Stick-pad pairings: an inexact and fun science

 Prompted by an earlier discussion of “pad sticks” at the FB Boutique Sticks group, I’ve decided to offer a few suggestions for pairing ordinary drum sticks with practice pads in ideal combinations.

First, a word about “pad sticks,” which have been discussed earlier in this blog:

Generally speaking, “pad” sticks are designated as such by the manufacturer, and not an historic category.

They most often come with a diameter similar to a smaller marching drum stick (think 2S or so), with a medium taper and an oversized ball tip.     

  

Pad sticks are designed for use on a practice pad, most often to practice rudiments and to clean passages before applying them in rehearsal or performance. But without an historic designation, pad sticks are basically an invention of stick manufacturers and drum companies looking to expand their “brand”.

The oversize tip makes them risky to use on an actual drum, unless that drum is built to withstand the additional forces provided by a heavy stick. (The original pad stick from Vic Firth was not labeled as such in the beginning, but as model “Thunder Rock” for rock drummers.)

Moving away from Pad sticks — go back and read the post on those from a couple years back if you like — I was intrigued by the idea of pairing sticks with specific practice pads, the way Girl Scout cookies have recently been paired with strains of marijuana. This list is by no means exhaustive, and reflects the opinion of one Drummer, but is a good place to start.

1. Vintage pads (through around 1990). Older pads work best with the sticks in use at the time of their design and manufacture. Using a modern marching stick on a Real Feel tan rubber pad from over twenty years ago may not give the most ideal results for feel and response as using a stick in production in the mid to late 1990s. Likewise for pads made earlier, like this 1960s Remo pad. Promark was just beginning to make a splash in the US with their handmade Japanese oak sticks. Here’s an early 60s Remo pad with a pair of Promark Japanese oak 2B sticks, and the feel is very satisfying.

2. Marching-specific pad with marching sticks. Marching specific pads weren’t really a factor until the later 1990s and later, but their appearance in the world of practice pads changed a few of the rules for pad and stick pairings. Designed to take the heavier hits of newer marching sticks, marching pads don’t always offer the nuanced feel of a more standard pad (like a Remo, still on the market and used by students around the world even today). So if you have a marching-specific pad, you’ll be happiest with modern marching sticks. Below, a HUN adjustable snare pad and my VF Brian Mason signature sticks, which I use when playing with my local community marching group. They feel great and are sturdy enough for the craziest rim shots.

3. Custom/boutique sticks and tunable pads. When I use boutique, custom, small batch sticks, I prefer to use them on tunable pads with a Mylar head. That’s the closest to an actual tuned drum, and the least likely to damage the sticks. If your pad uses a coated head, it’s helpful to lightly sand the center of the pad to remove some of the coating (to reduce wear and tear on the tips).  Inculcate brush patterns mostly utilize the outer four to five inches of the head, so you won’t lose much brush coating where you really need it. 

Below: a really lovely pair of Cooperman concert sticks with a QuietTone tunable pad.

Again, this is only a starting point, and can get as specific or as general as you like. If you have lots of pads and sticks to choose from, it might be fun to consider which pair well, so you can get optimal use from each.

Happy drumming.

DIY time: flip-over drum mutes by Pearl, and by Yours Truly

Yeah, I know. 

Technically, this is some kind of copyright infringement.

But since I don’t plan to sell mine, I figure no harm, no foul.

Pearl’s design retails for $25.

 

My copy, which cost less than five bucks in materials.

The idea, I think, is to muffle the worst of the overtone ring, which my design does pretty well.

I suspect making it with suede would work better as the suede offers more flexibility, but I can just play with the leather to work it a bit and eventually achieve the same result.

I noticed that in the customer reviews, someone said Pearl’s design was faulty because you couldn’t keep it from popping off the tension bolt when playing a rim shot or loud accent. My thinking is that ther user might be faulty because if you’re muting the drum, why would you 0ay, you know, loud?

It’s a good design, and works nicely on my new-old drum.

Vintage Corner, UPDATE: The Leedy Drum Master, refurbished and a real player!

After some trading and discussion, John at Revival Drum Shop refurbished my Leedy Drum Master by installing a replacement throw-off and swapping in square-headed tuning rods, which made the drum more user-friendly and less prone to failure.
Here's a blueprint of the original strainer design (thanks, Michael Windish), followed by a photo of the replacement (an era-close model from the 1950s). The original throw-off was broken and missing parts and I could not be bothered to search high and low for a rare replacement, so I asked John to find something era-adjacent and reliable:

The other end of the strainer system worked fine and looked sturdy enough to remain in place.

I traded some things to Revival to cover the cost of the refurbishment and a barely used Revival shop padded bag large enough to hold the drum.

Once home, I asked my Sweetie for about half an hour to put the drum through its paces. We live in a little house with no meaningful soundproofing so she tries to be understanding of my need to drum, and I do most of my drumming at home on pads or heavily muffled drums. But I needed to hear this drum really sing, and get a sense of what I'm working with.

Is is an ideal concert drum? Not in the modern sense, though it would certainly fill in nicely when a "field drum" is called for in a wind ensemble. In fact, it's just a deep, warm sound that could work alone or with a drum kit. And sometimes, I just want to play a live, wide-open drum for its own sake.

Here's a video where I try out some things, including different mufflers and tunings. In the end, I can't tune it super-high as its over 80 years old, with a very lightweight shell and wood hoops, so some compromises and lowered expectations are in order. Still, it's a truly fine instrument that I will enjoy the heck out of, and I'm glad I have it.

Homemade snare muffler.
I have another commercially-made one on order but this will work for now.

The head that it came with is fine for the time being. Eventually I'll replace it with a standard Remo Ambassador head.

My goodness, what a gorgeous drum.

DIY Drummer: Timpani practice pads

Since getting back into concert percussoion, I've been noticing timpani practice pads.
Commercially-made, these highly specialized pads start at around $40 and go up to over $150.

I decided to see if I could make a set for use at home.

All it took was some scrap wood, closed-cell ensolite camper pad material, and some Super-Glue gel. Et voila! One is small enough to fit in my mallet bag; two are perfect for practicing tricky passages at home. The feel is close to that of a tuned kettledrum, and if used ONLY with felt-covered mallets should last awhile.

After hanging out with these a little while, I decided to preserve the edges by wrapping them in gaffing tape. Once the tape sets, I’m hoping it will protect the edges from scuffs and snags, that step, plus playing ONLY with felt-covered mallets, should be enough to preserve the useful life of these pads for quite awhile.

Happy drumming.

Video: Slingerland marching drum after restoration.

Sorry for the delay, but here's a demo video of the Slingerland drum I finished repairing so many months ago. 

It's a keeper!  I LOVE the tone and crispness. When my health and energy improve, I'm going to take it to the park and have some fun.

And if you’re new here, these are the posts that detail the refurbishment from start to finish, in order.

SLINGERLAND DRUM REDUX 

http://drumlove1.blogspot.com/2020/07/day-one-slingerland-redux.html

http://drumlove1.blogspot.com/2020/11/vintage-corner-slingerland-drum-update.html

http://drumlove1.blogspot.com/2021/02/vintage-corner-slingerland-drum-update.html

http://drumlove1.blogspot.com/2021/02/vintage-corner-slingerland-drum-update-3.html

I’ve been sent to timeout by a pad manufacturer. Oh, well.

 Remember Revolution? Their ads are all over social media and their Chopping Block pad got popular very fast. So I bit the bullet and tried one.

Then I sold it.

That was a few weeks ago.

Yesterday, Revolution’s surveybot contacted me and invited me to take a short survey. So I did. In my answers, I took them to task for not being more forthcoming with answers to my pre-purchase questions.

Today, I got a response that took ME to task for being, in their words, “the kind of customer small businesses dread.” They then told me that their teak source was FSC approved, their foam surface was patented (but no further details on where it came from before assembly in Bend) and that their pads cost $65 to make. Then they wished me “Peace.”

Uh, okay.

So I guess this puts in me some kind of Practice Pad Jail. Perhaps it will make other pad companies steer clear of me and my blog and not grant me interviews. And if so, perhaps it’s just as well.

I admit that I’ve lost interest in exploring new drum products by large companies anymore.  So in the future, I’ll probably stick to the obscure and fledgling creatives and makers, and also to the cool vintage stuff. 

Because at the end of the day, no company that can sell its products directly AND through at least three different mail-order warehouses is THAT small. No company offering oblique answers at best to questions about sustainable manufacturing practices is super-sustainable. The world is filled beyond capacity with things that are not sustainably made, and we don’t need anymore. Those who can afford to will shop around and be willing to pay more for truly sustainable products. Those who can’t afford to will buy their stuff used. Both will shop less often, repair things and make them last, or make do without.

And honestly, that’s not most of the drum industry anymore.

So perhaps this comes at the right time for me to shift my focus to the used, the vintage and the underdog making things in the most sustainable way possible. And that feels more than okay. I ruffled some feathers but perhaps I expanded some conversations too. I have no regrets, and I’ll keep on drumming for health and happiness.

Wherever your surfing takes you, happy drumming!

Some final thoughts on the new “workout” pad phenomenon.

 For the last six to eight months, I’ve had some fun obtaining and trying out all sorts of different pads advertised as being specifically for “working out” or “warmups.” Here’s a list of what I’ve cycled through:

— Reflexx (pre-Zildjian)

— Revolution 

— Drumeo Quiet Pad (1st generation)

— Prologix Red, Blue and Black

— Moongel (early edition, borrowed briefly from a friend)

I didn’t have the Moongel for more than a week, not long enough for me to really live with it and decide if I wanted one for myself. In hindsight, probably not.

This has given me a fairly wide range of surfaces to try out, and also some time to consider the whole idea of “working out” on  a playing surface.

Before the advent of so-called “workout” pads, drummers warmed up on any old practice pad, or on an actual drum. 

So who decided that the world needed pads specifically for “warming up” or “working out” as if weightlifting were part of the drummer’s training?

That’s not a completely rhetorical question. Specificity in practice pads became big — and big money — when pad makers realized there was, as marching drums got higher and tighter, a growing market for marching-specific pads. So finding another specific market isn’t such a far-fetched phenomenon.

It may be, however, an unfortunate one.

In the years before pads got SO specialized, all drummers learned how to play roughly the same way. Learn and master the twenty-six original rudiments; learn how to read music; and then apply the techniques learned to playing in dance bands, drum corps, school marching bands and classical orchestras. With only minor differences in technique, a drummer could transfer his or her skills from one kind of music to another without too much fuss. Good drummers before the rise of specialization were those who could play and read in nearly every style, and they were the ones who found steady work in opera and vaudeville houses, musical theatre pit orchestras, jazz combos and military outfits.

When drum corps and marching bands began to change, to “modernize,” in the late 1970s, most drummers still had to know how to do everything well. As drum technology evolved, as drums got higher-pitched and higher-tensioned, it soon became clear that differences in playing style and technique were necessary, since Kevlar and carbon marching drum heads required a different approach than looser Mylar heads still used in jazz and symphonic work.

And so the practice surfaces for each diverged more and more, until by the early 2000s there were pads for “general” use and pads for “marching” use. Over time, the young people involved in the marching arts were relatively easy to channel into a new market for pad makers, and specialty pads for marching drummers became, as the kids say, A Thing.

And that’s how we got to where we are now.

Some of the marching-specific pads are quite good, in as much as they promote and encourage the kind of technique required in today’s drum lines. Are modern marching drums and pads, and the technique required to play them, healthy for still-growing hands and arms? I’m not medically qualified to answer that question with any authority. What I DO know is that many older drummers (those marching before the advent of high-tension drums) who grew up marching with lower-tensioned drums often find it very hard — and sometimes painful — to make the transition to Kevlar and carbon heads. 

That’s something worth thinking about.

Back to “workout” pads.

Why do I need to “work out” when it comes to drumming? I play drums nearly every single day, and usually warm up with a page from “StickControl” (still the best drum book that no one ever loved), followed by some Rudimental exercises or short pieces at different tempi. By then, my hands are ready to tackle whatever it is I want to look at that day, whether behind the drum kit or with a marching snare drum. (*note: I play marching drums with lower-tensioned Mylar heads exclusively, and will never play a Kevlar-headed drum again. My hands are too old, arthritic and accustomed to lower tension.)

So after several months of trying out these different “workout” pads, I came to the realization that in the end, I probably don’t need them. 

I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that, in the end, neither do most other drummers.

I’ll go even further and say that “workout” pads should NOT be given to young drummers whose hands are still growing.

Why? Because if they’re used improperly, or too often, or for too long, they can actually hurt your hands rather than help them. And while many of my readers came from a world where private teachers and one-on-one instruction were par for the course, there are many drummers who still don’t have access to that and who have to figure things out themselves.
Giving young, unschooled drummers  one of these “workout” pads and letting them pound away with little or no guidance is a mistake that could result in injury.

Something that is or feels like a real (non-Kevlar) drum is probably the best choice for drummers of any age and level of experience. 

So I have been letting go of those “workout” pads, one by one.

Today, I’m down to one “workout” pad, the Drumeo Quiet Pad,  and it’s the obverse surface of a pad that has a basic silicon rubber top side. I’ll probably hang onto it for awhile, as part of my pad collection.

The rest are gone. I won’t miss them. 

Today I broke out a rubber practice pad, warmed up on it, and then settled in for a short session working up another of the Wilcoxon solos. It felt fine. When I was done, my hands did not hurt from overwork.

Cheers and happy drumming.