Tag Archive - drums

Ludwig Drum Company: Innovation That Paved The Way For All Custom Drum Builders

October 24, 2011 in Drums History with 1 Comment

In 1909, the brothers Ludwig, William and Theobaldner, were the founders of what is now the Ludwig-Musser Company, which is owned by Steinway Musical Instruments. Ludwig Musser is a leading producer of drums and other percussion instruments.
Ludwig’s initial product was an improved pedal for bass drums that could beat faster than competing products. The brothers developed the pedal in a south-side Chicago barn they rented. Following up on their initial success, they next engineered:

  • a timpani with hydraulic action
  • the spring mechanism that is the forerunner to today’s Balanced Action Pedal Timpani
  • more drums (and banjos), such as brass snare drums and wooden drums

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David Milwain on The Importance of Reading Music for Drummers

September 7, 2011 in Drum Tips, Drummer resources with 2 Comments

The Importance of Reading Music for Drummers

Rhythm and drumming has been a part of society dating back thousands of years. Something so primitive and natural is simply engrained in our being. We, the individual, need nothing but to harness the rhythm and express it.

When learning a new instrument, be it guitar, piano, drums or any other, the student has the option of learning to read the notation or playing solely by ear. Although learning by ear may be easiest or quickest for a beginner, I am a strong believer that learning to read the notation leads to a more holistic understanding of the instrument. Some music teachers focus solely on the basics of how to play; in my lessons I focus not only on the basics of drumming, but I also place emphasis on sight reading drum set and rhythmic notation along with proper counting and steady breathing techniques to make the student a more well-rounded drummer.

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Drum Tip: Mark Hardware Angles and Height On Your Cymbal and Hardware Stands

August 22, 2011 in Drum Tips, Drummer resources, Drums, General Updates with 3 Comments

A couple of days ago Ed Francis shared a tip about spiking your drum set hardware layout with tape to make sure that you set your drums up exactly the same every time, which leads to a more efficient set up and comfort when playing. His post reminded me of another important aspect of setting your drums up: consistency when setting the height and angles of your cymbal stands and hardware stands.

One of the main ways to consistently set your drum hardware up the same for every show is by using memory locks. Memory locks are basically small metal pipe clamps that you attach to your hardware stands to mark and stop at a certain height/angle that you like to have your stands at. These memory locks are moved up and down the stand by tightening or loosening the lock with a drum key.

Memory locks are great, but I have a very small SKB hardware case that doesn’t have enough room for me to completely disassemble a cymbal stand, which is basically what I would have to do if I used memory locks on my stands since you wouldn’t want to move the memory lock every time you put it back in the case. In order to fix this problem I just started marking my heights and angles with a fine tipped Sharpie! This completely eliminates the need for memory locks, and allows me to collapse my hardware inside itself enough to fit everything in my hardware case.

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Ed Francis on The Importance of “Spiking” Your Drum Kit Set-Up

August 18, 2011 in Drum Tips, Drummer resources, Drums, General Updates with 1 Comment

The Drum Coach from Round Rock Drums, Ed Francis (AKA: The Drummer on the Round Rock), combines his love of life, music and people with a HUGE and generous heart. At no cost to the recipients, Francis tours Round Rock and surrounding areas to share his passion for the arts and drumming. He donates countless hours to elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, juvenile detention facilities, music stores, drum studios, community centers, YMCA’s, daycare centers, and other outlets. He does this with one thing in mind – to spread his passion for music and drumming. I have had the privilege to become his friend over the past year and recently had a chance catch up and ask him to share a drum tip with the readers here at Makedrums.

MD: I know your a busy man, so I’ll make this quick. Can you share just one drum tidbit with our readers that has been helpful to you during your 33 years of playing?

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How to Tune Drums – 4 Practical Drum Tuning Tips

August 15, 2011 in Drum Tips, Drummer resources, Drums, How to Tune Drums with 1 Comment

The ability to tune drums is something that comes with practice and patience. In this post I offer just a glimpse in the world how to tune drums. This post is not intended to make you the next great drum tuner, but should at least give you some insight in the the art of tuning drums that you may or may not have already known. This is your basic drum tuning stuff….stay tuned (no pun intended!) for some more in depth step by step “How To” drum tuning advice in one of my next posts! Enjoy!

Practical Drum Tuning Tips

  • The quality of the materials in the drum and the craftsmanship put into making the drum will ALWAYS transfer to how well the drum tunes and sounds.
For instance, there is a huge difference in the time and effort put into making a “custom” drum set from a high end drum company as opposed to a mass produced drum set you can buy for $300 at a music store. The materials in a high end kit are used because of their acoustic properties, structural integrity, and overall higher quality. Most factory produced kit’s are thrown together as cheaply as possible, using cheap woods and cheap hardware, with the expectation of the owner upgrading their kit after a few  years of playing on this “beginner” set. To put it bluntly, you will have an extremely difficult time trying to make a PDP Starter Kit sound like a Pearl Reference Pure drum set.

Bass Player – Turned Drummer Builds His 1st Custom Drum Set

August 3, 2011 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Resources, Drums, Reader's Drum Pictures with 1 Comment

This is a guest post from John A. Ledingham, PhD. He and his new custom drum set reside in Columbus, Ohio.

I started out not as a drummer, but as a bass player in my hometown of Springfield, Ohio.

One Thursday afternoon, the leader of a group I was playing bass with called to tell me the band had been hired for a six-night-a-week gig, scheduled to begin the following Monday night. However, “Eddie” wanted me to play drums, not bass.  In fact, I had an older set someone had given me to settle a debt and I had been practicing playing on them for fun.  I tried to explain to Eddie that I was nowhere close to being ready to play a drum gig. “If you want the gig, you play drums,” Eddie insisted. When Monday came I was able to get by on the drums, but only barely. That was almost 50 years ago and I’ve been playing ever since.

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Drum Builder Interview: Jeremy Wolfe’s 2nd Custom Drum Set

July 28, 2011 in Drum Building Resources, Drums, Reader's Drum Pictures with 0 Comments

I recently had time to interview Jeremy Wolfe about his recent experience with building drums. This is the 2nd custom drum set he has built with the help of this site. Check out our conversation and pictures below!

Makedrums: Can you tell us about the drums you’ve built?
Jeremy: This is the second kit I have built. It’s the first using the E-Book. It was actually a rebuild from an older kit. The drums were originally wrapped in a dark red wrap. After using some wood filler and the “wet sanding” tip from the book the shells were then consistently smooth. I also plugged the original lugholes with filler because I was going for an alternate lug layout. Also the toms were cut to custom size. The 9×12 rack tom was cut to 7×12″ and the 16×16″ floor was cut to 12×16″. There was also a 10×13″ rack tom that was cut to 5×13″ which is now the snare drum. Finish is a simple white gloss spray with off centered double pinstripes that gradually get bigger according to shell size. Using the finishing steps in the book the build coat and pinstripe came easily. Top coat is the lacquer suggested in the book also and finally black hoops and hardware were put on to finish.
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My Drum Head Recipe – The Best Drum Heads for Bringing The Funk

July 6, 2011 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Resources, Drummer resources, Drums with 4 Comments

Over the years I have gone through hundreds (if not thousands) of drum heads between replacing them on my personal kits, and installing them on the custom drum sets that I build. Some drum heads have impressed me over and over and stayed on my kit for weeks, but other drum heads have come off my drum set after a few hours of playing them. This post will show you what drum heads I’ve generally trusted over the years to provide me with a sound that makes the engineers go wild. I’ll also tell you the pros and cons of each drum head, and my preference in how to tune each drum.

My current preference in drum heads for my kit:

Keep in mind I play mostly rock/pop/funk.

Snare Drum: Remo Ambassador Coated Drum Head + Remo Ambassador Snare Head, Hazy

  • Pros: Fairly cheap, almost always in stock at any music store, sounds great tuned low and tuned high, very articulate even for ghost notes.
  • Cons: 1 ply drum head can dent easily for heavy hitters and may need to be replaced more often.
  • My Tuning: I tune both batter and resonant heads to the same pitch, I try to tune them high enough to give me a mid-range “crack”, as well as giving me a good stick response. On the resonant head I tune the lugs closest to the snare wires about 2 turns tighter than the rest of the head. This allows the snare wires to have a more crisp and clean snap as well as picking up more snare snap when playing ghost notes.

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How to Refurbish an Old Drum Set – Breathe New Life Into Old Skins

June 23, 2011 in Drum Building Resources, Drum Building Tutorials, Drums, Reader's Drum Pictures with 1 Comment

This is a guest post by Jon Lee of MNI Drumworks in Austin, TX.

In the fall of 1993 my parents gave in.  The past 18 years had been a torturous, ear bleeding ordeal for both my Father and beautiful Mother.  I had slapped, hit, tapped, knocked, kicked, and played EVERYTHING in every house that we had ever lived in, or vehicle we had owned.  From banging on pots, pans, lamp shades (great cymbals), to foot pedal trash cans (great hi-hats) and seat cushions…I was born to play drums.

Music Lane Studios, Summer 1994

The only drum kit I have ever owned is as a 5 piece Mapex Mars kit (later 6 piece) that I bought from Phil Fisher at the Drum Connection on North Lamar in the summer of 1993.  The kit is obsolete by today’s standards, but there weren’t a lot of technological advances in drum design for beginner kits in the early 90s.  When Pearl and Tama introduced suspension mounting systems for drum kits under the $1,000 price range, it was a revolution.  A concept that just about every drum company foreign or domestic soon adhered too, including Mapex in the late 90s.  For me, I got to hit stuff really hard, and could hit stuff really hard without breaking my parent’s .  If anything the first few weeks playing would have been like watching an Animal impersonator screaming WOMAN  WOMAN while banging away in the garage.

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Classic Custom Drums by Brian Roberts

May 26, 2011 in Drums, Reader's Drum Pictures with 0 Comments

I’ve been chatting with Brian Roberts who has recently sent me some amazing pictures of the drums that he has built with the help of the eBook. I hope to post an interview with Brian soon to find out more about these amazing classic custom drums that he has set out to make a company around.

Phillip,

Hi there. I downloaded your book about six months ago and it lit a fire inside of me, and I am in the process of starting my own drum company. I’ve built drums and wrapped drums before, but at this point, I have not built a drumset under my company’s name – Roberts Drum Company.

You see, the idea behind my drums company is to build drums that look, sound and feel like vintage drums – and vintage drums only. So you wont find any 45 degree edges on my kits or any all maple shells etc. Right now, I’m in the process of raising support to fund the first prototype kit (a replica of a 1960’s Ludwig Super Classic set in silver sparkle…14×24 kick, 9×13 rack , 16×16 floor w/ a black beauty clone snare. My website is pretty understated and simple at this point. However, I’d really appreciate it if you would still include me in your blog.

The website is www.robertsdrums.com

Thanks, Phillip! You are an inspiration to me!

Thanks Brian for the email and the pictures! The drums look amazing!

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