The beginning of the end of big-name practice pads? I’m sort of ready for that.

I am winding down my practice pad collection, probably for good.

I’ve been pondering this step for a long time. I’ve made a few halfhearted tries in the last few years. But something has changed, in me and in the world around me, and I find myself in a new place that I am finally beginning to recognize.

The fact is that I’m preparing to enter a new phase of my life, one which likely does not involve teaching or drumming professionally and one which may not even involve much drumming in public for the foreseeable future.

Since the pandemic and its related events turned my life upside-down, I’ve been floundering. Getting far enough past Long Covid simply to function like a person again took over two years, and residual issues have lingered long enough to force me into medical retirement.

I’ve struggled to find my bearings since I began to improve; not knowing where or how to be useful, not able to promise a regular schedule or a regular level of energy while I’ve dealt with various medical issues, and feeling really lost.

Last week, a local All-Age drum corps invited me to join them in the pit playing mallet percussion. Playing in a drum corps pit would require me to manage not just playing mallet instruments, but also moving them and loading them on and off trucks at performances. Add in the fact that the corps is based in Milwaukie, and I’m transit-dependent, and it would be an unworkable situation that I could not guarantee a meaningful commitment to. There was a time I might have leapt at the chance, but that time has passed. I thanked them for the invitation and politely declined.

While I am getting stronger and more functional, there are definitely limits to my functionality and my energy level that signal it’s time for me to consider other possibilities. I can still play rudimentally, but marching and performing are just not happening at this time. And without the incentive of rehearsing I admit my interest in drumming has flagged a little.

Which brings me to my other line of thinking, especially about practice pads and my interest in them.

I have a feeling that the practice pad tidal wave is beginning to fall. Too many similar designs of higher-end pads have flooded the market since the beginning of the pandemic, and not enough people or communities have rebounded financially since Covid began to recede. Add to that the struggle of so many school groups just to stay afloat, let alone field a marching band. Even if Drumpf and Co. DO get shown the door, there’s too much damage done to repair anything in a lot of what’s left in my lifetime. It’s sad. I try not to dwell on it too much.

So I am beginning to sell off as many of my pads as I can. I hope to reduce the number down to perhaps a dozen or so pads that I use and enjoy regularly. I’ll offer them at decent prices, and whatever I can’t sell I might donate to a youth group.

I’d hang onto them, but I’ve encountered a lot of apathy in my attempts to spark interest in Rudimental drumming locally. Portland just leans way too far left there to be much purchase beyond well-funded suburban schools.

At the end of the day, it’s just a practice pad. And maybe someday it will be just that, and no more, again. More and more, I think that would probably be a good thing.

Pad Rescue: Vic Firth basic pad, much improved

Early last month, I scored a bundle of old practice pads and mutes. Among them was the baseplate of a Vic Firth student pad. This pad is still being sold by Vic Firth and it basically sucks. The grey side is softer rubber with a muddy rebound that is unsatisfying. The black side is much harder and equally disappointing to play on. The baseplate is MDF with a heavy coat of black textured paint. The rubber pieces are applied with thick double-sided tape. It’s a perfectly horrid practice pad, and most of them wind up for sale on eBay or elsewhere after they’ve been used and abandoned.

What came to me was the baseplate with the black rubber still attached. It was pointless and sad, so I pulled it off.

Then I removed as much of the two-sided tape as I could. The shiny stuff under the black rubber was easier to remove; the tape on the other side had been exposed for so,e time and was gross and sticky, but I got an awful lot of it off.

Then I looked around for something to glue on in its place. What surfaced was a 1/4” thick round of hard rubber with a surprisingly pleasant, sharp rebound. Certainly an improvement over what had been there before. I took it out to the shed, propped open the door, donned gloves and safety glasses, and opened a new bottle of superglue. 

I roughed up the opposing sides, carefully applied the glue, laid on the rubber round and held it in place long enough to stick. Then I took a drumstick and used at as a rolling pin to roll out any gaps or air bubbles. After I wiped away the excess, I weighted it down and let it dry overnight.

The next day, I tried it out. It was hard, but with a nice rebound. Still, it felt like something was missing.

So I looked around my stash and found an old drum head with a slice near the edge. I traced a circle around the undamaged portion, cut it out and took it out to the shed, where I glued it on,top of the rubber round. After rolling a drum stick over it and wiping away the excess, I weighted it down and left it overnight. It wasn’t my most careful work and there were a few little splotches of glue left.

But when I took it out to chop on it, I was happy with w the result.

Adding a laminate added a snap to the feel and tone that, in spite of my general bias against laminates, was actually nice to chop on.

I glued a round of yoga mat material and glued it on the bottom as a nonskid surface. Perfect.

As MDF baseplates go, this one isn’t bad. The heavy coat of textured paint helps solidify it.

I’m happy with how this turned out. It has applications for modern marching drummers, and possibly for pipe band drummers too. And honestly, from what I’ve seen in the last few years, Vic Firth couldn’t bring out anything even this nice.