More experience as a drummer, less muffling of the kit..what does that tell us?

NUTHA JASON said:

you have to really earn the right and be darn lucky to GET YOUR OWN SOUND. john bonham had his own sound. lucky guy.

but in the modern arena it should be all song first and ego last. once you have been on many albums, are in a huge super group etc then maybe you can get a signature sound. i'd rather be known for my playing than for how my kit sounds. as long as the kit sounds good in the song my job is to make the drumming sound good in the song.

j

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Couldn't agree more. Funny thing about "that" sound. Bill Bruford had a distinctive drum style on the early YES albums and notably the snare was unique sounding, for years he said it was a secret when asked if it was a special tuning, finally he revealed that the sound came from the fact that Chris Squire plays very high up on the bass scale and subsequently Bruford said he had to hit rim shots all of the time in order not to be lost in the mix, the producer did the rest. Adapting and overcoming a problem created The end result and not a desire to produce a "Bruford sound" . His playing style I would say is unique however.

Wouldn't say it's down to experience just the sound you're going for. I personally prefer the open unmuffled sound but am prepared to dampen depending on the circumstances.
A famous producer once taped down a leather wallet on my snare and I was more than happy with the results because it suited the music I was playing at the time. That kinda dead 70's sound.

There is also the argument that less experienced drummers don't know how to tune and muffling a drum becomes the easy way out. That's a different story though as those people are just going for the only sound they know how to deal with whereas the more experience have the option of muffled or open.

It's just about tuning and muffling to fit what's best for the music.

Stoney said:

That kinda dead 70's sound.

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Oh, thanks alot! (from a 70's drummer) :-} Joking aside, I do admit that yanking off resos, cloth in drums, duct tape, etc, ad nauseum went way overboard during that era. But it was also an era when lower drum tunings started, too. Dead on dead was the result

Stoney said:

There is also the argument that less experienced drummers don't know how to tune and muffling a drum becomes the easy way out. That's a different story though as those people are just going for the only sound they know how to deal with whereas the more experience have the option of muffled or open.

It's just about tuning and muffling to fit what's best for the music.

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Many drummers these days don't even try to tune, just keeping everything but the snare a twist above wrinkle. I wonder why anybody would even pay more for exotic woods with a tuning scheme like that. I think maybe some of the more experienced drummers need to make more of a point to the younger ones how much better a set sounds when tuned correctly, and how exactly to get it to that point. I admit I was one of those 70's dead on dead guys until I finally learned about tuning and using the reso to eat nasty sounding overtones.

I would think that most drummers, well with the exception of ones playing really loud music, muffle their snare. With loud music, the snar can't be dampened imo, the craxk and what not is a plus. But i think that a little muffling of the snare gives it a nice pop. My favourite snare sounds are jojo and weckl....both muffle their snares. I think it depends on size aswell, find theres no need to dampen a 6.5" as much as a 5"....i like the low end pop

i was all about muffling everything until i started listening to some live recordings of my bands. everything on the live recordings sounded like cardboard! the latest recordings with no muffling definitely sound better to me, especially the snare and the toms.

i think if i were using mics on my drums i might still muffle. and i still believe that muffling in the recording studio can be good.

There are a few parallel points going on here.

Yes, beginners tend to over muffle their drums. They have often not learned to tune well and have not learned what the drums sound like in the overall mix. Sitting right on top of them, they probably sound far too ringy. Also, beginners often don't have good dynamic control and muffling can be a response to being told that they are playing too loud.

There there was the overreaction by recording engineers (which has spilled over to live sound "producers", opps I mean sound engineers) to close micing and the technology answer to kill the drum and then artificially recreate the sustain.

And then there is the appropriateness to the music. Which is largely a matter of density and precedence in the mix. A prog thing like ELP (Carl had fairly open sounding drums) would use them mixed in hotter than a pop song. So there was room for the open sustainy sound. The drums were an integral part of the melodic arrangement. On a pop song, a fill would be a rhythmic accent, often together in unison or counterpoint to several other things while burried in a dense mix. So they need to be drier in order to be distinct and fit in the mix.

In a trio setting where the sound is more open, large open toms have room to fit in the overall mix. But in a larger ensemble with more going on, I like the sound of smaller toms, usually tuned higher so that they have their own place. The alternative is to tune them lower but deaden the sustain so that you mostly hear the (higher pitched) attack.

I have a pretty crappy kit, and muffling used to sound awesome. But as I played more and with people, I came to admire people who didn't muffle and knew how to tune. So I started experimenting with less and less muffling until I ended up with a bass drum with nothing in it, and some remo rings that I put on and take off depending on the mood.