So despite my previous dragging of feet, I finally went ahead and preordered a TDW-20 after I heard through the rumor mill that Full Compass was offering them for around $360 USD, shipping included.

What really gets my goat though is why this isn't their advertised price? At the time I placed my order, their reported list price was $599 and the price they were offering under their "low price guarantee" was $495. I'd never before encountered a situation before where phoning in an order resulted in a nearly 30% savings over an Internet price, especially one that claimed to have a "low price guarantee".

Look, I'm not complaining -- $360 was low enough for me to take the plunge and buy the card. It does make me wonder though how many times I've gotten the shaft by paying what seemed to be the lowest price on the Internet. I guess we should all start getting quotes over the phone again.

I've added a new section to the site for archiving audio recordings. I've got stuff going back as far as 1994, if I ever get off my hinder and encode them all to mp3.

For now you'll have to settle with my most recent stuff, from Hadley Hill. I promise to get some of the older, more embarrassing stuff up soon! :)

A permanent link to the audio section can be found in the sidebar, near the link to my profile. You can also get there by clicking here.

This article details step-by-step how to fire off a TD-20's percussion samples from an SPD-11 or SPD-20. The concepts work pretty much the same if using other modules or pad controllers as well.

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We took the munchkin to Chuck E. Cheese's yesterday for the first time and I realized I hadn't been there since about the time I first started playing drums, about 25 years now.
While I like to think that my playing has aged gracefully, I'm sad to say that the mouse has not. What happened Chuck E.? Your place used to drip to 'cool'.. now it just drips toddler pee (literally).

Also, a sonnet to the redneck that cut in front of a line full of kids just so he could buy a beer...

"..oh dearest redneck that cut in front of a line full of kids just so you could buy a beer....
You suck."

Started work on converting the 13" snare from the Chameleon kit. I don't anticipate running into any major problems with this one, seems pretty cut and dry. I am however looking forward to applying some of the lessons learned from my first attempt, with the 10" tom.

Here are some pics of the snare before I started:

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Throw a bunch of actuators on an acoustic kit and now you don't even need a live drummer to play em... neat.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=19395558

Would sure be a lot of fun to set one of these kits up on stage and then use a zendrum to slave it. Sort of a remote controlled drumset. shweet.

I've finally begun work on the electronic conversion of the kit I purchased a while back. I'm starting with the high tom (10") since it should be the easiest to convert.

Here are some pictures of the procedure.

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One of the more pointlessly time-consuming aspects of setting up an electronic kit is plugging everything into the module. For trigger inputs alone there are 16 cables that you need to plug in for a Roland TD-20. Digging around in a bundle of 16 jacks and plugging them all in can be a major drag, worse still, if you should mix two up and don't have enough time for a sound-check so that you can discover the mix-up, you're gonna be in for an interesting show.

Enter the Kable Keeper!

My loving wife put these together to help me out.

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If you're in the area, come on out and see us!

So I've been stepping up my double-bass game lately-- no, not what you're thinking, I promise it will be classy. Anyway, I have a very specific fill that is needed for one of our tunes, which is essentially an undulating set of sextuplets across an entire measure. This is commonly referred to as a "double-bass quad". This name has always thrown me because when I think 'quad', I immediately think of something divisible by 4, as in a 16th or 32nd note phrase, but these are clearly done as sextuplets (sixes). I guess the term 'quad' comes from all 4 limbs being used and not the actual phrasing.

So to get to the point, when researching the "proper" method to perform these, I've discovered that I've been doing them utterly the opposite way from the rest of the world. Every mention I've seen (outside of the "ladder" technique) states to start with two toms followed by the two kicks, moving from right to left, as in RH,LH,RF,LF. The odd thing is, I've always been doing this the other way.. starting from the kicks and then moving to the toms, moving from left to right, as in LF, RF, LH, RH. I think this comes from years of using this little flam trick I do with a single bass to end fills, where I'd go RF, LH, RH. On double kick the leading left foot just sorta slips in there naturally making it LF,RF,LH,RH. I use this to end the last bar of very busy sections, usually ending with the right hand on 4, leaving the rest of beat 4 as empty space. This flurry of low-end notes followed by dead space alleviates the tension and then allows me to return to a tighter, more controlled beat on 1 of the next bar. A nice little trick for the end of choruses or more importantly, bridges.

So anyways, tell me, how do you execute double-bass quads. Am I just a weirdo, or do you do them "backwards" too?