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Practice both. Either way you'll get used to it, I've done both throughout my thirty years of drumming. If you play hard, though, I'd recommend shoes. Hammering the BD barefoot for an hour, week after week, can take a toll. (Nicko McBrain may be an exception but that guy is inhuman.)

I think I'm lucky in that I play with a few different bands and use different set ups for each band, including different sticks. In the course of a week I'll have rehearsed with all three and used three different weights of sticks in doing so. I think the variety has helped my technique, in...

That's only true to a degree. It's not like I change heads depending on circumstance, but I absolutely take the room into account when assessing how to tune my drums. Thirty seconds of quick adjustments can, in my experience, make a huge difference. (To me, if not the audience...or band...

Do y'all have any particular rules about tuning for an outdoor gig? I'm talking the pure instrument sound, not including PA of any kind (I just did an outdoor gig yesterday and there was no mic'ing of any kind - no singer in this band). I haven't figured it out yet, but it's clear to me that...

Could have written this myself. Agree 100%. As Bermuda says, it's all about what you want to get from playing drums. Right now I play in a surf band, covering original 60's surf music and doing a few more modern songs (e.g. Gary Numan's 'Cars') in a surf style. I try to keep as close to the...

Interesting! Reminds me of the 70's.... Are you planning on using them just for lower volume, or are there other reasons as well? I'm figuring the sound is a little different, but I'm curious as to how they'd integrate with an otherwise conventional kit.

It's black, fortunately - opens up options a bit. And I've started looking around, I've found some decent floor toms but I really want a 10" rack tom, haven't found a good one of those yet. But I'm patient. That's good to know - I did find some PDPs for sale on our local Facebook yard-sale page...

Wow, great info - thanks again so much. I'm excited to get going on this kit!!!

I keep finding recommendations for the Aquarian heads on a kit this size. On my bigger kits it was almost always Remos and occasionally Evans, which also seemed to be the recommended heads for larger kits; what is it about Aquarians that makes them so popular with the smaller kits?

Very interesting! And COOL! You're making me rethink things a little - maybe I'll keep the RT bass drum and just find some good toms to go along with it. What you've done requires a lot less $$ than what I'd planned, but it will also require a little more effort - which is just fine with me...

Excellent info, drumguy. Thank you for the input. For the Aquarian heads, what weight/style did you use?

No, no need to go above $800 on the kits...what you've named are perfect for my needs (and budget). And I am a hard hitter - part of the reason I wanted a smaller kit: so that I can play somewhat close to how I normally play, without blowing out the rest of the band in a setting that doesn't...

This is VERY helpful - I really appreciate you taking the time to lay all this out for me. I've got some online searching to do! Thanks very much, man. One last thing: once I settle on a kit, I'm going to hit you up for suggestions regarding heads. That's what you get for helping a guy out!...

Well, a big part of it is that the Rhythm Traveler kit I got wasn't complete - it was just the bass drum and a tom. Plus, the RT kit's toms have no bottom heads. They just don't have enough 'body' and sustain, I thought the Club Jam toms looked a lot closer to 'real' toms. Do you think it would...

I've been experimenting and working with a small kit recently, for a variety of reasons. A lower-volume kit allows me flexibility to play more kinds of venues (small clubs, restaurants, etc.), play with more kinds of artists (mainly female singers in front of a small combo), and concentrate on...

In over 30 years of playing to live audiences, I can't count the number of times I've had someone - the sound man, the club manager, an audience member, the bartender - tell me/my band that we're too loud. In all that time, I've had two complaints that the drums were too quiet. Two. Both...

I could be paranoid, but I'm sensing some sarcasm here...

Edge of the bed, the arm of a cushioned chair, a rolled up towel wrapped around my knee, an old throne seat, a pillow, a folded-up jacket...all things I've used for practice. I really wouldn't put too much thought into it.

I'd say the listening audience's ears are more sensitive to perfect time nowadays, after several decades of computer-perfect timing on virtually all popular records. And with digital recording providing the option of re-aligning a live take to match with 'the grid' (ah, the dreaded 'grid'), I...

I've played some pretty horrible original tunes...but that's where I tell myself that if I come up with a really killer drum part, I can turn the tune around. It's an honest attempt to make lemonade out of lemons - but just as honestly, it rarely works out that way: some songs are so bad that no...