I picked up this pair of practice pads a couple of weeks ago in an online sale.
I was able to research the patent and the maker thanks to Google Patents, and from there I located the inventor, Denny R. Dennis, through Facebook. I asked if he’d mind talking a little bit about his invention, and he gave me a phone number so we could chat.
Denny is a longtime drummer based in Southern California, and is the father of Ty Dennis, who has enjoyed his own top-drawer career. (“Be sure you look up my son,” Denny told me. Very sweet.)
Denny developed these pads in order to provide the drummer with a way to practice drumming more melodically, by providing pads with different pitches. Each pad is made from maple plywood, and has a thin rubber playing surface and thin metal rim on top. On the bottom of each pad are three “feet” with Velcro pads, allowing the pad to rest on a specially prepared stand. There should be small pieces of rubber on the bottom layers of Velcro, but my pads did not have these. (I may add my own later.)
The rubber provides additional stack height to give the pad some space for greater resonance, because resonance is the point with differently-pitched pads.
The pads are attractively finished, and according to Denny they came in multiple sizes to approximate the different drum sizes of a drum kit.
Mine are both 12” across, with a playing surface of just under 9”. Denny originally designed the pads in sizes ranging from 12” to 18” and even used the largest as a bass drum pad with a pedal affixed.
The rubber playing surface is very thin, perhaps only 1 or 2 millimeters thick, but is glued to the wood and gives off a surprising amount of resonant tone.
The narrow metal rim is there to provide a place to practice rimshots, though the very narrow and low-profile dimensions don’t provide a truly accurate dimension for this purpose. Still, they do work and I was able to get a clean rimshot sound. (These pads are best used with concert or jazz sticks. Heavy marching sticks could damage them.)
Denny told me that he came up with the idea in 2009 or so, and partnered with another fellow to bring the pads to market. They weren’t on the market for very long due to “difficulties” between the business partners, and by the mid 2010s they were no longer being produced or sold anywhere.
Their short history makes these already rare pads even rarer.
Denny’s inspiration was to promote more melodic practice and drumming, adding to the language of drumming by expanding the aural palette. “Language is a kind of rhythm,” he told me, “and when you add more tones you add more possibilities to the available vocabulary.” Denny’s years as a teacher were evident in his choice of words and his enthusiasm, and I found it refreshing to talk with him about his passion.
I don’t know how many Pro Pads are out there today. I purchased mine as a pair, and didn’t realize they were different thicknesses and tones until I opened the package and set them up. They’re interesting and kind of fun and I’m glad to have come across them.
It has long been a dream of mine to get some drummers together and host a Pad Party -- a get-together in some large back room of a pub or similar, where rudimental drummers can hang out, chop on some sprees and solos and whatever, and maybe enjoy it enough that they might want to do it again.
It has been difficult for me to attract drummers who already know how to play.
During Covid, I held a couple of Pad Parties outside at a sheltered picnic table, and put out the word online. The most I had was four people, and that was at the beginning of the Honk! summer season when making music was on everyone's mind. However. I found that none of the Honk! drummers could play a roll or actually read music. So I spent the time teaching rather than jamming.
I taught music for decades. It was fun while I did it, but I'm older and more tired now, and I'd prefer not to teach. I really just want to get some folks together who already know how to play a passable roll and maybe read a little.
That's a tough thing to make happen in a hard lefty town like Portland.
There ARE drum groups here.
There are at least a couple of Brazilian drum groups, and they are very performance focused and very physically active, perhaps too much so for me. It's also not rudimental drumming, which is so near and dear to my heart.
There's the Last Regiment (see previous post), but they don't play actual rudiments, they pound the hell out of the drums, and they play the same ten or twelve street beats the leader learned years ago in high school. They and their audiences have fun, but it's not musically satisfying to me and may actually be dangerous for my hands.
There's a drum corps based in Milwaukie, which has a youth arm and an all-ages arm, and they are focused on growing enough to enter the SoundSport category in DCI, which means weekly practices and touring and stuff. Milwaukie is a serious schlep from where I live (90 minutes to two hours each way on transit, depending on the connections), and more intense than I'd like to be at this point.
There are a few Honk! ensembles. I played with one for three years, until my health got worse and I couldn't keep up. Also, the emphasis with Honk! bands seems to be hard left activism that includes protests and I'm pretty done with that (mostly for health reasons). I know that sounds weird. But honestly, I just want to meet up once or twice a month with some folks to chop. I'm looking for reasons to get out of the house without completely taxing my body, and I'm tired of drumming alone all the time.
I may try again to throw another Pad Party, and see who shows up. After High Holidays, so later October at the soonest.
Stay tuned.
(below: Crazy Army, no repeats, on a 15" marching snare drum that I occasionally regret having sold. This is the stuff I love to play, and I cannot find anyone else locally who loves it.)
Here in Portland, there’s a drum corps that has been entertaining folks since the 1990s.
The Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers (LRSD) consists of men and women who play a combination of snare drums, traditional [single] tenor drums, bass drums and cymbals.
Their web site explains that they were founded by a fellow who grew up in Long Beach, California, and after he moved to Portland he decided he wanted to recreate the drum line of his school days.
The style of drumming is called “Syncopated,” and was developed by a school band director in Long Beach in the 1960s. During its heyday, Syncopated Drumming was popular in Long Beach, with several schools assembling drum corps to compete against each other in local parades.
Its popularity did not extend very far outside of Long Beach, back then or today.
During the 1990s and 2000s, a handful of alumni groups were in existence and mostly based in or near Long Beach. At the same time, LRSD was beginning to get noticed in the Portland area and a little beyond, thanks to the hard marketing and instructional work of its founder.
Ultimately, the Portland group would make its way to Long Beach, sort of like going back to the mothership, where it would perform alongside the remaining alumni groups to enthusiastic applause.
Today, this style of “Syncopated” drumming is performed almost exclusively by the LRSD. The Long Beach-based groups had mostly folded just before or during the pandemic. There may be a new alumni group in Long Beach, but it’s small. And women do not play any of the instruments there except cymbals. There is a prevailing attitude by the old guard that the overt physical demands of this kind of drumming are too much for women to handle. (Also remember that in the 1960s, when most of these guys were in middle school, it was incredibly rare to see a woman marching anywhere in a drum line. Old attitudes die hard. And so do old drummers.)
More recently, the founder of LRSD has made successful inroads into the public schools, promoting and teaching this style at any school where he will be welcomed as a volunteer coach. Considering how little arts funding there is in Portland Public Schools these days, some schools are grateful for his work and today there’s a tiny Syncopated Drumline at at least one Portland high school.
I want to be totally stoked about this.
At its best, it gets people excited and happy, and make kids think about learning a musical instrument in school.
Unfortunately, the “style” involved here has no basis in actual Rudimental drumming. None.
If you have studied Rudimental drumming, you know that no small amount of technical study and practice is involved in order to learn and master the twenty-six original rudiments (as codified by the National Association of Rudimental Drummers in 1933. The Percussive Arts Society later expanded this list to forty official rudiments).
Syncopated drumming, if you go by these videos, does not utilize the rudiments. Nor does it emphasize the technical or visual uniformity that is a hallmark of Rudimental drumming. It approximates the traditional grip, but the volume required in this style destroys hands.
Check out this photo. The drummer has taped hands, in order to either facilitate a stronger grip or possibly to provide relief from the strain that may well come from drumming this way for a lengthy period of time.
The bass drummer, above, is putting on heavy cowhide work gloves, in order to better grip the bass drum mallets. That’s because when he plays loud, he’s pulling the mallet two feet away from the drum head in order to achieve the desired volume. A modern, Rudimental drum line doesn’t need to hit the head from that far away.
Note how low the drums are hanging, with the leg rests positioned just above the knee.
Also note that most of the snare drummers are holding their sticks with the tips facing away from the head, presumably to get a bigger, fatter sound from the drums, which are usually older, 15” snares and tenors.
(I learned how to March using a drum on a sling and leg rest. My drum never hung this low. My leg rest was positioned in the middle of the thigh, and marching with it was pretty straightforward. I cannot imagine trying to march with my drum hanging this low.)
Here’s an example of the Long Beach style of “Syncopated” drumming, as demonstrated in this retrospective video that includes a couple shots of LRSD from Portland. As you can see and hear, while there’s certainly some syncopation here, there’s not a single legitimate rudiment being played other than single strokes played at varying volumes.
See, this is where I start to struggle a little with “Syncopated” style.
If this guy, in the name of encouraging kids to play drums, is successfully making inroads into schools and getting kids to engage with drumming this way, he’s potentially doing the students, and proper Rudimental drumming, a disservice. Sure, some of these kids may never want to play any other way, and/or may never play drums after high school; but if this is how they learn to play and they want to lay anywhere else — in a college or community band, in an orchestra or a jazz trio — they will have a lot of bad habits to unlearn before they can learn how to play rudiments from someone else, somewhere else. I’m still believe — and a ton of drum teachers will agree — that the rudiments can be applied in all kinds of musical settings and should continue to be a big part of the foundation of drum instruction. Introducing kids to this kind of drumming is cutting them off at the knees.
On the other hand, there are growing noises about just how boring the rudiments are, and how fewer kids want to get that technically geeky, and short attention spans and blah blah blah. And maybe there’s some truth to that. But there are still thousands of students every school year who take the time to learn and master the rudiments on their way to learning how to play snare drum, drumkit and classical percussion.
If I had not been a music educator for thirty five years, I might not care as much. But I was, and I do.
And I am personally glad that this “style” of drumming hasn’t caught on in many places.
Because if I had to choose between my kid learning this:
And this:
I’d pick the one that’s cleaner and more musical.
Especially if I have a kid who wants to play drums in any capacity beyond high school.
If you grew up playing Long Beach style and you want to call me a snob, that’s fine. I can handle it.
I went to a high school with a merely decent concert band and a horrible marching band, and I still managed to learn proper drum technique. I played a different marching instrument every year — single tenor, cymbals, snare and tritoms (class of 1981) — and I took all of that knowledge and technique with me when I played after high school.
I would want no less for my own child, and I don’t apologize for that.
Why am I writing about this now? Honestly, because I would really like to find some rudimentally trained drummers to play with recreationally, say once a month with a performance or three during the summer. And there just isn’t anything locally to satisfy my desires. There’s a small drum and bugle corp outfit in Milwaukie, OR that’s too far from where I live for me to get there regularly, and there are a few Honk! bands I’ve sat in with, one of whom I played with for the better part of three years. I sat in with the former, where none of the other drummers had any training at all (and most didn’t care if they got to play on two and four). I was the only snare drummer in the latter, and when they wanted to March in more protests and longer parades I couldn’t keep up with them. I also got tired of being the only drummer, with no one else on the horizon. (I like second-line, but it’s not something I’m burning to play.)
Every now and then, while I sit at home and chop on a pad (or, rarely, a drum) and wonder what it wou”d be like to find some other drummers who would want to play together strictly for pleasure. It’s not terribly likely to happen here in Portland, especially when LRSD a is such a draw for the folks who never got exposed to more technical marching percussion. So I admit I’m sometimes a little sad that this kind of drumming is attracting more interest than traditional, technically based Rudimental drumming.
I’m on a particular place on the Timeline, and the likelihood of finding what I want is pretty darned low. So I’ll keep drumming on my own until I can’t anymore, and be grateful for what I have.
Wandered over to a drum corps subreddit early this morning, where I read a post from a young man. Seventeen years old, wants to try out for the Cavaliers (DCI’s last all-male corps). Identifies as a trans man, a full year past his transition. Wants to know if his status will be an issue, medically or socially.
Responses pour in from current and recently former members of the corps, and even from a staffer. All are welcoming, without reservation: Bring your best stuff, they tell him, work hard during audition camp, and be sure you tell medical staff if there’s anything you need. We welcome male and male-identifying members. It’s all good.
I am welling up as I read all of this, remembering how and why I was shown the door from organized drum corps (lesbians, especially in the more “male” spheres of the activity, were simply not accepted in the same way and on the same terms as gay men back then).
Sad that I could not have marched in such an atmosphere, and SO damned happy that this young man gets to do so now.
Change is Everything, if we only allow it to happen.
I found this tiny cutting board in two pieces at the back of a kitchen drawer. It's such a ridiculous size for cutting cheese -- roughly 4 x 6" -- that I decided to repair it and turn it into a pocket pad.
I roughed up the edges of the two pieces, applied wood glue and rubber band clamps and let dry. Then I added top and bottom surfaces. I assumed that the rubber would add just enough weight to keep the pad from hopping around too much with 2B sticks, which is as much as you want to use on a pad this size.
It works.
And Sweetie won't miss such a ridiculous cutting board.
