Check out this great post about the essential beats of rock and roll. They boil it down to some great beginner beats, and everyone wanting to get started on drumming could check this out.
A great drummer once told me, play less unless you must. The “less is more” strategy is very effective in drumming. A drummer who can play a simple beat effectively and convincingly is always recognized as as a sympathetic and supportive player.
There are many, many different ways to produce drums in a live setting.
For some drummers, it’s a simple case of “let the sound guy handle it”. If you are lucky enough to have an experienced person to handle your live mix, then good for you!
But, for the rest of the working musicians in the world, the luxury of having a dedicated person to mix for band may be just out of reach cash-wise, or it can also be a personal preference, in such that maybe you or your band doesn’t know anyone capable of doing the job at an acceptable or professional level. In short, your best friend who wanted to get into the club for free by being your “roadie”, may or may not be qualified to twist knobs for your band. And in my experience, nothing can ruin a great gig worse than poorly produced drum sounds. If you have to produce yourself at gigs, then you’re in a great spot to learn and earn as you go.
So what’s the secret? Experience helps, but even a beginner, if they follow some basic rules you can have acceptable results for live drum sounds.
Tip #1
Don’t over do it.
Drums by nature are can be very loud, and unless your drummer is very dynamic and understands how to control their technique, any live mix can become chaos very quickly with poor drum production. My best advice to beginners it to start simple, listen to the band in the room that they’re playing in, and try to keep the drums “in the mix” not too loud, but still coming thru the PA system.
This is a tricky task. Some drummers play at one volume and intensity at sound check, and then somewhere between the final note of sound check and the first note of the gig- they somehow transform into the “Gorilla” and suddenly the volume of the drums override everything. This can be attributed to a very natural “enthusiasm”, in essence people tend to play louder during the show than at sound check. So if you’re the person in charge of sound, be ready to roll back the drum volume on the first song if you happen to be in a band with an enthusiastic drummer. The extra headroom can come in handy as the performance develops.
Tip #2
Mic Placement
For as many different drummers as there are, there can be as many different microphone placements. Jazz and blues drummers can at times “get by” with fewer mics.
This should not be considered a hard and fast rule. Many blues and jazz drums feel fine with a simple “kick – overhead” mic placement. This would allow you to set the kick drum mic to fill in the “bottom” of the mix and allow a single mic overhead (typically a condenser, but not required) to grab the rest of the kit in what is usually a very balanced fashion. The snare tends to be loud by nature, with a little high-end rolled up the overhead also captures the cymbals and the overhead will grab the toms too.
More modern or rock drummers tend to like “a mic on each drum”.
It can be as easy as placing a mic on each drum, but can get complicated if there is a lot of “crosstalk” between drum mics or if the band’s style demands a lot of compression or reverb. Crosstalk can be bothersome, but if you are a practical person you may or may not be able to use it to your advantage. If for instance, you have some reverb effect on your snare, you may not need to put any on your toms- in fact many times the reverb effect on the snare is distinct enough to provide a little of the same effect on the tom-toms; the mic on the snare is still “live” even when the drummer isn’t using it, so when the toms “bleed” a little into the snare mic, it can provide a small (sometimes just right) amount of reverb on your toms too. That way you can get a “big verb” sound on your snare, allowing your tom-toms a clear resonance, not diffused by adding verb, but not all together “dry” either.
Tip #3
Overall Balance
Remember, at a live gig, the drums tend to be the hardest thing to wrangle.
Too quiet, too loud, not enough “punch” are all common complaints.
Where do you start? I tend to setup the kick and snare at what I think are the correct levels, then bring in a little of the tom mics (if you’re using them). Then, add in all the other members of the band- bass, guitars, keys, vocals. Make sure you get the proper vocal placement (on “top” if you’re mixing for a vocal act, “in the mix” if a heavy metal or rock act- A “general rule”, it always depends on the individual act.) I tend to add the toms and overhead cymbal mics last. Not that those are any less important, but the cymbals (unless you’re playing a huge concert stage) tend to bleed into every vocal mic on stage in smaller or medium sized rooms, so to that end the amount of overhead needed to fill out the sound could possibly be less than if you checked the drums alone. This is due to the “bleed” factor, unlike some people, for live work, I tend to use bleed to my advantage, since it’s hard to overcome completely and can be used to your advantage.
Tip #4 Feedback
Ok, so you’ve got the great mix- vocals on top, bass `kickin, guitars blazing, drums big and killer. All of a sudden, there’s a squealing feedback that makes everyone in the place wince with pain. The band looks at you, you look at the band, and the club owner is counting the minutes until he pulls the plug.
Don’t freak out.
Counter to what you might think, if it’s a high pitched squeal, the cause may or may not be the “high end” on a certain channel of your console
If it’s a “low rumble”, you may or may not have a low end buildup.
In short, if it’s a high squeal, don’t think you “must” start rolling off high end.
It may be an overload of high frequencies, but it may be a mid range vocal over loading things and causing a buildup that makes the feedback.
First- try to discern if the feedback is coming thru the mains or the monitors.
Did you have to highly accentuate a set of frequencies to make a band member happy?
For example, did the lead singer need a bunch of midrange to fill out his monitor?
When ever you have to “spike” a frequency in excess, that can cause feedback.
Many times I’ve had drummers ask for “lots of low end” on the kick drum. It’s a normal thing for drummers to want a big, ballsy kick drum sound. But, in practice if you add too much low end to a drum that is already basically all “low end”, you can cause a variety of feedback problems. Again, when you sound checked the level might have been perfect.
But once a percussionist starts “getting into it”, the volume and frequency buildups can turn the perfect mix into a perfect terror.
If you do encounter feed back due to overloading frequencies, just roll it back a little and judge the results yourself. You’ll know soon enough which channels of the mix are causing the problem and with a little rational thinking and remembering what happened to get you there, any feedback can and will be eliminated.
Getting started in percussion I was a real pest to the other drummers I knew.
What’s the magic fill? What do I do to develop my chops? How do I learn to keep time?
One of the initial things I worked on was building both hands. I’m right handed, so certain things were easier to play accurately while leading with my right hand, some things were easier to play leading with my left. A drummer friend pointed out that a tendency to use one hand or another was one of the first things to work on. It seemed insurmountable. How could I overcome my natural tendency? A lot of practice, that’s how! And somewhere, in all that practice, I think I unlocked something in my brain. Seriously. While not exactly applicable to everyday life, the ability to think with and work with both sides of your brain, I find to be a plus.
That said, here’s a beginner lesson for single stroke roll that covers the aspect of using both hands to lead, and how you need to practice those bad habits (not being as fluent when leading with one hand or another) out.
When I started playing drums I didn’t own my own kit. As engineer at a local recording studio I did have access to a kit much of the time, but it’s when I started teaching at a local music store that I started playing closer to “full time”. All was not easy when playing on drums owned by the music store! To begin with, it’s pretty much used drums only. Lucky for me there were lots of used drums around. Nice ones too, Tama, Ludwig, Gretsch- but the good ones didn’t last long, so I got used to playing cheap kits too.
I think the best part was getting to play on various drum kits! I got to experience lots of different kick pedals, so my technique (if you can call it that) didn’t develop with one pedal. Now I know how to play on any kick pedal, and what the limitation are with the equipment. The other “best thing” was getting to play in a big open room. And that was a multifold blessing. I got to know the sounds of drums in a big room loud AND quiet. When the ever so kind store owner would give me the wave of his hand I had to take the drumming from concert level rocking to barely a whisper tapping, sometimes remaining tacet until the interaction with the customer was completed.
That was a real world lesson in dynamics.
