What do you use for muffling?

[Syncopated_1]

No muffling anywhere as I no longer play cheaper kits that have that nasty over-ring.

[Jules]

I think there are still people that don't know how to differentiate between sustain and over-ring, and there are dead drums because of it.

[Syncopated_1]

Also amazes me how many people do not truly know how to properly tension and fine tune high end kits. Anything mid range and up is easy to tune out the nasty.

[tcbetka]

Also amazes me how many people do not truly know how to properly tension and fine tune high end kits. Anything mid range and up is easy to tune out the nasty.

I think that older guys, who maybe started playing in the last century and didn't have all these "tune-bot" tools, find it easier to tune a set of drums by ear. I don't think the younger players "trust" their ears as much, to be honest. But when you've tuned a drum set literally thousands of times, it does seem to get a bit easier.

Warning: Long story coming...

I remember once, back in 1991 when I lived in Anchorage Alaska, I was helping a friend who had a little back-line company up there. Joe Satriani came to town, and Jonathan Mover was playing drums. Stu Hamm was on bass--so just a three-piece band. The rider included a double-kick set with a BUNCH of toms. Like 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, with two 22" kicks. My friend worked at FedEx as a ramp-rat (package handler) out at the airport, and I was a pilot up there then, so we sort of hit it off. The gig was on a Saturday evening but set-up was during the afternoon of course. As my friend had to work until like 4, I took all the drums down there in my pickup truck. (For reference, I'd been playing drums for well over 10 years at this point.)

So I go down to the venue with the drums around 1pm or so to meet the stage manager. It was my job to simply get the drums to the gig, and into the venue...and stacked on stage. JM's drum tech was then supposed to take it from there. However this particular tech, who was new to JM, was basically a guitar tech--and had no real idea how to tune drums. The drum kit we furnished for the gig was a GREAT set of black Yamaha Recording Custom shells, made in Japan. Just top-of-the-line stuff for the day. So I get them all out of their cases and take the cases back out to my truck, and just waited. Well along comes this "drum tech," and takes one look at the drums and says something like "F$*#!, there are WAY too many drums to tune!" So he proceeds to start changing the heads, which they had brought with them (along with JM's cymbals and kick pedals). An hour goes by and this guy is struggling. he simply CANNOT get the drums to tune to save his life. I mean, it was painful to watch. Then he starts complaining about how these drums suck because they don't tune like JM's Tama Artstar kit did. LOL!

At this point I just couldn't take it anymore, and told him he was full of shit! Those Yamaha RC kits were some of the easiest drums to tune that I'd ever come across: All shells in-round, perfect bearing edges, and shallow depths...so no excessive overtones. Just a joy to play, and to tune. Anyway, he takes exception to my comments, and says "Fine--then YOU tune them!" So I did. In 15 minutes I had those drums sounding like a million bucks. He was amazed, or at least he said he was. But a guitar tech, who is used to tuning electric guitarts with an electronic tuner, isn't trained to use their ears--and they're certainly not used to hearing drums, especially when there are so many drums and the tuning interval between drums is relatively small.

So the rest of the story is that after all of this, the backline PA/sound guy arrives at the venue, comes on stage and says "Why are there all these drums? I only brought enough mics for a 4-piece kit." LMAO! Thus we had to tear ALL of them down, and then JM walks back on stage (after having seen/heard the entire kit with all the drums), and he's PISSED that he now has to play a 4-piece. But after like 30 seconds, Joe Satriani walks over and asks what the problem is, and they talk about it for a minute, and JM says..."Fine, let's go with a 4-piece." So we did. And that guy played the ever-loving crap out of that kit. MAN...that kid could play the drums. That's the first time I ever saw a guy play with one foot what I could barely play with two. Just amazing foot technique! He was playing the early version of the DW nylon-strap kick pedal--the one without the baseplate, so he could fold them up and put them into his suitcase on the plane. It turned out to be a really great gig, and those guys were fantastic to hang with.

Funny ending to the story: On the way up to Alaska, my wife and I met an Army dude who was getting transferred to the Army post up there, just north of Anchorage. The gas stations of the day were few and far between on the Al-Can highway, so everybody stopped at pretty much every gas station--so we'd see him every time we stopped. So we just started caravaning with him, for safety. After we all got there, his wife and young daughter flew in and we all became friends. Well he was a Joe Satriani FREAK, and loved the guy. So when I told him I was doing this, he was begging to come along and help--so I said sure. Well, right after their sound check with the 4-piece kit, the stage manager announces that catering was about to close things down, so anyone that wanted dinner should get down there. It was after 5pm by now, so I asked if my friend and I could go down and eat. Sure, he says. I hadn't eaten since breakfar, so I asked my friend Kevin if he was hungry--but he declined to go down, because he wanted to hang by the stage and wait for Joe Satriani who had left the stage area by this point. Cool, I said...and went down to eat.

So I get down to the dining area, and there are like 8 round tables with 6-8 chairs each. Every table was empty, except for one...and there sat Jonathan Mover and one Joe Satriani! I went and grabbed a bunch of food and went to sit down at a separate table--and just then Joe Satriani says "Hey man, come over here and eat with us." Cool! So I did, and we spent about 45 minutes talking about being a bush pilot in Alaska, music, and whatever other things that came up. Jonathan Mover was a very quiet dude--nothing like his persona on the kit. There he was a freakin' animal, but to talk to him he was very soft-spoken and just didn't say much. But Joe was a super chill dude for who he was at the time. It was a truly great hang.

Finally to conclude the story, we finish eating and I go back upstairs to the stage, and Kevin is still there. "Dude, you should have come to eat...I had dinner with Joe Satriani!" I said. He called me about every name in the book for not coming back to get him, lol... But he blew it and I never let him forget it. Point is: Tuning that drumkit got me some credibility with those guys, starting with the tour/stage manager--and being willing to do whatever it took to make the gig successful for them got me a change to have dinner with two amazing musicians.

True story.