Duct Tape and Drum In A Box

Masheanhed

Senior Member
I sat in for the regular drummer at the church I attend today. The drums from when I have been in the audience sound good but to me they have always had a muted sound. The normal drummer plays harder than I do and I have heard the other members mention he plays hard so I suppose it is not just me that thinks that.The drums (Pearl Sessions) are situated in one of those plexiglass booths with a carpeted roof and back wall.

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The heads had pieces of duct tape on them, each about four inches long and about an inch wide, placed with the middle of the tape pulled up and the sides taped to the head so the middle creates a inch tall flap. The snare had three pieces, the tom three, and the floor tom six. The bass drum had a four inch thick piece of foam rubber inside it that circled the entire inside. All the drums were mic'ed.

I played two services and heard a guy mention that I was playing "kinda light" in the first service (I have no idea who this guy was in relation to the band or sound guy). I felt like I had to thrash the drums to get any sound from them as inside the box they sounded like cardboard. I had to wear earphones for the monitors and the drums were not in the monitor mix. I mentioned later to the guitar player I couldn't hear myself in the monitor and he said "yeah (the other drummer) complains about that too".

Playing in this kind of set up is new to me. Normally when I play it is with a mic'ed kit, sometimes mics on each tom, sometimes with one on the bass and an overhead, just depending on the size of the place, and I usually have a monitor on the floor next to me, but it is open. My question is...is this a normal set up for this situation? It all just seemed like it was "mute overkill". Is this normal for a set up like a church? I know this was likely to give the sound guy control of how the drum sounds but why mute a drum like this and then try to make it sound like a drum again in a mixer board? Also, what does the 'box" do?
 
There is nothing :Normal" about that set up to me.
There is no need for the drums to be in a booth.
A drum screen would do and there is no need to tape drum heads.
I play in a Jazz band with acoustic instruments and I use light maple sticks and a either a Jungle or a Bop kit with a 16" or 18" bass drum.
Volume is not a problem
 
The plexiglass box keeps the volume of the drums down....for both those on stage and those in the crowd.

I have no idea if it's a normal church set up though. I'm hard pushed to be found in one even for weddings and funerals. I'll leave that one to those who know.
 
All the churches that Ive been to have mute overkill. It's ridiculous. I play my drums at church and don't have any muting at all. The glass cage is to lower the volume of drums. But with all the muting on the drum it's overkill. Many church drummers never learn control because of that. I can make my drums sound loud or soft depending. I'm rambling. Sorry.
 
Unfortunately, this (the plexiglass box) is very common in a church setting. I think heavy muting is the norm in this environment because alot of church's have a rotation of especially younger players that have not learned to control their volume. So, they just arrange things so that it can be controlled from the booth.
The second option, as with my church, is the use of an e-kit. Even though it's a nice kit, I hate playing the thing. But, I guess, it's better than being in a cage. Maybe?
Monitor issues are also common in a church gig. I have learned to make do the best i can in the situation as frustrating as it can be sometimes.
 
I've played drums in three different churches of varying sizes and approaches to worship music. Each has used a screen or a cage, but in vastly different ways.

The plexiglass screen was originally intended to roll some highs off the kit that tend to bleed into other stage mikes. As many churches have small stages and volunteer/amateur sound techs, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It also works in reverse: Your drum mikes are isolated from all the other sound on stage, and so you get a great, pure drum tone, *IF*:
- your drums are tuned worth a dingo's kidney;
- you're miked;
- your miked sound is mixed properly;
- you have an adequate monitor mix.

Also, consider the room. Most church sanctuaries are great big rooms built to project the spoken voice. That's awesome, except that a drumset played with authority is going to sound like cannons going off inside a warehouse. So sound techs, worship leaders, etc. etc. tend to overcompensate by mixing the drums way down (or worse, not even miking them up). Adding to this confusion is an undercurrent of young, inexperienced drummers who don't know themselves necessarily how to tune a drum to sound good, confronted with a bunch of people who insist he not be so loud, and a sound tech who's grasping at straws. It's enough to drive you mad.

Fortunately, in my case I've been playing going on 30 years, I'm not unskilled at the alchemic art of drum tuning, and I know my way around miking and mixing a drumset. What I do in all cases:
1) When I am asked to start playing drums for a church, I go at the earliest opportunity to inspect the drumset on hand. Very rarely have these sets been crap. usually drums can be made to sound okay with some work. In your case, I would have started ripping off tape and tuning drums. If the heads are beat to heck, that's the time to ask the worship leader what the chances are of getting new heads. If he/she balks, you can always explain that it's the equivalent of trying to play a guitar with two-year-old strings. They might understand that. More often, the cymbals are the issue: B8s or ZBTs, and that's easy to fix... I schlep my own cymbals in every time I play, in that case.
2) Are the drums miked? If they aren't and everything else is amplified, you may have an uphill struggle. The worship leader and the church leadership either don't know or don't care. But even an overhead and a kick mike can start making a difference immediately.
3) If you have any miking, do you have a monitor? If so, what control do you have over the mix? I've had everything from no monitor (!), to a monitor shared with the keyboard player (and trust me, we don't want to hear the same things), to a personal in-ear monitor system that has me mixed across four channels, plus every other instrument with my own controls right there in the booth. That would be ideal, but it's money that many churches don't have. Again, you need to educate the sound tech on what you need and don't need.

This is not necessarily "normal", but it's not unheard of, either. I took the bull by the horns at my new church by educating people. I pointed out to the worship leader that the congregation isn't clapping on 2 and 4.... because they can't hear the snare... because the mic is not mixed in, and it's not pointed at the right spot on the snare... and before you know it, boy, those people are clapping and talking about how great the worship is all of a sudden!

Not all churches get it. This is part of the "worship wars" that have been going on in churches for dozens of years. Do your best to make the drums sound good, and if you get stonewalled, well, it's a volunteer ministry. Unvolunteer.
 
Drum booth, duct/electrical tape and tissue paper abuse, drum heads at wrinkle point, non-existent stage monitoring, woeful maintenenace, drummers who have no concept of dynamics … It makes we want to laugh AND cry at the same time. The political situation is equally pathetic. The kids in the band aren't interested in what "old" people like me think, and the elders who "support" them are even more clueless. A couple of years ago I volunteered to overhaul the then pathetic existing kit, and managed to get it to sound decent. I also offered to conduct workshops on drum maintenance and setups, and playing dynamics. But the Church had more "pressing issues" to deal with, so it never happened. Since then, someone donated a newer kit and a booth. But the newer kit is now just as pathetic as the old one, and as expected, the booth has just created more problems than it was supposed to solve.

In his desperation, the head Pastor (who agrees with me but is usually outvoted by the rest of the Church elders om this issue) cunningly asked me to be a guest drummer for the March Church anniversary "praise and worship" Sunday. Stupid me agreed only if I brought my own kit, and be allowed to play with no booth. This means this "old man" will have to start practicing more often until March, and will probably have to hire a roadie beause I don't looking forward to heavy lifting. I pray this helps proves my point, and that people start listening to reason.
 
LUCKILY The drummer who started our church worship band was good enough to be able to only use a screen.

Same situation at my uni chapel, we just use a screen and rods/play lightly.

Churches are great places to use E kits.
 
I started drumming at my church last year and have experienced many of the "church drummer's woes" mentioned in this thread, but thankfully the glass cage isn't one of them. The screen is bad enough, it's been a frustrating transition from my previous church gig where I was able to play unhindered and unmuffled.

If the heads are beat to heck, that's the time to ask the worship leader what the chances are of getting new heads. If he/she balks, you can always explain that it's the equivalent of trying to play a guitar with two-year-old strings. They might understand that.

Yes! New heads and a bit of tuning can make a world of difference. I recently replaced all the heads on our church kit with the exception of the bass drum. I was talking to another (non-drummer) musician about getting new heads and tuning up the bass drum, removing the Salvation Army store's worth of blankets inside; his response? "Oh, you don't need to remove the blankets, the drum has a mic on it." *facepalm*
 
I've encountered the "box" at several churches. It's never necessary, and neither are electronic kits. It shows that there's either some reservation about drums being used at all (some churches have them, but feel uneasy about having drums or electric guitars on stage) or the usual drummer is a knuckle-dragger who can't play appropriately for the room...
 
Holy cow! I started laughing my head off when I saw this photo. It's like the drummer is some kind of wild, uncontrollable animal that must be kept in a cage, lest he get out and destroy the music. Is there a padlock on the back? Does the drummer wear a padded helmet? The whole setup looks oafish and detracts from the worship service I am sure. Clearly, this is a good argument for an electronic kit. No electronic kit is as ugly as all this stuff to silence the drummer. Or, just learn to play at a reasonable volume, using no mics. People have been doing that kind of thing for thousands of years - you can do it too. Or accept the possibility that incorporating a drummer in this setting is too difficult, and do not have any drums at all. Many churches have taken that route.

People like the concept of a drummer more than the reality of a drummer.
 
ROFLMAO!! Yep, TYPICAL church setup!! I feel fer ya Mash! I've played in two church praise bands and subbed a bunch at another church and it's all the exact same thing: church politics overrules any concept of musicianship!

Case in point: the plexiglass animal cage is there to control the volume of the drums. You see, church audiotechs, pastors, elders, deacons, congretation members, etc. have no concept of actually how drums work. All they know from their limited abilites and knowledge is the fact that drums are loud and the people who play drums are even louder and wilder than any other musician on the planet. And we all know here that is not the case, but PERCEPTION is everything. Therefore, the need to control drum volume and drummers overrules any other logic in existance. And from the pic you posted, I didn't notice the guitars were amped. My guess is they are feed direclty into the audio system so the techs get to control their volume as well.

Add to that thinking a lot of praise and worship bands may have a very wide range of member expertise, ranging from players JUST learning their instrument to people with years of experience, so the trust and need to control every sound on stage is even greater and the need to put on a perfect production for every service is at a high level.

So a drummer can be top notch with tons of experience and have a very versitile genre range and can play any style like an expert and control his volume expertly, but STILL must be in a cage simply because the audio techs and powers that run the church WANT him there because it's just easier and less stressful on everyone. Buddy Rich himself could be playing and the lowlevel church audio techs would STILL put him in the drum booth with duck tape covering the heads and say that is the way they were told to do it and it's always been done that way!

And remember, the drums just sitting there all by themselves with nobody playing them are still TOO DAMN LOUD!! HAHA
 
The drum booth is just a side effect of the "keep the volume as low as possible so it doesn't offend the old people who give most of the money" problem. The whole eliminating stage volume has gotten out of control in churches. Drums in booths, amp in boxes, in ear monitors. I find it ironic that i can play in a club that is not much bigger than our church stage and sound fine, but I have to be caged in a auditorium that holds 500 people? When everything is super isolated it creates a steril sound. There is something about all the instruments mixing together that makes an energy you can't get when everything is so seperated. I think I said this on another post somewhere, the church volume wars problem is a problem that is literally dying off. As more and more older people who grew up before rock and roll die off and are replaced by more and more baby boomers and gen x'ers, who grew up listening to loud music, I don't think it will be an issue in the future.
 
I find it ironic that i can play in a club that is not much bigger than our church stage and sound fine, but I have to be caged in a auditorium that holds 500 people?

Well said DrumDoug! It's funny isn't it that is the norm. You walk into a club or bar and the guitars are all amped, the drum set in NOT in a cage or behind a plexiglass wall, yet the sound is perfectly fine and you can hold a conversation with someone 20 feet from where the band is playing.
 
That first picture is exactly why I played my Roland e-kit for the last 20 years at church. No wall, no tape, no roof, no chains. I had my headphones on with a perfect mix, and it was up to the sound guy to do the rest. I got to be out with the rest of the band, and not boxed like an animal. I don't miss playing at church at all when I think of all the crap that I went through with worship and sound. :/
 
Holy cow! I started laughing my head off when I saw this photo. It's like the drummer is some kind of wild, uncontrollable animal that must be kept in a cage, lest he get out and destroy the music. Is there a padlock on the back?

Nice one DMC, I loved it :) ...the "original" drummer in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo

Clearly, this is a good argument for an electronic kit. No electronic kit is as ugly as all this stuff to silence the drummer. Or, just learn to play at a reasonable volume, using no mics. People have been doing that kind of thing for thousands of years - you can do it too. Or accept the possibility that incorporating a drummer in this setting is too difficult, and do not have any drums at all. Many churches have taken that route.

Agree, an electronic kit could be the answer, especially if the drummer is a heavy hitter, the best compromise perhaps?

But I also dig the comments regarding playing with an open sounded drums and adjusting the dynamics to suits the location and the volume, why dampening a drumkit to that degree and stuffing it in a booth and then amplify it through the PA system? Am I missing something? it doesn't make sense to me... :)
 
Trust me, I have played with blastics and tip toed around in the beginning on an acoustic kit. You may as well not play. At least with the e-kit, you can play with all the dynamics you like.
 
Oh yeah!

I gotta play in a damn booth now at my church and I can honestly say it SUCKS big time! With the 2 cymbal stands and hi-hat stand, plus the 4 mic stands plus the 4 piece drum kit, plus a music stand and a percussion stand there is hardly any room left. I do have a small fan in there because with the door shut - an audio tech REQUIREMENT - it gets hot in there. I have an Aviom personal mixer but still, it gets to be frustrating when the leader and band members discuss shit away from the microphones and I can't hear because I'm cooped in the animal cage.

So if I have a question, I have to either speak into one of the overhead mics, or open the drum booth door and climb out and ask my question.

I would much rather have an e kit any day of the week and not feel like a caged animal. I mean, this business of blocking out any unnecessary sound on stage and not letting the sound mix freely is a bunch of crap audio techs and others simply do not understand.

And that is one of my pet peeves is audio techs who DO NOT PLAY ANY INSTRUMENT.
 
Here is the pisser for me: whether I play in a small area or at an outside festival I can adjust my playing accordingly, either lightly for a small area on a non-mic'ed kit or louder for a club so they don't have to turn my drum mic's to 11. In this set up, they put enough tape on this kit to wrap a mummy, shove a piece of foam rubber the size of a twin mattress in the bass drum, put you in the "Cone of Silence", and then gripe because they have to turn you up (because through their little supper dooper monitor gizmo I cannot hear half the friggin' instruments) even though they had it turned down to almost zero because Gorilla Monsoon who played the Sunday before hits everything like he is Thor.

I sat out in the audience last Sunday and really gave the kit a good listen. Sounded like Tupperware.
 
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