No-BrainerDrum

Innovations10TopThe

From Playability To Portability, Each Feature Of The Modern Drum Set

Evolved From Years Of Trial And Error. But Some

Advancements Seem So Crucial We Can’t Imagine

Life Without Them.

e’ve all stayed up way past midnight and

saw those awful infomercials on TV and

thought to ourselves, “Why is this nec-

essary?” Who would have thought slicing vegetables

could be so diff icult we’d need a robot slicer? Does

anyone really ever need a dedicated hot dog toaster?

Then there are those products we can’t seem to live

WDRUMmagazine.com August 2012 DRUM! 69

By Kevin Schuenemann

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Swivel NutGeorge Way invented many things — pearl finishes on drums, the parallel throw-off, even the China cymbal (aka the Chinese Sneeze), but his greatest no-brainer innovation was the swivel nut, which allowed for easy alignment of the hoop and lugs and thus more even, reliable drumhead tuning without a bunch of stripped lug screws.

Drop ClutchThe drop clutch allows a drummer to play dou-ble kick drum parts while keeping the hi-hats open or closed. The drummer even has the op-tion of switching between the two by flicking a lever or stomping on the hi-hat pedal.

MutliclampsWith drum kits having eight or more stands, it’s not uncommon to become clut-tered and limited simply by the tripods taking up so much space. Utilizing a multiclamp re-moves a tripod or two from the equation while still allowing the identical cymbal setup.

Collapsible Truck DollyWe’ve all carried drums down long, skinny hallways, mak-ing multiple trips to the car. I would have given up drums long ago if this invention had not come about. The audience may never get to see the dolly, but I consider it a necessary and vital piece to the drum kit.

Standard-Size Drum Keys And Tension Rod HeadsJust like 19th century railroad engineers, early drum builders saw no need to create a

uniform-size tuning tension rod. Drummers, however, saw things differently. Some drums needed special wrenches, coins, or hexagonal tools, while others just needed

a screwdriver. Even the tension rods were threaded differently. Believe it or not, there still is no “standard” tension rod threading, even among brands like DW, which creates tension rods with higher thread counts than

other brands. However, to make things easier on the drummer, the drum manufacturers have seemed to all agree at least on the mod-ern square head.

Multi-Microphone SetupsEarly drummers, on up to Ringo Starr, often used only two microphones to play live shows and record. The sounds were often primitive and didn’t truly capture the talented drum-mers of the day. Today we typically use one microphone for each drum and in most live show situations, at least two on the snare, and another two on the kick drum. Today, the audience cannot tell if the drummer is playing to a track or actually playing the drums be-cause the sound quality has come far enough to confuse the human ear.

Internal Drum Microphone MountsSmall risers leave drummers with no room for kick drum microphones. And external mikes can easily pick up stray ambient sounds.

70 DRUM! August 2012 DRUMmagazine.com

The Top 10 No-Brainer Drum Innovationswithout. Various Apple i-products come to mind. And though at first glance it would seem drums haven’t changed that much since the days of Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, innovation has kept us chugging steadily along to the present.

And while some ideas have stuck and others didn’t, the ones that have really mean something.

Sometimes it’s important to look back and appreciate the little things that have made our lives so much easier. So, we cleaned out the storage unit, dusted off the old tub collection, and came up with a list of our top ten drum inno-vations that make you want to shout, “Why didn’t somebody think of this sooner?!”

Kick Drum Pedal

1Early kick drum pedals made their appearance in 1888 and included a striker

that could hit a cymbal attached to the kick drum hoop. This new invention allowed the drummer to be more versatile and play more drums, which bandleaders in tight orchestra pits embraced. However, the pedals had no spring mechanism returning the beater to a resting position, which forced the drummer to manually depress and then recoil the beater. Due to the exhaustive repetitive motion, the drummers often could not play for long periods of time.

In 1909, Theobald and Wil-liam F. Ludwig added a spring, which allowed the drummer to play longer and faster. Some models included a way to turn the cymbal striker off with their foot. For the first time, a single drummer could play a wide arrangement of drums,

cymbals, and percussion using their hands and feet. Eventu-ally the cymbal striker fell out of favor and we were left with the modern kick drum pedal.

The Modern Hi-hat Stand

2If snare drums are the center-piece of any drummer’s kit, surely hi-hats

Honorable Mentions Because Ten Wasn’t Nearly Enough

William F. Ludwig Sr. holds one of his first bass drum pedals, made in 1909.

The

“low boy”

aka, “sock

cymbal”

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DRUMmagazine.com August 2012 DRUM! 71

would be the cymbal equiva-lent. Hats of the roaring ’20s featured a pedal mechanism similar to kick drum pedals with cymbals attached that would clang together. It was similar to a modern hi-hat except it was kept very low to the ground, never intended to be hit with sticks — hence the name “low boy.”

After a chance stick drop, drummer and drum builder Barney Walberg noticed that now-famous gasping sound as the stick hit right at the opening action of the cymbals. After months of experimenting, Walberg’s company extended the inner rod and outer tube of his low hat stand to about waist high so he could play the cymbals with his hands as well as his feet. And so, in 1926, the modern hi-hat stand was born. Walberg was so confident that he named the new piece “Per-fection Hats,” and they quickly

flew off the shelves of every major drum company. Walberg may have been right about the name — in 86 years, very little has changed about the hi-hat stand. His company, Walberg And Auge, continued to make hardware for all the major drum com-panies, but remain to this day one of the most unsung leaders in drum innovation.

Double Bass Drum Pedal

3The very first widely recog-nized predeces-sor to metal’s little helper

didn’t come on the scene until

the early ’70s, after Austra-lian drummer/inventor Don Sleishman met handicapped drummer Evan Biddle. Biddle’s left arm had not fully developed, and so he compen-sated by having two kick drums to fill out those missing beats. Sleishman took note of this and struck on the novel idea of adapting a double bass drum setup

(already popularized by drummers such as Louie Bellson, Ginger Baker, Keith Moon, and Ronnie Tut) into something more manage-able for a handicapped musician. Sleishman built a double pedal prototype for Biddle and made it privately for friends for years before

Internal mike mounts, such as the Kelly SHU and May System, utilize already predrilled lug screws and/

or vent holes to allow you to keep your mikes inside your

drums, where the sound is pur-est. This allows the drummer to have an iso-lated microphone without the cumbersome stands and, more importantly, allows touring drummers to keep the microphone inside the drum indefinitely, eliminating a significant part of each set-up experience.

Bearing Edge ManipulationLike almost everything else on this list, bearing edges allow the drum-mer to fine tune a sound once they decide on one. Most drums used to come standard with a 45 degree inside edge and a rounded outside edge. By cutting the outside edge 45 degrees as well, the drum-mer’s sound becomes tighter and more con-trollable as the outside edge does not touch the rounded collar of the drumhead. These days, however, various angles are used to elicit specific sounds, with more rounded edges creating softer, vintage tones favored by jazz players. Having your drum’s edges recut by a professional is a great way to get

a whole new range of sounds from damaged or otherwise unsatisfactory shells.

Stave ShellsMade similar to a conga drum, a stave shell (usually a snare drum) uses no plies but is often thick, up to 1.5" or more! Stave shells utilize much less glue than traditional ply shells, which not only increase the true sound of the shell, but also allows the grain of the wood to be book-matched vertically, so the sound travels through the wood from head to head unimpeded by glue or other fillers.

Nylon Tip Drum Sticks Nylon-tipped sticks — invented

by Joe Calato of the Regal Tip Company, who also patented the first

retractable brushes — appeared in the late ’60s and increased the projection and clarity of cymbal patterns, as well as increasing the durability of the stick tip.

Drum TriggersFor the drummer who absolutely will not play on electronic drums but still needs special sound effects or inhuman levels of consistency, Ddrum

revolutionized the industry with its Acoustic Drum Triggers. With a trigger, a drum can now sound like a click, a clap, or even a waterfall.

Independent LugsEarly drums were rope-tuned with a crank that tightened the top and bottom heads simultane-ously. Adding independent lugs allowed for the bottom to be tuned higher and the top head to be pitched lower, or vice versa, resulting in a more customizable sound. Americans were slow to embrace the innovation but Europeans welcomed it and it became standard in Ger-many 30 years before catching on in America.

Max RoachOkay, an innovator, not an innovation. But man, did he change the face of drumming. Roach transformed drums in the 1940s from their largely time-keeping role to an ex-pressive musical instrument. He did this in large part by play-ing the downbeats on the hi-hat as opposed to the kick drum. This enabled soloists to freely wander the scale while allowing room for accents and pauses instead of trapping the music under a downbeat.

Original Sleishman Twin Pedal

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72 DRUM! August 2012 DRUMmagazine.com

The Top 10 No-Brainer Drum Innovationslaunching publicly in 1978. Since this innovation, almost every drum company offers a descendant of Don Sleish-man’s “Twin Pedal.”

Electronic Drum Kits

4Graeme Edge, drummer for The Moody Blues, holds the distinction of

creating the first known recording using electronic drums (on “Procession,” from 1971’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favor). “This was pre-chip days,” Edge said. “Back then you did it all with transistors … like, 500 transistors. The electronic drums inside looked some-thing like spaghetti.”

The kit had six snares, thirteen tom-toms, eight bass drums, sixteen sequencers, and incorporated a tambou-rine. Although the drum sounds didn’t match acoustic drums, the new sounds, which included the classic “trash can” effect, opened up a new sonic palette to drummers. In 1978, Simmons began produc-tion on its line of electronic drum kits. Simmons’ signa-ture dzzzzshh and clap sounds became staples of the ’80s and are still used heavily today. The entirety of rap and hip-hop owes a debt to Edge and his electronic kit.

Isolation Tom Mounts

5The Rogers Drum Company’s Swiv-O-Matic tom holder featured the

innovation of a ball-and-socket connection that exponentially increased movement and flexibility. Even Ludwig drummers such as Ringo Starr, Mitch Mitchell, and John Bonham used Swiv-O-Matic hardware. The Swiv-O-Matic represented the first significant thought drum builders had given to the mounting of toms.

The year 1979 brought out the RIMS (Resonance Isolation Mounting System), created by Gary Gauger of Gauger Percus-sion in a recording studio after cross talk from tom mounts transferred the vibrations into other toms and kick drums mounted from the same stand. The RIMS innovation eliminated the acoustical “short circuit” and “choking” effect on the resonance created by the drums, which drum builders of-ten overlooked. Due to the slow

reaction of drum builders to this chronic problem, RIMS re-mained a secret of studio drum-mers for years. The system has since become commonplace, and RIMS or their equivalent are now featured on the drums of many manufacturers.

Mylar Drumheads

6In 1957, Remo Belli learned about a new film being produced by DuPont. The

Mylar film intrigued Mr. Belli because of its low cost, weather resistance, and durability. As a drummer, he knew the pitch and tone of Mylar would work as a great substitute for calfskin heads. Remo traveled the Midwest pitching his new drumheads, dubbed “The Weatherking” after his dramatic demonstra-

tions of pouring water onto the heads and

then playing them,

something inconceiv-able with calfskin. This act proved the heads’

viability for many

dealers across the country. But

convincing musicians who had

grown accustomed to the old natural heads was a little more difficult. Chick Evans had invented a different plastic drumhead around the same time and encountered the same hesitations Remo did with musician accep-tance. Jazz musicians still preferred calfskin.

With the ’60s came the new sound of rock and roll and a steady supply of younger, more aggressive players seeking longer-lasting drumheads that could keep

their tone and pitch through punishing sets and despite changes of humidity and weather. Before long, Remo and Evans became the domi-nant forces in the drumhead industry, eventually supplant-ing nearly all calfskin heads with Mylar.

Snare Throw-off

7Snare drums had been around for a long time by 1913, and, before radios were invented,

had even been used in combat to signal troops; a commander could order a few snare drum players to play a cadence that could be heard for miles. These drums found their way into the modern drum set and before long became the centerpiece.

In 1913, Julius A. Meyer came up with the idea for a snare throw-off when an or-chestra he was in played a piece for which he needed to mute the snares and play the drum like a tom tom, quickly followed by a funeral cadence played with the snares engaged. Not long after filing for his patent, every drum company was making some variation of Meyer’s snare drum “muffler.” They became standard on snare drums throughout the 1920s. The look of the models varied, includ-ing a few parallel versions, but

The

Swiv-O-Ma-

tic finally set

toms free

The PETA-

approved

drumhead

choice

Simmons put a hex on drums

Early at-tempts were heavy on the

hardware

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Ads_01.indd 73 6/13/12 3:50 PM

74 DRUM! August 2012 DRUMmagazine.com

The Top 10 No-Brainer Drum Innovationslargely they performed the same task of releasing the tension of the snares against the bottom head.

In 1960–’61 Rogers began production on its famous Dyna-Sonic snare drums, which featured a frame to keep the tension of the snares tight and had an independent throw-off that released the frame from the head. The effect of the frame was that the snares could now be tensioned as tight as the drummer liked without choking the bottom drumhead’s vibrations.

The Drum Rack

8Drums have always been cumbersome to haul around and store. One of the first innovations after the advent of the “drum set” was a wheeled

system of tubes to attach cowbells and cymbals, making mobility much easier. The drum rack fell out of favor with musicians in the ’50s, ’60s, and most of the ’70s, when simpler kits were in vogue. The ’80s metal

scene brought back the drum rack in a completely new and flamboyant way. Besides just reducing the weight of bulky stands and clutter, these racks had an almost sculptural quality — a sculpture that doubled as a solid folded metal frame.

Since the re-emergence of drum racks, almost every manufacturer now produces a basic rack with customizable parts al-lowing the drummer to create their own look. Often the drum rack itself is just as famous as the drummer playing behind it. Rikki Rockett, Ray Luzier, Terry Bozzio, Scott Rockenfield, and Tommy Aldridge are well known for their over-the-top, often twisted stage setups. Hip-hop groups got into the twisted-metal look as well with the advent of The Lou Rider, a drum kit played by Snoop Dogg and Kottonmouth Kings, which incorporated a bicycle as the basic drum frame and throne. Small drum risers were no longer an issue with Greg Voelker’s rack by hang-ing the kick drums off the edge of the riser and giving the drummer more space. The UFO-looking Drumframe elevated the kit and relaxed the drummer into a racecar seat. There is no stopping the custom-izable looks created by a few pieces of chrome pipes and connections.

Moongel

9Early drum builders were not concerned with the overtones cause by drums given their supportive role in large ensembles and the

lack of sophisticated recording technol-ogy. Drummers learned to tune around the overtones and ringing. A few higher end drum kits came with dampeners on all the drums so you could adjust to a comfortable level without the drum sounding like a towel. As many other drummers did during the 1960s, drummer George Weimmer would cut the hoop and inner part of old drum heads, leaving a 2" round strip of plastic

SUPERNATURALCYMBALS.COM

I’m a Natural!______

Are you a Natural?Visit www.supernaturalcymbals.com or Facebook/Supernatural Cymbals Worldwide and let us know your story. If chosen, you could appear in future advertisements for Supernaturals and tell the world why you play drums and choose Supernaturals.

“My name is Lem McEwen. I'm originally from Chicago, IL but I live in Sacramento, CA. My Dad, Clarence McEwen, introduced me to music early and I started playing drums at the age of three. My teacher, Phil Crews, and many other influences helped me grow. Gospel, Jazz and Fusion are some of my favorite types of music to play. I like Supernatural Cymbals because of their sound and versatility. The Heritage Series is my favorite because of the dark wash and short sustain. I've always had the type of sound I want to hear in my head when I play and I finally found the right cymbals that work in the studio and live settings. These cymbals truly work in any situation for me.”

Visit www.supernaturalcymbals.com or Facebook/Supernatural Cymbals Worldwide and let us know your story. If chosen, you could appear in future advertisements for Supernaturals and tell the world why you play drums and choose Supernaturals.

The Heritage jazz collection starts with the name itself. The Heritage line is inspired by natural hand hammering techniques and is usually "raw" in looks. Dark wash and short sustain speak to Jazzers and Blues drummers as well as drummers looking to experiment in their cymbal voice. Heritage cymbals can be customized per size and gram weight to accommodate any gig or recording application. The Heritage Jazz collection delivers all the characteristics expected in a premier cymbal line.

Lem McEwenCurrently playing with

Improv Artist Miss Mouth Peace,

Step Jayne Band and

Center Of Praise Church

“My name is Lem McEwen. I'm originally from Chicago, IL but I live in Sacramento, CA. My Dad, Clarence McEwen, introduced me to music early and I started playing drums at the age of three. My teacher, Phil Crews, and many other influences helped me grow. Gospel, Jazz and Fusion are some of my favorite types of music to play. I like Supernatural Cymbals because of their sound and versatility. The Heritage Series is my favorite because of the dark wash and short sustain. I've always had the type of sound I want to hear in my head when I play and I finally found the right cymbals that work in the studio and live settings. These cymbals truly work in any situation for me.”

The Heritage jazz collection starts with the name itself. The Heritage line is inspired by natural hand hammering techniques and is usually "raw" in looks. Dark wash and short sustain speak to Jazzers and Blues drummers as well as drummers looking to experiment in their cymbal voice. Heritage cymbals can be customized per size and gram weight to accommodate any gig or recording application. The Heritage Jazz collection delivers all the characteristics expected in a premier cymbal line.

Are you a Natural?

Lem McEwenCurrently playing with

Improv Artist Miss Mouth Peace,

Step Jayne Band and

Center Of Praise Church

I'm a Natural Lem McEwen.indd 1 6/5/12 7:57 PM

Ray Luzier

with his

monster

drum rack

Photograph: RobeRt D

ow

ns

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DRUMmagazine.com August 2012 DRUM! 75

that he would place over his new drumhead, significantly reducing the overtones and ringing. The plastic rings, however, always seemed to find ways to slide or bounce off the head.

In 1992, Tom Rogers was experi-menting with gel to make an electronic drumhead. The gel-based head didn’t quite work and was more expensive than initially thought. However, during the experimentation stages, the gel was placed on a cymbal. When played, the gel controlled the amount of resonance while still allowing the tone of the cymbal to shine through. Drummers quickly learned that simply applying a small amount of “moongel” greatly reduced the amount of overtones in cymbals and drumheads, allowing them to fine-tune the resonance. The drummer could now get the custom-ized sound he wanted without crazy amounts of muffling and tape.

Everything Within Reach

10The modern drum kit, as complex as it is and with an endless supply of gadgets, still has not ceased to compel drum-

mers and drum builders to innovate. Some drummers, such as John Morrison, play solos performed entirely on pieces of the kit normally ignored by other drummers, like the hi-hat stand, while not touching the cymbals. Another great creation was Remo’s Spoxe, which effectively turned roto-tom brackets into hi-hats. Other high-profile bands, like Slipknot and Nile, continue to innovate drums and percus-sion by incorporating household and common items like saw blades, a boat propeller, car tire rims, and baseball bats. There are countless other drummers who often can’t afford the high price of drum

gadgets invert crash cymbals to form Chinas or drill into them to create new effects sounds. Stomp! and Blue Man Group have even found a way to be percussive with brooms, PVC piping, and Zippo lighters. Street drummers even have their own niche among YouTubers by finding whatever is available — including a kitchen sink! No matter what background they come from, drummers seem to push forward new ideas and find ways to get previously unobtainable sounds through their own talents. I look forward to the next couple of decades to see what has become of drumming then.

Simplicity is the secret to Moongel’s success

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