed for teaching such guys as Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Smith, J.R. Robinson, Dave DiCenso, Jonathan Mover, Casey Scheurell, Joey Kramer and more.
His Patterns series of books are divided into 4 – Time Functioning Patterns, Sticking Patters, Rhythm And Meter Patterns and Technique Patterns. Each book has tremendous content from groove exercises to polyrhythm study to finger control study, linear grooves and fills and more and it’s impossible to really outline the depths of these books in a mere paragraph. Suffice to say that the systematic approach of the books makes a lot of sense and has a broad spectrum of application. A must for any serious student but by no means are they beginner books.

 

The New Breed – Gary Chester
Much like Gary Chaffee, Chester has taught a mass of wonder drummers such as Kenny Aronoff, Dave Weckl, Danny Gottlieb, Max Weinberg, Tico Torres and Lindy Morrison, out with his own celebrated session career. The New Breed focuses on a variety of things at once – independence, vocalisation of rhythms, reading, ostinato, and groove/time. Said by some to be on of the most difficult books around, Chester followed it up with the New Breed II

 

Master Studies – Joe Morello
Adapted from his love of Stick Control, Morello fleshed out those exercises into what is a veritable bible on hand technique practice. The book deals solely with the hands andhas been layed out with 7 sections – Accent studies, Buzz roll studies, Stroke combination studies, Control studies, Fill-in studies, Ostinato studies, and Flam studies. It’s an intense study but very, very worth it and short regular practice session would perhaps be the easiest way to tackle the material.

 

Stick Control – George L. Stone

Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer – Ted Reed
Voted second on Modern Drummer’s list of 25 Greatest Drum Books in 1993, Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer is one of the most versatile and practical works ever written for drums. Created exclusively to address syncopation, it has earned its place as a standard tool for teaching beginning drummers syncopation and strengthening reading skills. This book includes many accented eighths, dotted eighths and sixteenths, eighth-note triplets and sixteenth notes for extended solos. In addition, teachers can develop many of their own examples from it. As stated earlier, Alan Dawson had over 40 ways of playing the Syncopation exercises in the middle.

Reed followed the book up with Syncopation II which provided a few of these ideas, fully notated out for drumset.

 

Beginner/Playalong.

Groove Essentials 1/2.0 – Tommy Igoe

A great addition to the drum book library, the books feature 47/53 different grooves respectively that deal with just about every conceivable style that drummers are likely to come across/have to play. What’s more there are 2 playalong versions for each groove – slow and fast so that every ability level can work on said grooves. Each groove is also supplied with 2 variations, so that as you progress in ability, the grooves change and/or become more challenging. A must book for beginning styles.
The books are broken into sections, such as Rock, Funk, Hip – Hop, Jazz, Speciality/World and Odd Meter grooves and there are exstensive introduction sections to guide you through at the start of the book.

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A Fresh Approach To Drum Set – Mark Wessels, feat. Stanton Moore
A thorough approach to starting the drums, Mark Wessels has taken what he considers to be the iumportant builidng blocks in order to have a great working knowledge of playing drums. With over 41 playing alongs covering a variety of styles and grooves, the book is broken down into sections that have an accompanying track(s). In conjunction, he has filmed video lessons to work hand in hand with book, featuring New Orleans drum star Stanton Moore. The book can be used by beginners, intermediate and advanced players as the play along material can be used for a variety of different practices.

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As I said before, this list isn’t exhaustive and I encourage you to find books that work for you. I haven’t covered the feet really at all and there are some bass drum books worth looking at – Colin Bailey’s Bass Drum Control would be a great starting point.

Most newer books are usually accompanied by an online resource and/or DVD package which is always worth a look too, in order to re-affirm what you’re learning. Dive in and you never know what might inspire you!

The humble wedding gig. It is looked upon by different people in different ways. Some drummers loathe it and some drummers love it. A lot of people see it as uncreative and unsatisfying and some people see it as a great challenge. Where else would you get to emulate so many classic drummers, play classic drum grooves AND get paid for it?!

Personally I enjoy wedding gigs. Firstly, two people are having what is meant to be one of the happiest days of their lives and have asked you to be part of it and entertain their guests for a few hours.

Secondly, it’s usually a great hang out with good friends eating buffet food and cake. Thirdly and most importantly, for me, you get to play a bunch of drums.

Now I’m weird. I like playing for a long time. I relish the challenges. Ever played Led Zeppelin’s ìRock n Roll” after two and a bit hours of playing relentlessly? It’s a tough ask, especially as the groove, if played properly, is a roast! But I like that. I like having to de-tune my snare in between tunes to get a compressed, drum machine sound to play some of the modern pop tunes. It’s all good.

But these things aren’t the only part of the job. So I asked 10 or so of Glasgow’s busiest wedding band players for their input and advice on what they consider some of the most important aspects of playing these gigs, and what to know if you want to get started. I’ve split these into 6 sections, that whilst not definitive by any means, are a great starting point.

Groove

Grooving is important in every aspect of drumming with these gigs being no exception.

ìThink about the job you’ve been given. It’s to make people dance. This means that you’re going to do well if you can find an enjoyment in the disco beat and the pop/rock grooves. Neither your wedding guests or your fellow band mates really care about your chops.” (Martyn Hodge, Aurora).

As with any original band you might find yourself working with, the relationship with the bassist is paramount.

And spending some time in rehearsal building a solid foundation is worthwhile: ìKeep it solid with your bass player, work on phrasing with each other and get that rhythm section as tight as possible.” (Ross Findlay, Waterfront)

Part of the package of a good player, especially those who focus on groove, is the attention to detail and playing weddings can mean having to cover a base of different styles, attitudes and players. This attention to detail is an important aspect.

ìThe difference between Steve Gadd and Ringo playing a shuffle is massive. The difference between Ronnie Vannucci playing a rock beat and Charlie Watts playing the same rock beat is worlds apart and shouldn’t be approached the same on a gig.

ìOverlooking this aspect of the song will result in the ìfeel” of the song being wrong. At this point, it’s game over. If that’s not there then nothing else can be achieved.

ìGetting into as many players in the ìtop 40″ world and listening to what they do within that framework, understanding their ìvibe” and imitating them will give you a better idea of how certain songs should feel, how you should play them and ultimately will make the band sound and feel better.”

(Jamie McGrory, Replay)

Gear

Some people may not consider this as an important aspect, however I have had beginning students come to their first lesson and suggest that they were going to buy a £250 kit and start playing weddings. Suffice to say the student never returned for a second lesson.

Doing the job on tools that don’t stand up to being hit for 4 hours a night, 2-3 nights a week, 4 weeks a month is simply not professional. One doesn’t have to spend a lot of money (I WOULD suggest spending more than £250 though).

ìThere are so many wedding bands out there and it’s tough to make a mark in the wedding scene, so set yourself apart from others, pride yourself in having good gear, you don’t need to spend thousands on a kit to have a decent one.

ìI recently bought a Mapex Armory Series kit for less than £600.” (Ross Findlay, Waterfront).

The venue can dictate the amount of gear that you take too, as some of the spaces are small with the band having to put PA, bass and guitar amps in.

ìTake minimal gear. Ideally, a four piece set up with a few cymbals is more than enough, plus it doesn’t piss everyone else when trying to squeeze into small spaces!”

(David Calder, The Riffreshers)

ìAdvice that Jim Drummond gave me was: if you get booked to fill in with a band, bring sensible gear and make minimal fuss with it. No double pedals, no china cymbals, no drum racks.”

(Ewan Laing, Cruise).

With all the guys I spoke to, gear was a big factor. It shows a sense of professionalism is necessary in this regard. Joiners buy the best tools, Driving Instructors have decent, well looked after cars to teach in. For the most part, you’re a tradesperson so have good gear to work you trade on.

Attitude

This is a big deal when dealing with music in general. No one wants to play with or be in a van driving for hours with someone who’s negative or a pain in the ass or any of these things. I certainly don’t with other instrumentalists/singers.

This idea isn’t just related to your attitude to playing the music, but also just in general.

ìBe punctual and help with lifting gear (especially when depping). You would be surprised the amount of musicians who don’t get a second gig because of lateness and laziness.”

(David Calder, The Riffreshers)

Just how you conduct yourself as a person can be tantamount to how much you work.

ìGo into it with a good attitude, don’t just think ëit’s only a wedding band’. Make it one of the best wedding bands! Work hard at it and constantly work with your band mates to get your set as solid as possible.”

(Ross Findlay, Waterfront).

Ross’ advice serves as a reminder to me anyway of how hard you have to work sometimes. It’s not always just sitting down at the drums and playing. It’s making rehearsals count, learning the music beforehand so that the rehearsal is just plying through them and tightening them up. This makes everything more productive.

Volume

We play probably the loudest acoustic instrument around and can pretty much drown out everything that is not amplified. But that doesn’t mean we should.

Some gigs have limiters. Which means that above a certain volume, the power cuts out and everything goes off – so all guitar amps and PA. Which is a horrendous pain in the backside.

So how do we deal with it?

ìBe willing to play at any volume – don’t play LOUD all the time! I usually keep a few different weights of sticks in my bag to facilitate this.”

(Douglas MacFarlane, Ernest)

The singer of the band usually has the hardest time with volume. Firstly they need monitoring to hear themselves as their voice is going out the front, and the PA speakers can’t be put behind the band due to feedback issues from microphones.

So in order for the singer to pitch correctly they need to hear themselves with monitors. We don’t. We can pretty much hear ourselves acoustically. So we have to try and be responsible and be sensitive to the singer’s needs.

I can’t imagine it’s a nice experience to wake up after a gig and have problems speaking but you had to push your voice over a drum kit and guitar stack.

ìAlways accompany the vocalist/singer. If you can hear them, you’re playing at the right level. If you can’t – sit back till you can!”

(Gordy Turner, Daytura)

All singers will have a different threshold for volume so it’s probably sensible to ask on the gig.

Charts

A couple of the guys suggested using charts for a variety of reasons and I agree that they can be very useful.

ìFor guys starting out – get your reading on. It saves the pain of memorizing/learning an enormous amount of music. Even if it’s just the geography of the tune and especially the first dance, it can really help. This applies if you’re depping a lot too.

ìYou may get the set on the day of the gig if it’s an emergency so being able to throw a quick chart together can make all the difference!”

(Ian Hendry, Dawn Patrol)

A lot of bands will do different version of tunes so quick cheat sheet can help you. Plus you never know when it’ll come in handy elsewhere.

ìCharts can be useful when depping, but maybe just some short hand notes:

ìVerse – 8 bar funk

Chorus – disco groove – 16

Bridge – out

Chorus – in as above.”

(David Calder, The Riffreshers).

Songs

This is probably the most obvious yet sometimes the most overlooked part of the gig. The amount of instrumentalist deps that I’ve worked with that haven’t learned the music or hearing reports of people who have covered me that haven’t learned the songs is crazy.

ìLearn all the classics. Get your hands on a few set lists from established guys on the scene and learn the tunes inside out.”

(Allan James, Real Easy)

Usually set lists will contain the classics and some more modern tunes but if they don’t and you don’t know who is around on the scene, or where to meet them – use a wedding band agency.

These usually house plenty of media of bands playing and more importantly, their sets. There will be literally hundreds of songs on there so you’ll get an understanding of the popular repertoire.

Having a strong knowledge of repertoire is really important – you have no idea who is going to be in the room and what they want to dance to.

You might find that all your old classics are working and that’s what is getting people up, but you only know 6.

ëTailor your set to suit the crowd if need be.”

(Douglas MacFarlane, Ernest)

You could be depping and you don’t wanna be the guy who doesn’t know the tune if it gets called (trust me – I’ve been that guy!).

What have we learned?

So from these few things you can see there is a lot to think about. There was a lot of crossover from the drummers on a lot of the topics.

The big crossover points were:

• Don’t overplay and play what the song needs.
• Have decent gear.
• Don’t be an arse.

There is a decent living to be made playing weddings and it’s a great job. For the most part you’re in charge of yourself, you’re playing music and not serving someone’s dinner or pulling pints or anything else you may not want to do.

Approach it with a positive attitude, work hard on your set so you know the music, work hard on your craft so that you play it well and you’ll have lots of fun.