the ritual: taping up new sticks, and more

It's early summer, and the beginning of the marching season for so many of us.
Whether you march with an uber-modern DCI corps or your community band, summer is the time to play outside!
And so I've been readying myself and my gear.

1.  The heads that came with my Ludwig drum were, along with the snare hardware, pretty beat. The snare-side head had a hole almost as big as my pinky finger. It wasn't too close to the edge of the shell or I would've replaced it sooner. Still, when I noticed a split forming in the batter head -- a CS black dot that was almost as old as the drum -- I decided to bite the bullet and replace both heads.

2. While I was at it, the original strainer mechanism was beginning to fall apart. The tensioning screws for each individual snare had fallen out, and a few snares were missing. The remainder were showing a little surface rust. So after pondering my options, I replaced the entire thing with something simple and more modern (Gibraltar, for all its plainness, sells excellent, serviceable parts that stand up well to daily use). After all, this was never going to be a showpiece. I bought it as a player and the random scratches in the finish never bothered me. I got some trade-in on the parts at Revival, and the new hardware went on fairly easily. I only had to drill new holes for the butt plate.

3. I finally managed to re-shape the steel leg rest I'd scored, so that it would fit my older, larger thigh. (Don't blame that on weight-gain; my quads are a lot bigger now from all that cycling then they were when I was fourteen, and the platform had to be spread a little.)

 Early 1970s Ludwig 10 x 14" marching snare, with angle bar and new heads and strainer.

 With only eight lugs, there is no point in putting a super-high-tension head on this drum. It was meant to have Mylar heads and that's what it's got. I opted for the Power Stroke, which is what my marching snare drum had my senior year of high school. A tad later than the drum, but it sounds crisp and clean.

Mylar heads are tuned lower, meaning that the player has to do a little of the rebound work themselves. But if you tune the batter head a little high than the snare head, you'll get a crisp, dark sound that those of us of a certain age still know and love.

4. Next up: Sticks. After trying several different makes and models, I finally took my friend Mary's advice and went with the Vic Firth Jeff Queen signature model. Although Jeff designed it as a "solo" stick, honestly it's a fine ensemble stick, especially for smaller hands and for use on Mylar heads. With my arthritis, it's the stick I've kept coming back to. So when I pulled out my sticks after my last band practice and saw the telltale ridge (see photos), I knew it was time to buy new sticks and wrap them in fresh tape.

The ritual used to go like this: I'd go to the music shop, spend about half an hour finding two sticks of the same model that matched in pitch (in those days I'd settle for 1/4 to 1/2-step apart if I had to); then begging the shop owner for a quantity break on 4 pairs (he almost always said no, unless he'd just smoked a bowl), and then taking them home and setting out the stuff I'd need to wrap each pair in a fresh layer of white electrical tape. In high school, this would be trimmed in thin stripes of royal blue tape at both ends to make the sticks match our school colors. (In corps we didn't bother with trim, because the snare line went through sticks too quickly on tour. I swear, sometimes they'd tape up new show sticks every two to three days.)

This is something of a tiny ritual for me, and taping up new sticks always takes me back to my teen years as a marching member, in a sweet way.

I'm mostly packed for Honk! weekend, and looking forward to a great time playing live in the streets of South Seattle this weekend. I'm playing with the Unpresidented Brass Band. If you read this blog and come to the festival, find our band and say hello.

 

Above: a little vid. I'm just farting around, playing whatever I feel like. Sometimes it's nice not to have a plan. Cheers!

vintage sticks: Hinger Touch-Tone, medium

When I was in college in the early 1980s, I came across a large lot of used drum and percussion parts, sticks and accessories at the downtown location of Captain Whizeagles, the music store where I'd bought my drumsticks since 6th grade. Whizeagles was closing its downtown location and moving out to somewhere in Clackamas, Oregon, far beyond the reach of public transit at the time. So I rushed to the shop to see if there would be any blowouts before it closed.

I found a pair of Hinger Touch-Tone snare drum sticks, size large for marching and rudimental use.
Made of hollow aluminum shafts, each stick also had small rubber sleeves which could be moved up and down along the sticks to change the balance and sound. I remember paying very little for the sticks -- they were useless for rock and roll playing -- and showed them to my drum instructor back on campus. He offered me many times what I'd paid for them, and since I was a broke college student who needed the money, I sold them.

Later on, of course, I wished I hadn't sold them. They were different and very cool.

So when I found another pair in the medium (concert) size at Revival Drum Shop, I had to have them. Fortunately, I had some trade on account and used that to purchase these.

The sticks themselves are nothing special to look at, other than the material. They're basically hollow aluminum rods with holes at each end, about the same length as a regular wooden drumstick.

These sticks did not have any rubber on them; I'd seen them with and without rubber weights, and I've even seen a pair with rubber handles at one end. (Fred Hinger, the designer of the sticks, meant for them to be played with matched grip.)

If I really want to experiment, I suppose I could find some super-skinny bicycle inner tubes and cut a few small sections off to approximate the same function.

Still, with or without weights, these things play an orchestral buzz roll that is so clean and beautiful it sounds like tissue paper being gently torn.

A bit about Fred Hinger the innovator, and his son Bill who took over the business and made further innovations, borrowed from the Olympic Drums web site:

*********

Through his entire career Fred Hinger was never satisfied with commercially produced percussion products and spent much time creating his own drumsticks and tympani mallets while he was in the Philadelphia Orchestra. He found that tympani handles made of bamboo produced a much larger sound than the traditional wood handles found on virtually all commercially produced tympani mallets. People started asking him to make the same mallets for them, and as time went on he started selling these hand sewn tympani mallets to students and other professionals.
In the early 1960’s, he began to experiment with other handle materials and found that an aluminum tubular handle would produce the same sound characteristics of the bamboo, but were much more consistent and could be duplicated much more easily.
As business picked up in the early 1960’s he registered the trademarks Hinger and Touch-Tone, which eventually became the company name.
When Bill Hinger  (Fred's son) joined the United States Army Band in Washington, D.C. in 1967, all tympani mallet production was moved to Alexandria, Virginia.  Bill became responsible for production of tympani mallets for the next three years. Fred focused on designing and building a concert snare drum from a solid metal shell that sounded incredibly crisp and clean. [Note: I had the pleasure of playing some college band concerts on my instructor's Hinger snare drum. It was a thing of beauty and one of the most incredible instruments I'd ever played.]
In 1969 Bill Hinger broached the idea of starting a company to make sticks, snare drums and tympani. In May 1970, Bill left the Army Band and moved back to New Jersey.
From that point forward, Bill was responsible for the design and production of all innovations and ideas generated by himself and his dad. 

********

Fred Hinger sold the mallet side of his business and closed down the snare drum production side completely in the late 1980s. He died in 2001. Hinger snare drums remain highly sought after both as incredible instruments and as vintage collectibles.

Malletech now distributes Hinger products, including timpani and marimba mallets and the concert sized aluminum and maple snare drum sticks. They also offer a slider kit that may fit my concert sticks, but more research is needed before I buy a set.

Hinger sticks by Malletech are available from a few outlets, including Steve Weiss and Mostly Marimba.

Here's the maple version of the Hinger snare drum stick, available from Steve Weiss; maybe down the road I'll spring for a pair.
Even though it's basically the same shape as the aluminum version, being made of wood you could get away with an errant rim shot here or there. Even so, these are not sticks I'd want to use for anything other than concert playing.

I'm going to hang out with these on my concert snare drum over the next few weeks and see whether or not I want to bother with making or buying sliders.

Vintage sticks: Promark 3S Japanese oak

Back when I marched in my high school band, the stick of choice for the snares was a traditional, heavy 3S stick with a medium taper and an acorn-shaped tip. Fat as my father's thumb, and seventeen inches long. Usually pretty heavy -- too heavy for my still-growing hands, which is why I used 2B's until my senior year.

Promark came out with sticks made in either American hickory or Japanese oak. The hickory sticks were predictably comfortable -- they had a "spring" and "flex" to them, and absorbed the shock of accented notes so your hands wouldn't have to take the full impact. Hickory remains the first choice for drummers today for that reason.
Oak was another matter. Oak sticks were noticeably heavier, and harder. They were harder to break unless you played like Sesame Street's Animal. My section leader, a handsome boy who came from one of the wealthiest families in town, could buy any sticks he wanted, and he did, trying out various brands and models to find the sticks that worked for him. He tried the Promark 3S in both oak and hickory, ultimately opting for the hickory for its ease on the hands. The hickory also cost less than the oak model, so you could buy many more pairs and always have spares on hand.

Today, a pair of Promark 3S sticks in oak arrived, from a fellow vintage drum enthusiast who didn't need them and offered them to me. (He knows I try to find stuff from my early years of drumming, mid to late 1970s.)
I cleaned off the masking tape with some nail polish remover, and tried them out on my rubber pad.
They felt lighter than I remembered, perhaps because my hands are full-size now (and far stronger than when I was fifteen). They felt well-balanced and surprisingly not all that heavy. A longer session with them might prove me wrong later on.

They're beautiful sticks. The oak grain is luminous and almost shines in places. The gold stripe at the ends is accompanied by the numeral "79" (year of manufacture, perhaps?) and the words "Hand-made in Japan" -- and they don't appear to have been used all that much.

These will enjoy a slot in the stick display, and I may play with them from time to time (on a pad only, though).   What old sticks do you like to play with now and then, for nostalgia's sake or just for a change of pace?

groove du jour: padded love

I am messing around with rhythm.

I do this every day, several times a day, in my head. I try to do it in the mornings on my practice pad.
I did not acquire a real drum of my own until I was fourteen. Before that, I played everything at home on a practice pad, and the sound and feel of pads has stayed with me one of my great sonic loves.
It's a big part of why I collect pads instead of actual drums. There's just something about the thwack! of sticks on a rubber pad that tweaks the pleasure center in my brain, and once that jones has been established it's not going away.

So when I want to figure out a groove, I do it on my pad.

Today's groove, which may become the foundation for a new composition: Padded Love.
1940s Slingerland Radio King Pad, 1970s Ludwig 2S sticks.
(I don't play on this pad with modern marching sticks as they're too big and fat for such an old pad.)
Blogger will only let me post up to 100mb of video so this is a cut from the original. But you get the idea.

I'm imagining laying down a "bass" part with a 5-galon water jug, and perhaps some metallic colors with some old hub caps and a homemade sistrum. Stay tuned.

drumitation: meditating with rudiments

When I was having health issues over this past winter, my counselor suggested I look at a meditative practice to help ease some of my symptoms and create a consistent way to begin my day.

I tried sitting still for five minutes, every morning.
That seemed doable. So I upped it to ten.
It got harder, but I hung in there.
I thought about upping it to fifteen, but my last day at ten minutes crashed and burned at around Minute Six. I was fidgeting and squirming and I couldn't sit still anymore.
So I gave up.

One morning after my failure, I was in the studio, fiddling with my sticks and a rubber practice pad (definitely a happy place). I pulled up my dog-eared copy of Stick Control and opened it to the first page.
I set up my metronome at something stupid slow like 70 beats per minute, and forced myself to play the entire first page as instructed: each exercise twenty times without break before moving onto the next one.

So the whole point of Stick Control is that it's meant to be sequential, methodical and very gradual. You don't jump from Page One to Page Ten. (You could, but you won't really benefit as much from just burning through and sight-reading. This is not a sight-reading book.)

By the time I'd gotten through the entire first page at that speed, I noticed two things:

a. My hands felt jerky and klunky at the beginning, and pretty smooth and comfortable by the end of the page.

b. Repeating every figure twenty times before moving on at 70 bpm took me something like 10 whole minutes.

I knew I was onto something.

 Every morning after that, after eating breakfast and taking my meds, I went into the studio and played the first page of Stick Control, at gradually increasing tempi with the help of a metronome.

When I was done with that, I decided I wanted to play something else. So I pulled up book number two: 128 Rudimental Street Beats, a collection of drum cadence figures from the 1960s, by John S. Pratt (a master drummer of the time and the head drum instructor at West Point).

These beats are deceptively simple.

I figured that, if I could nail down the snare drum part, I could then get the bass drum and cymbals in my little community band to play steady time, with beats on the quarter-notes. (None of them are experienced drummers and a couple don't read music at all, so I have to introduce new material by ear and repetition.)

What I discovered along the way of selecting two or three street beats I could string together is that these things are actually a lot of fun to play. I memorized a couple and have incorporated them into my morning drumitation.

 

Finally, if there was time left in my half-hour time limit, I'd pull out my favorite solo book of all: America's NARD Drum Solos, published in the 1940s and reprinted with fresh plates about 20 years ago.

 The NARD Book was compiled by the first members of a new drumming organization formed in 1936, called the National Association of Rudimental Drummers. Their goal was to standardize the 26 basic rudiments (the "drummer's scales") known at the time and to encourage new drummers to adopt these standard rudiments as part of their training.

The original organization lasted until it disbanded in the late 1970s. A new version of NARD was established in 2008 and remains active today. This book, now in its third edition, remains a gold standard for rudimental drummers around the world, and it's the book I learned from in high school. (I still have my old copy!)

I don't always work out of this book every morning -- sometimes I get lost in Stick Control and allow myself to just zone out, because the point of drumitation is to chill out and calm down, not to work up new material all the time. But when I reach for it there's always something more for me to learn.

I learned a couple of these solos for contest in school. Because I couldn't afford private lessons I figured them out myself, and was scolded for taking this approach at contest. "You're a good drummer," the judge told me. "If you're serious about your drumming you'll make finding a private teacher a priority." (This was back in the good old days when it was unseemly to admit that your Dad was looking for work and you were eating tuna casserole for the fourth night that week. So I kept my mouth shut and nodded. Then I went home I continued to play and work out stuff myself. I did not have a private drum teacher on a regular basis until I got to college.)

In my return to rudimental drumming I find that I'm sometimes paying for my lack of private instruction early on. But since my primary goal is to enjoy myself and to use rudimental drumming as part of a meditative practice, I don't worry about that. I'm not currently looking for a private teacher (and I can't afford one, anyway). And sometimes I don't get to the drum pad when I'd planned to so I end up doing it a little later in the day. But drumming on a rubber pad has definitely helped me musically and emotionally, and for that reason I'm grateful I can still play.

Let us now praise famous Drum pads: Remo

I joined my school band in 1973, when I was ten years old. We had moved to Concord, California about three months after I started fifth grade, and I wanted to join the band and learn an instrument.
My first choices -- trumpet and french horn -- were not available. My parents told me they couldn't afford to rent something from a store, so I had to make do with whatever I could borrow from the school. After considering multiple options, I chose the drums, and rode home with a brand new pair of 5-A sticks and a Remo tuneable practice pad in my backpack.

The Remo pad was the first practice pad for a whole generation of drummers, most of whom began playing in the late 1960s through early 1980s. It's portability and tuneability were the main selling factors, as was the reasonable price. Because the school bought pads and sticks in quantity, I could obtain my pad and sticks for a total of $10 in 1973 ($45-50 today, adjusting for inflation).

The Remo pad was also popular because it could be played on a tabletop (or on a tilted music stand, which was standard practice when I was a kid) or mounted on a threaded cymbal stand; the raised rim allowed you to experiment with something cool called a "rim shot" (played on a real drum, this would eventually break the stick; played on the Remo pad, this would eventually crack the plastic rim. I admit I broke at least four Remo pad rims on my way to High School, when I switched to a rubber practice pad). Another nice feature was the replaceable head -- though I never played mine hard enough to have to replace one. The largest size, 10" in diameter, was almost big enough to practice brushes on.

The pad, first patented in 1962 (only a year before I was born!), revolutionized drum practice for tens of thousands of school and professional drummers for decades, and nearly every drummer my age remembers starting out on one of these pads.

(Below: A 1966 patent for Remo's practice drum kit, comprised of multiple tuneable pads on an adjustable metal frame. Today, you can find these for amazingly little money at yard sales and on craigslist.)

Remo tuneable pads are now considered a good choice for a student on a tight budget, the idea being that when money was available the goal would be to "upgrade" to something "better" -- or, in 2019, something that came closer to the feel of a high-tension marching snare with a Kevlar head. Remo pad heads are tuneable, but not past a certain point; and that point doesn't come close to the feel of a higher-tension head.

For those who can't afford a high-tension, "modern" practice pad (the best ones start at close to $100 each), there are numerous Youtube videos showing how to get an approximation of the modern "fake-snare" sound by modifying the Remo pad -- by filling it to the brim with unpopped popcorn or even ball bearings, and even swapping in longer bolts to allow for tighter tuning. But remember, that plastic rim can only handle so much tension -- so if you decide to experiment this way, expect that the rim will show its limits before you reach the desired higher tension.

For those of us who continue to play on Mylar heads, the original, unmodified Remo pad is still a fine choice, which is why I keep one in my stable today. Happy playing!

no need to reinvent the wheel, or go with what you know

I came of drumming age, as it were, in the days when marching drums came with Mylar heads, same as concert drums.
Around the time I had graduated high school, some drum lines were experimenting with a head made of woven Kevlar (the same stuff found in bulletproof vests). Kevlar was the new miracle material; drums heads made from it could be tuned higher and tighter than any Mylar head. As a result, kids in the 1980s began putting Kevlar heads on their regular drums, cranking down the lug bolts, and playing hard enough to break lugs and drum shells.
Of course, this led to the development of high-tension drums, with a free-floating shell and a tubular lug that could withstand the forces of cranked-down Kevlar heads. Eventually it even led to drum tuning wrenches that could handle the torque required to tune a high-tension drum. (I have one of these and I only use it on the aforementioned drums. It's complete overkill for anything else.)

The result changed marching percussion forever. Modern drum corps and marching bands now use Kevlar or Kevlar-Carbon hybrid heads almost exclusively. Today's kids are learning to play on these heads from middle school onward, with the result that it's ruining their concert technique (because we still use Mylar heads in orchestral playing and they require a very different touch) and it's ruining their hands and wrists in the long run (because the tension is so high there's no real "give" and all the shock goes into the hands and wrists, causing fatigue and a high potential for tendon and joint injury in younger players).

I had just missed the Kevlar boat when my marching days ended; The one season I marched in college band the school was broke and still had older drums with Mylar heads. When I began coaching high school drum lines, nearly every one was equipped with high-tension drums and Kevlar heads. I had to adjust my playing approach, and my hands became fatigued early on. Eventually, I learned to play examples on a pad and let the snare players figure out on their drums. (I didn't yet know that high-tension drums could cause long-term issues; I just figured it was because I wasn't used to it.)

When I joined the UBB last year, I scored a used Dynasty Wedge snare and carrier to march with. The drum's sound was tight and crisp -- and completely out of p[lace for the second-line style of playing I was being asked to do. But it weighed far less than a regular high-tension drum, so I hung with it until I came across this Ludwig marching snare drum from the 1970s, around the time I played in high school band. After some fussing and cleaning and little help from the fellas at Revival Drum Shop, The drum has become a serious player. And I love it so much I've put my Wedge drum up for sale.

 

You'll notice that, with Mylar heads, you really have to draw the sound out of the drum more; you can't just let the sticks bounce happily away, because Mylar heads will require you to do a little of the work, controlling the strokes with your hands and wrists. (This i why, back when I marched, we practiced at night on our pillows before going to sleep in the gym on tour. The pillow made us do ALL the work, and we built up our chops as a result. Today, I'm sure wouldn't be able to pull of half of what I'm doing with my arthritic hands, if I had not worked out this way as a kid.)

You'll also notice a fuller, deeper sound with a lot more space in it. That's because of both the shape of the drum and the lower tension required for Mylar heads, both of which lend more depth and color to the snare drum's sound. (My drum is a 14" x 10" model -- try this in a 15" or 16" snare drum from the 50's and you'll be amazed at the depth and darkness of the tone.)

I've put the wedge and carrier up for sale on Facebook's Marching Percussion Marketplace, at what I think is a very good price for each.

Because you know what the other benefit of going back is? With a sling and leg rest, this drum weighs far less than my high-tension setup, and my whole body is happier.

Sometimes going retro is the right thing to do.
I'll never play Kevlar heads again. Because I don't need to.

Happy drumming!