So over the years I’ve kept getting the same questions:
“Why don’t you change your snare head?”
“Why don’t you repaint your wall/clean your door?”
“Why don’t you slap new heads on ‘your’ kit?”
“Why don’t you use a wing nut on your cymbal stand?”
It’s worse than that. Not only haven’t I changed the heads on the shared drum kit that featured in so many of my videos...
...I take a perverse pleasure in playing it exactly as I found it. Like found-object art.
And I’m not alone.
If you haven’t encountered them in the wild, New York drummers come across as an odd bunch, with idiosyncratic behaviors. Until you live here for a couple of years, then you’ll understand.
In suburbia, where I grew up, space is abundant, parking is convenient and cheap, people live in single family homes with distance between, cars are cheap to fuel and insure, and there’s always more time than you need.
In such an environment, a “utopian” drum culture evolves.
People play elaborate kits with permanent mic set-ups. Everybody plays their own kit, which is exquisitely maintained, with well-tuned new heads.
And almost every suburban drum YouTuber has a dedicated room in their home, which they’ve painted, decorated, and essentially turned into a professionally lit television studio.
The forces that force New Yorkers to evolve differently come from a few directions.
As living space is scarce and expensive, and neighbors just a wall away in the same building, home studios are rarer. Most everybody rents shared practice studios, a habit we started developing in music school.
Cymbal stands are missing wing nuts because they’re not necessary enough for anybody to put in an effort that outweighs the ease with which they can cavalierly be stolen or misplaced.
Nobody changes the heads because they don’t want to be the one guy stuck buying heads everybody else is going to use and abuse.
Both in practice studios and on gigs, drummers develop an appreciation for anything that allows them to carry less, spend less time setting up and tearing down, and leave less personal equipment on the kit for others to steal, abuse, or complain about. (In just the last 2 days of setting up and tearing down at my new studio I decided changing the cymbals and hats on the house kit “wasn’t worth it”, and started playing the house ones.)
Whereas in the suburbs having a modern-drummer-cover-ready kit for a gig is a flex, in the city playing somebody else’s ancient four-piece that hasn’t had a head change since the Ford administration and making it sound great is often more respected.
Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of New York drumming, in this week’s video.