(Photo of Michael Beauclerc from Canadian Drumline Association)
Michael Beauclerc has established a diverse and exciting career as a professional drummer, percussionist, composer, and author in Canada. He is also a busy marching percussion clinician for Yamaha Canada, having performed over 140 clinics from coast to coast as part of the "Start the Groove" campaign. Currently, Michael is the percussion head of the St. Michael's College School Drumline in Toronto, and a consultant and composer for several additional scholastic drumlines in Ontario. His books “The Mad Practice Pad” and “Developing Modern Drumlines” have become the literal foundations for Canadian drumlines and marching percussion instructors. For more information or to contact Michael, please visit www.michaelbeauclerc.com (from http://ca.yamaha.com/en)
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I had been following the trajectory of Mad Pads for a couple of years, when I decided to take a closer look at their web site.
The pad’s design and construction, though deceptively simple, reflect numerous decisions that had to be made along the way in order to end up with what Michael calls, “just a really nice pad.”
I reached out through the contact form at the site to ask a few questions about the design, construction and proper care of Mad Pads, and was pleasantly surprised when only a few days later, Michael replied in an email with an offer of a live video chat. That chat, conducted online between our respective homes in Toronto and Portland, became this interview.
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BH: With so many pads already on the market, what inspired you to make and sell your own design?
MB: I grew up playing the old RealFeel tan rubber pads, so I was used to that feel and liked it. I still have my old RF pad around here — I played it so much that I sort of wore out the rubber! During the pandemic, I was looking around for things to do while the schools were closed and I couldn’t teach in person.
I had worn out my old Yamaha tenor pad, which I believe had actually been made for them by Xymox. I asked them and my other drum sponsors if they could make me a new one, and they all said no. The pandemic was creating problems everywhere with access to materials and slowdowns in production.
(Photo: Mad Pads Tenor pad.)
I’d already entered the instructional book market with a couple of self-published books. At one point, I’d even managed to get distribution, but the company tanked and I was back to doing things on my own. I have some woodworking knowledge — I’d spent time on a family farm and so I began experimenting with making pads. I wanted a solid pad that was made of quality materials sourced as locally as possible, that would stand up to the demands of the daily player. As a tenor player, I found that modern tenor pads were terribly expensive but didn’t always conform to the right standard and shape to provide the player with a good practice surface. Also, in Canada most schools march with the smaller tenors, so I wanted a pad that would approximate that size, instead of the larger tenor pads commonly found among US-based manufacturers.
I started by making pads at home, and eventually transitioned to making them on my uncle’s farm outside of Toronto. He was a custom kitchen designer and builder, and had all the tools available.
When schools began opening up again and I returned to teaching, I began showing my pads to others, and began taking orders for small runs. Then, I started taking larger group orders for schools. (If you check my Instagram page, you’ll see in the early days Mad Pads could be made in any color, and group orders in a school’s colors was a big part of the business in the early days.) I began with tenor pads, then started making snare pads as well.
I experimented with different materials for the base, including MDF and Baltic Birch.
Regular MDF is nasty stuff, filled with chemicals. It’s also cheaper, which is why many companies producing thousands of pads use it. Baltic Birch is amazing, fabulous stuff to work with, but it was so expensive that I couldn’t really sell enough pads to make it worthwhile, even on a small scale. Finally, I found a Premium MDF which uses far fewer chemicals and is more sustainably produced - and I was able to find a source that wasn’t located overseas. It’s more expensive than regular MDF and less costly than birch, and works well for my purposes.
[Ed. note: I researched "Premium MDF" at multiple sites and was unable to find a clear, concise explanation that matched Michael's assessment. Georgia-Pacific, a company my family has some historic connection to, provides a short, non-technical explanation of what Premium MDF is. G-P's site includes the statement that [theirs, at least] is made using NAF, or No Added Formaldehyde, resin. If that's true, then it's safer than regular MDF. Unfortunately, I have no way to test that.
Also, remember that in my earlier post about MDF, nearly every living thing emits a tiny amount of the stuff, so determining how much less is a good amount less will probably be imprecise and even subjective for the layman. If you have connections to the wood products industry, feel free to dive deeper.]
(MB, continued:) The gum rubber is sourced from South America — not local but probably as close as I can find in that respect — and it’s processed and distributed by a Canadian facility that's locally owned and operated.
After the first quantity orders were sent out and more people saw and tried out the pads, demand went up. It got to the point where I would teach, then drive out to my aunt and uncle’s farm and work in the shop and then go back to town and resume teaching. I was cutting rubber rounds by hand using tin snips, and painting and gluing each pad myself. It took a lot of my time and energy to do everything. As schools opened up and my teaching schedule approached what it had been pre-lockdown, it became harder to sustain a good time balance. At some point, I was cutting wood for pads in the barn while my aunt’s horse strolled past the window and I realized that I could not keep going this way. So I found a local woodworker who lives about an hour from me, and he was willing to take on the cutting of the bases in larger quantities for me. Then I found another fellow an hour in another direction from me who could machine cut the rubber (and also supply and cut) the foam base material in greater quantities. Finally, I have a student who lives not far from the woodworker, so when he comes for his lesson he stops there first to pick up the next batch of prepared pad bases, and delivers them to my house.
(Photo: Mad Pads snare pad)
BH: There are so many different ways and materials out there with which you can make a practice pad. Why gum rubber?
MB: I like the feel of gum rubber. And so many of the cheaper pads are made with some kind of neoprene, which can be dyed any color, is made overseas and is chemically just gross for the environment and your health. Plus there are a million pads now that basically come from Kerplastikan [Ed. — Michael's word, not mine] and they’re not even that good. My goal is simply to make a really nice pad, and by keeping it simple and as sustainably sourced as possible I think I’ve achieved that.
BH: Tell me about your new Cicada pad. It’s a pad with an approximation of a snare drum sound. In the video on your site, there is no view of the underside of the pad. Why is that?
MB: I spent a lot of time experimenting with various sizes and thicknesses of metal plates and the size and depth of the recessed area for the snare beads until I hit upon something I liked.**
Then, I decided that I wanted that mechanism to be non-alterable by a student. So instead of nuts that could be fiddled with, I covered the entire metal panel with foam and the Mad Pads logo sticker, essentially sealing the mechanism from adaptation.
An interesting note: When I went to buy the ball bearings for the mechanism, in Canada you need to be walked to the locked compartment where those things are stored, because they’re considered a weapon. (In Canada, guns are for hunting. We see police officers carrying guns and it gives us pause, you know, because openly carrying a gun just isn’t done here.)
BH: did you experiment with different sizes of ball bearing?
MB: No, I didn’t. I used what was readily available and found that it worked well.
BH: I noticed that your pad has three full indentations for the arms of a snare stand to rest in so the pad will stay put in the stand. You also have a decal on one side of the base and you’ve positioned it quite intentionally. Tell me more about that.
MB: When students put their pad into a snare stand, they tend to point one arm away from them and have the remaining two arms pointing towards them, but those two arms line up with where their wrists and sticks would go, interfering with the strokes. I wanted to make the indentations for the stand really obvious, and provide a firmer grip for the pad. But I also wanted to educate students that they should aim one arm towards themselves, instead of away from themselves. The decal should be located between the two arms that face away from the student. It’s a visual aid.
BH: What’s coming up for you, besides a busy teaching and performance season?
MB: In the past, I relied more often upon others to create a great deal of my digital content. Now that I no longer have to make every pad from scratch I can devote more time to creating more of my own digital content, including instructional content based on material in my books. I’m also looking to expand the marketing and distribution of my books. Now that things are opened back up, I look forward to doing a lot more teaching and performing, while continuing to improve Mad Pads where and when appropriate.
BH: Last question — what’s the best way to care for a gum rubber practice pad?
MB: With each Mad Pad there’s a little care-and-feeding sheet that explains how easy it is to make the pad last longer. First and foremost, don’t leave it out in the sun! Ultraviolet rays are the single most damaging thing for gum rubber, so keep it away from the windows and out of direct sunlight as much as possible. And if you spill something, wipe it up with a damp cloth and let dry — again, out of direct sunlight.
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[NOTE** While he didn’t say it directly, Michael alluded to the fact that his design for the snare sound is one of many adapted from the original design, which was first patented by Kevin M. Heuerman (founder of Xymox) in May 2000. That patent (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6239340B1/en) expired in 2020 and has never been renewed, freeing other makers to copy and/or improve upon the design as they see fit. Mad Pads isn’t the first company to adapt the design, and I doubt they’ll be the last.]
Mad Pads can be found online at https://madpracticepads.com/
US shoppers: Remember that all prices are listed in Canadian dollars, so don’t freak out. The regular Mad Pad costs $90 CA, which this week translates to roughly $66 US.
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Coming soon: A review of the Mad Pad here on the Drumlove blog.
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