You could paint a black "hole" on the head like Wil E. Coyote and watch soundman after soundman lose microphones into its' nebulous depths.


If they can't hack it without the hole, they shouldn't be running sound. I wouldn't take them seriously.


Faiz

i was reminded of this thread today while looking at the cover of Repeater +3 Songs.

While I've had my fair share of front heads with holes in them, now I prefer solid heads mainly because I've tired of the rather flat and two dimensional sound that one head or front heads with holes often produce, masking the character inherent in each drum.

Generally speaking kick drums get attack from a combination of the batter head and beater type, and tone, pitch and "boom" from the front head.

Whenever a front head has a hole in it it loses a little of tone, pitch and boom.

Yes, a hole can make it easier to get a "commercial" kick sound, but if you own (as in my case) a 26" Gretsch stop sign badge kick drum then presumably you're wanting to hear the unique character of that particular drum instead of someone else's preconcieved idea of what a kick "should" sound like. Two heads enable me to get more sound out of my kick and maximise its character.

However, I have found that six small 1" holes near the perimiter of the head next to the lugs allows the air volume to have some release without adversely affecting the tone, pitch and "boom". This also provides a subtle degree of "dampening" without resorting to felt strips or blankets. It doesn't provide any more options for the engineer, but my job is to know how to tune my instrument and how to play it, and their job is to know how to capture it and record of amplify it.

If a engineer can't get a representative sound from a drum with a solid front head then really they should be working with MIDI.

I try to see it from a red neck sound guy's perspective.
I know how a kick drum with no hole in the front skin is supposed to sound like, or what the drummer's intention or sought after sound might be. I've heard plenty of recordings on which the kick goes "BOOm". You can even compress the initial attack of the beater and increase this effect. I like it when I hear it.
Then comes the drummer who wants this all so familiar sound on a fairly small stage, with lots of bassdrum in his monitor. He has tuned the front skin really low to have a nice "booom" in the room. It might sound alright in the room but it won't sound cool through the microphone that sits 1-2" in front of the drum. Everytime the drummer hits his big floor tom, the bassdrum will start to resonate like a motherfucker. The bassdrum in his drum monitor will start to sound "woooooo125Hzoooop".
Me, the red neck, truck-driving, wife-beating, sound man will say: "It'll be a lot easier if you'd have a hole in that thing".
What I will do is:
I'll use a gate on the bass drum, and set it as slow as possible, I'll gate the floortom. I'll take out the "woooooop" out of the drum monitor. I'll eq the bass drum through the front and move the mic in front of the kick to the left and right, from middle to the sides and back and leave it where it sounds right. This will take about two minutes.
Usually there are other bands on stage that night with different bassdrums. Often there is no time for a proper sound check. Sometimes drummers play crappy bassdrums that are untunable. Sometimes drummers tune their bassdrum so that it is impossible to get a decent sound out of it.
But this is not a problem - we're all professionals, right?

no problem with no hole in the front of the bassdrum ! frankly .
even in gig ! I do it all the time ! just say to the soundguy to put another mike near the beater ! a sm57 or m201 do the job easily in a live situation . there is no problem at all . but maybe the soundguy has a hole in his head ? because if you want the sound of a kickdrum with a hole so I suppose you bring the one with the hole ? right ?

elisha wiesner wrote:the sound guy who tells you that you need a hole in the kick drum head will be the same guy that insists on taking the bass direct. in my experience neither of these things are required for good live sound. if you like the sound of your kick drum with no hole then just leave it and explain to the guy that you like it as is. a competent sound man should not have a problem with this.

-e

competent soundman don't exist nowadays
I've seen such a low standard for soundmen at every gig I go to/play at. it is genuinely depressing.

Man, this is getting a bit heated. Sure good live soundmen are rare but drummers who can actually tune their kit or don't bring in innapropriate choices/tuned/ammonts of snare drums/toms/cymbals and refer to them proudly as being part of "their sound" and then wonder why it sounds shitty are way rarer. The guy who explained patiently and accurately the painful process of miking a kik for live purposes without a hole had it bang on.

if everyone knows that most soundmen want a hole in the stupid front head, why wouldnt a drummer have two heads, one with a hole, and one without. i guess my point is that once again, the sound guy can make you sound like poo-poo or he can do it good. i try to work with the guy, whatever he wants within reason. i carry a countryman di, my amp has a 600ohm xlr output, and i bring a AT4033se just in case. youll have options, and youll also know how each of those setups will sound. i guess ive heard from that guy, "tell your drummer to get a hole in that head. i cant mic it, im gonna get leakage from all over the stage...." its easier to adapt then it is to be stubborn.

OK....let's change this up a bit. You're going to someone's studio to record some tracks. The engineer/producer asks you to do something similar.....change heads, hit drums harder, hit cymbals lighter, move cymbals stands a tad higher, etc.....
What would you do?
I think too many of us when we're wearing our musician hats have an attitude of "this is my sound and i aint changin it". I don't know how many times I've tried to talk guitar players into using less distortion, or bass players to not use distortion pedals, or drummers to do this or that.....
What the mic picks up can, and probably is totally different than what you're hearing in the room. Especially different than what you're hearing sitting on your drum throne.
These sound guys know their room, their gear, etc. If they know that a boomy bass drum isn't going to cut it, then do what they say. Most of us haven't gotten to the level of a John Bonham where we dictate what "our" sound is. Maybe there's a reason why the sound guy simply can't work without a hole in the head. Maybe the mic he's got for the kick doesn't sound good out front. Maybe he doesn't have the extra channel to use a mic in the back. Maybe he doesn't have enough gates to gate the kick mic and floor tom mics as was suggested earlier. If you think the sound guy in question is inferior, then you shouldn't be playing in such crappy places. If you're that much of a rock star, then bring your own mics and soundman.
Sorry for the rant, but seriously, if you just work with the sound guy, hit em hard and play your asses off, I don't think one person in the crowd will walk away saying, "man, that band was really good and the drummer kicks ass, I just wish he was using a solid front head on his kick because I think his kick tone was a little less resonant than I normally like".
For that matter, is there a good record that you can name where the music is great and the drumming is great, but a bad sounding kick ruins it for you?
later,
m

Max, how did you know it was a red neck soundman? Is it that stereotypical? You are exactly right. Being that my band is from Alabama and plays in the southeast, you can expect for us to meet quite a few red neck soundmen.

I actually saw three soundmen hanging out together in a bar last night. I polled them. They all said, hole in the front.

It was not that I wanted to give them a "rock star' attitude, but rather I prefer the sound of a resonant kick. But now I think maybe I have it wrong and need to get in line.

Actually, the soundman who last said this, was working this outdoor festival we were playing. He was going to supply the back line and kit for the stage, but I decided to use my own. Well the bass amp provided went out on the first song. It still came through the front, because he did use a direct box. So, we had no bass amp on stage. I thought he would have put the bass through the stage monitors for us, but in a few minutes that would not matter, because we lost all the stage monitors on the next song. At this time I am sitting there and thinking of how Steve told us he prefers no monitors, because he can control his own sound, every night the sound on stage is the same. He does not have to rely on the soundman's monitor mix. Anyway at this festival, there is a photographer on stage who happened be a musician, and he is telling me between songs the guitar sounds real distorted out front. The photographer is a guitar player, also, and he is taking pictures both on and off stage. So, he knows the difference in sound between on and off stage. Actually the soundman was the stage manager as well as the soundman. He was thinking we are going on at 10:00pm, we were scheduled for 9:45. Well anyway he comes out his little trailer at 9:50, saying "Oh we were suppose to start at 9:45." We were already sitting on stage ready to play, and we are thinking no shit. We wanted to start exactly at 9:45 no later, because the headliner P-Funk was scheduled to play on the stage next to us at 10:15 and we wanted to play most of our set before the crowd wondered over to the other stage. I am sure George Clinton's stage was much more organized.

Anyway, after the soundman come dragging his ass out late. He was probably getting stoned. His bass amp goes out. They spent our whole set trying to fix it and I am feeling like that scene in spinal Tap where the bass player gets stuck in that pod. They looses the monitors altogether. The guitar amp is coming out the mains distorted as hell. After all this, he tells me my toms sound like thunder, but I need to cut a hole in the front head. At this time I am sitting there thinking, you are the worst stage manager and soundman of all time. I would have thought at a large music festival they would have had a better soundmen, but this guy was worse than any dive bar we have played.