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[Whitten]

Maybe we need to talk about professional drummers, rather than ‘most drummers’ and ‘good drummers’.
I don’t know any professional drummers who use $10 sticks live. Most professional drummers have a stick endorsement anyway.
I use Vic Firth sticks and have never thought for a moment about the pitch matching. There are a lot of strategies music companies use to market their product. IMO pitch matching and shell pitch are two.
What do you expect me to do if I break one stick in a pitch matched pair? Throw the other unbroken stick away?
I agree with Bob Gatzen (drum design guru), that when you are tuning a drum there are certainly two or three zones when the drum resonates more purely. I often aim for one of those, but it really isn’t note specific.
As I wrote many moons ago in this thread….. tuning your drums to specific pitches is a very valid technique. Claiming most people do it and that you are not a ‘good’ drummer if you don’t is wildly exaggerated in my experience.
The opposite of tuning your drums to specific resonant frequencies is of course not ‘willy nilly’, it’s just a different drum tuning technique. If the drums sound good, and most professional players drums do sound good, or they would not be professional players for long. In my experience, professional players have their drums set up and tuned correctly at the alloted start time for the session. So I’m a little mystified that the players Ashtonpage’ cites as the ‘creme de la creme’ are also wasting precious recording time tuning a drum that should have been tuned before the official session start time.
Anyway, based on his last post you can firmly put me down in the NOT good drummer category.

[Whitten]

In agreement –
Yes, it’s good to experiment.
Yes, some drummers tune their drums to the key of the song.
Yes, some tunings can obviously clash with the rest of the music.

In disagreement –
Most studio drummers tune their drums to the key of the song. They just don’t.
Most kits are tuned to 4ths. No, there are no rules. Most drummers tune their kits to many different intervals to suit their own needs and taste.
Most drummers select sticks that are in tune. No, most drummers just pick up a pair of sticks and play.

Bottom line, there can be real benefits in carefully tuning the pitches of your drums. To claim most drummers, or most studio drummers tune to specific pitches all the time is just incorrect.

[Whitten]

I’m always able to log in automatically.
One weird thing I have is that if my browser predicts I want to go back to a reply I’ve already posted, the forum says it can’t find the page and then logs me out.

[Whitten]

I’m using my own very simple password.
Maybe you are missing something or have made a mistake on logging in and set up the first time?

On your ‘My Profile’ page you have an option to ‘Change password’.

[Whitten]

Yeah, I think the Platinum midi pack from Peter Erskine is probably a good one.
I’ve heard it triggering ‘The Classic’ EZX very well.

[Whitten]

How would you like the Metal Foundry bass drums to sound?

[Whitten]

I think ‘vocals’ is an area ripe for exploitation.
I can’t think of many pre-sets that would work for bass. A bit of eq, a bit of compression are both useful, but that’s about it.
My vote goes to a Techno pre-set pack. I’m loving the Feelgood pack, but would like to see one of the techno masters have a go.

[Whitten]

C’mon, that old boys music?
I suggest ‘Jazz Week‘

[Whitten]

The answer is in your software host program.
What is it? Reaper, Cubase, Logic?
You should break out the manual and look up midi editing, midi recording.

[Whitten]

Thanks gents.
Much appreciated.

[Author]

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