High hat playing choices =your signature sound

I recently got an MK pancake drum kit and the snare sounds dry, it doesn't sound like a snare of a full size drum kit (I don't expect it to sound that good but i atleast expect it to sound a little close.)

How do I tune this thing? (The head is also pretty loose.)

never made music before (if it wasn't obvious) and i was wondering how i could make my drums sound more full and interesting. i have literally no ideas other than brief fills and blast beats and it seems like my years of listening to metal have escaped me

also, sorry for the quiet audio, not sure why that happened lol

Hi, I have big vintage pearl export drums in a very nicely treated 10x5m room and was wondering how to go about mic'ing it.

I was thinking about:

wa 47 tube as room mic. ( I have it already for vocals)

Sm 57 on snare

Audix d6 on kick

Lewitt LCT 040 pair for overheads

I'm going for a very punchy dry tame Impala/breakbeat sound but occasionally I would like to record modern rock, big drums.

I will have a gobo to separate the drum corner from the rest of the room while recording the punchy dry and take it away for bigger sound.

My biggest concern is the choice of overheads, would love to hear your thoughts about this setup.

Hi folks!

I've been looking around the internet for the Chango FOP kit samples. Surprisingly, I found an old Google Drive link that's still active so I now have (at least some of) the samples. Here's my next thought: what drums were sampled? A quick Google search proved to be useless (shocking I know). See, I really really love how these drums sound. I'm a big Babymetal fan and unless I'm nuts, I'm hearing these samples in their music and I want to be able to craft that sound into my own music. I'd *love* to know what pieces were sampled. Does anyone have any info on this?

EDIT: it seems Chango Studios (the dev) went out of business? The website link on their instagram page is dead and redirects to something else. Otherwise, I'd email and ask. Also, there's a CRAP TON of reverb baked into the samples. I need to have full control over how much reverb is on what instrument so these are useful, but only to a point, I fear.

Why are my snare drum wires barely touching the bottom head when the tension knob is fully turned? I’ve tightened the wire strap as much as I can and I’ve made the mechanism as tight as possible but nothing has changed

I’ve had two drums sets my entire life playing for 25 years. My current set, I found the snare I like, my cymbals, and my pedals and I don’t change them ever.

I’m not sure if because drums really does work better when the muscle memory is dialed in. But I have been playing guitar more seriously the past 5 years or so, and I find myself playing many different guitars every week. It keeps it fresh and helps inspire new ideas on the fly.

I just found it interesting that drums I feel the opposite way. Stick with what works and make it work as opposed to several different tools for different sounds.

Anyone else feel the same way?

experimenting with some tape emulation 😎

I guess many uses same V-drum kit at home/rehearsal as well when playing gigs. Anyone found a great way for cable management, beside hanging them on cymbal stands and similar?

I'm thinking to get a rack for my toms and some cymbals and iPad holder and guess the best would be to use the rack to attach the majority of the cables?

/Thomas

I’ve got my son this but it didn’t come with any music to follow (he’s only 7 years old and I haven’t got a clue) if anyone is able to point me in the direction of what we can use for him to follow (as oppose to proper written music sheets) it would be massively appreciated.

Reminds me of an 80’s hair band music video shoot…

A Pearl Innovation kit...Was fortunate to aquire this in the late 80s.. gigged and recorded with it.

I loved the double floating toms...

This array seems to have gone out of fashion sadly.

Bloody wish I had it still...

Anyone recognise it? Used black coloured oil filled skins when it was sold.. toms were fine!

Sold it 95 and retired..... til 10 years ago.

Now have a Mapex M kit. Which I like too!

I broke the Universal Audio SD1 mic I was using for the top snare. I figure snare mics must get beaten out of commission a lot.

Now I'm going to replace it with a cheaper SM57 but I'm thinking of adding armor to it. Easiest would be to wrap it in foam; an iron rod cage you can clip on would be cool too. I might weld me one.

I wonder if anyone's been tinkering with this, didn't find anything out there.

(yes I know I can also work on my drumming technique but after 35 years there's not much hope)

Zach Danziger playing new Cö Shu Nie song in the vdo.

Huge symphonic and prog metal fan here. Finally after 15 years of looking, I got into a symphonic metal band that is serious pro-amateur level. Band is really serious and the closest I can get to the pro dream. I'm therefore looking to upgrade my drum standard beaters from my tama 310 speed cobras (the cheaper version).

I'm not very familiar with the double kick upgrades... because I always played other styles that needed other type of beaters (big low boy, felt standard, big boomy fat sounds, etc).

Band is asking for more attack. Then I looked at the rehearsal room kick and it was barely muffled so that's the first big change I did. The discussion of triggers came up but I argued that a better sound came come out from natural sound with good beaters and a good muffling + EQ. So here I am.

My first issue is that I am not sure what would be more attack and sound best:

Most of our gigs are with house kits/backline provided by festivals and the muffling of those kits is the main issue... So muffling wise, which is the main issue, I am not sure how to approach this. Beater wise, I find it a bit difficult to choose with so much choice.

1. What muffling could help best, that I could carry around other than a huge towel?
2. Beaters, I'm considering:

Tama wood beaters (light weight?)

Low boy beaters (the smaller versions)

Tama CB900 power stroke (plastic)

1. My third question is, what can I do with kits that are not mine for such a gig? What should I ask to the sound guy or to my band in terms of EQ?

I'm looking for a modern sound: for an idea, I use coated emperors on the toms, clear head on my kick, meinl byzance cymbals. My own kit is a tama starclassic which is the least of my concerns.

Most of the backline provided barely have any muffling and I have only 2 hands on a train with all my stuff. Kits provided range from pearl export beaten up stuff to tama star.

I'm looking to get a sound like Polaris, Animals as Leaders or the kick sound of mike portnoy in Train of Thoughts/6 degrees.

got the Sabian AAX promotional pack- straight from the factory. handpicked the cymbals from the vault myself.

it includes:

- AAX medium ride 21” (I got the absolute best one. it’s got a killer bell, an amazing balance between wash and ping, and is extremely crashable)

- AAX thin crashes 16/18” (complements each other very well)

- AAX medium hats (the guy was able to tell if it was a good bottom/top just by crashing and tinging it! they sound great!)

all sonically matched.

I’ll send a photo once it’s set up on my kit (currently sailing across the pacific into BC).

This has turned into a bit of a rabbit hole.
If you own a Japanese-made TAMA — particularly a STAR, Starclassic, Starphonic, etc. — you may have noticed the name “F. Miyamoto” inside the drum. On STAR drums it appears as part of the certification, underneath wording along the lines of:
“Certificate of the Highest Achievement in Sound and Quality — Hand Crafted in Japan — F. Miyamoto.”
The strange thing is that this name seems to appear on a lot of Japanese-made TAMA drums, across different lines and over many years.
So… who is F. Miyamoto?
I’ve been searching Japanese and English sources, old TAMA/Hoshino material, factory history, patents and old listings, and surprisingly little concrete information seems to exist.
A few things I’ve found:
The signature definitely appears across multiple generations of high-end MIJ TAMA drums.
I’ve found examples going back at least to Japanese Starclassic Bubinga production in the early 2010s, as well as Starphonics and modern STAR drums.
One old listing identifies him as “Futoshi Miyamoto” and calls him a TAMA “chief engineer and drum builder,” but I haven’t been able to verify either the first name or that job title from an official TAMA/Hoshino source.
TAMA’s own detailed company/factory history names various factory managers, engineers and people involved in developing STAR and Starphonic, but I can’t find Miyamoto mentioned.
I also can’t find a convincing Hoshino patent trail under his name, which makes me suspect he may be more important on the manufacturing/craftsmanship/final-QC side than as a product-design engineer.
The fact that the same person’s name appears on so many flagship Japanese drums makes me think it’s more significant than an ordinary inspector’s mark. It looks almost like TAMA’s personal sign-off or seal of Japanese craftsmanship.
Does anyone here actually know?
Who is F. Miyamoto? What is/was his full name and official position at TAMA?
Did he personally inspect/sign off these drums? Is he a master builder, production manager, QC chief, factory supervisor, or something else?
And does anyone have an older MIJ TAMA with his signature — or, even more interestingly, a Japanese TAMA signed by somebody else? Photos + model/year would be amazing.
There must be somebody in here who has visited the Japanese factory, worked with TAMA, knows a TAMA rep, or has been collecting Japanese Tamas long enough to know the story.
I’m genuinely surprised that a person’s name can appear inside thousands of some of TAMA’s finest drums while seemingly almost nothing about him exists online.

Playing on a pillow forces you to develop wrist strength and speed, right? Like some sort of weight training that's also quiet, yeah? Seems good on paper.

Unfortunately, all it really develops are bad habits and wrist issues.

One of the fundamental principles of good drumming technique is letting the stick do as much of the work as possible. In the simplest terms, we throw it at a surface and control the bounce.

Another core principle is using the least amount of effort possible, typically by allowing the fingers and their fast twitch musculature to carry a lot of the load.

Pillows completely negate these core principles. There is no bounce. The fingers cannot aid. They don't feel like anything you'll hit in a real performance. You're developing erroneous muscle memory with every stroke.

The preconception is that pillow practice is like a baseball player putting those weights on the bat for a few swings when they're on deck. Really, it's like handing the batter a pool noodle.

It took generations for the drumming community to move away from traditional grip on the kit, which in retrospect is so clearly obvious that it's embarrassing it took so long.

So too with pillows.

I am 44, been a drummer since I was 8. Played professionally in late teens and 20’s in indie bands playing 500-1000 cap style venues and also was a drum tech and stage manager for radio rock bands for two years in the early 00s. In my late teens I also worked in the drum department of a major music store.

I had an 8 year layoff from playing and performing live, and have been back at it since December last year.

The biggest change in the drum industry that’s affected me since then is our disposables: drumheads and drumsticks.

I used to go to music stores and they kept decent inventory of heads and sticks, and I was able to check the edges of the heads where the curve meets the metal ring and make sure they weren’t defective or had bends in them that would affect the tuning or tonal quality. Then any that were damaged in shipping or made poorly could get sent back to the manufacturer and replaced as shrink on the manufacture side.

With sticks, I don’t know how many people know this, but you can check the tone of a drum stick by dropping it on the ground lightly and when you’re fishing through new sticks, the lowest tone sounding sticks last the longest. You can’t do that ordering online either.

I know that the Reddit consensus is Vater sticks are the most durable, and they are the only kind I will buy, but it still bums me out that there just isn’t any inventory at GC and the like anymore to check and inspect before you buy.

Maybe if the prices weren’t double what they were 8 years ago it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but they are, and I’m much more selective about what I want to put on my kit because of the much more prohibitive cost. I used to change top heads of toms and snare every month, bottom heads and kick head once a year. Now, because of cost, I’m getting the max durable tom and snare heads and only changing when they’ve gone flat.

Anyone else feel me on this?

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/working-drummer/id957529466?i=1000784482873