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My son is in Jr. High and plays percussion. He's joined the jazz band and is learning to play a drum set at school, but at home he only has a snare drum. I'd love to get him a drum set for home, but he seems to think he needs every single drum and cymbal ever made. What basics should we get for a decent, but not elaborate, drum set?
This is an adequate Bare bones kit: Kick Drum Snare Drum Hi-Hat Ride Crash Floor Tom Low Tom High Tom
So I guess he was right. I knew about the bass drum (the kick). He kept telling me he needed three cymbals and three toms, but I thought he was just saying that. Thanks for the advice!
So, we got him a drum set for Christmas. It has a kick drum (bass), two tom-toms, a snare, a crash cymbal and a hi-hat. He already had one snare, so he's using that as a third tom-tom. He does miss the third cymbal, but he got some money for Christmas, so he'll save up and get that one on his own. Thanks again for the input. There is now a lot of awesome jamming going on in our basement!
Any time. Glad to hear everything worked out and everyone is happy. Now, at least, After he gets the Ride cymbal (which makes three of the distinct sounds on a record, btw) it is pretty much all fluff after that adding more. I like a smaller and crisper Crash, called a splash cymbal, so that would be the next thing to go after and you can pretty much call it a day on the kit being complete until he's old enough and has his own style where other things are added for stylistic/personal reasons. Good job getting this stuff to him early. Who knows, if he is exceptionally good at drums, you don't want him getting the gear late and living with you trying to make it because things were delayed unnecessarily. After about 5 years of seriously committing yourself to music does one know if they have the goods or not and if they do, they aren't going to quit under any circumstances. Usually those uncompromising people make it in the end. That may all be frivolous info, but there it is.
I really appreciate the input. It's amazing to listen to him practice now. Before we had to practically force him to pick up his sticks to spend time on his snare. Now he is on his set ALL the time, playing and practicing and goofing and developing his own riffs. I'm almost afraid to walk past now, because when he sees me he stops me and gives me a D-E-T-A-I-L-E-D description of what he is doing and what it's called and why and how and AAAAAAAARRRRRGGG! Much more than I need. I would much rather putter around upstairs enjoying the sounds of him below me. One more question, if I may? We tried recording his playing, using the video feature on my camera. His set is in the basement, with concrete floors and cinder block walls. It sounds fine to listen to, but the recording was a jumble of echos. Is there any hope for making a decent recording, beyond padding the walls?
I don't believe so, not without seriously isolating and miking the drums. They make things called noise gates that will turn off the microphone unless the sound reaches a certain limit. (usually have the effect of having to hit specific drums to turn "their" mic on. That is totally outside of your scope I would imagine. At this point you are running into really advanced stuff like Miking drums, tuning them perfectly, isolating them, programing noise gates, equalizing each mic so that two mics aren't amplifying the same signal, ect. The good news is your idea of noise damping is no where near as hard as it sounds. literally anything that creates a non-straight line will do. You can probably use a uni-directional mic or two and wrap something non-porous around the sides of the mic(s) to prevent bleeding from the sides. That is about the only cheap way to get it done, I'm afraid.