< PreviousModern Drummer February 2022 8 Daniel Gollin has played in a lot of bands—Halfway to Gone, A Thousand Knives of Fire, 40 Pound Hound, and many more—and his kit salutes its owner’s musical mishmash by being comprised of bits and pieces. Some of those pieces have history, as well. “The toms and kick were used by Monster Magnet,” says Gollin. “I believe during the band’s Superjudge tour and/or possibly the Dopes to Infinity tour back in the 1990s. I got them used after Jon Kleiman sold them to a local shop called Drummer’s Alley in Red Bank, New Jersey—which closed years ago.” The rest of the kit was assembled from gear that delivered the sound Gollin wanted. The 1990s DW “Monster Magnet” shells are 13” and 16” toms with a 22” kick in gold sparkle. The snare is a 8x14 Ludwig Coliseum from the mid 1980s in black cortex that Gollin purchased from another local drummer. The hardware is mostly DW with Rims mounts for the toms, as well as one old Ludwig straight stand for the 16” tom. The cymbals are 14” A. Zildjian Mastersound Custom hi-hats, a 21” A. Zildjian Sweet Ride, a 24” Paiste 2002 Ride, and a 20” K. Zildjian Ride. “There’s also a newly added Latin Percussion Black Beauty cowbell,” says Gollin. “And I use a DW 5000 double-kick pedal, but often I only use the main pedal without the slave pedal.” You can perhaps hear the sound of the “hodgepodge kit” on the numerous albums released by Gollin’s many bands, but if you’re into gaming, the kit appears on NHL 2K6 [2K Sports]. The song “King of Mean” by Halfway to Gone plays during the opening of the video game, and Gollin’s kit is the first sound you hear when the game intro begins. Daniel Gollin’s Hodgepodge with History By Michael MolendaThe Design Lab is a group of Artists, Engineers and Designers who form the incubator for unique professional instruments exclusively for Mapex Drums by using one of a kind sound inspirations and conceived by the revolutionary "Concept Hybrid Formula.” The Design Lab creates unique voices, each with a combination of the artistry of instrument making and the modern science of drum design. RUSS MILLER BPDLMH4460LPWBPDLMH4650LPWModern Drummer February 2022 10 ~~~~~~~~ Wellness ~~~~~~~~ Concentration By Lauren Monroe T here is no way around it. If you want to succeed as a musician, you have to practice. It requires focus, drive, and concentration to turn your skill set from outstanding to legendary. That means removing distractions—all distractions—when you are concentrating. That’s just one of many behaviors scientists report that can enhance concentration, retention, and performance [Sörqvist and Marsh, 2015]. One study found that playing your favorite music can improve your concentration and performance, but playing music you don’t know— or just working in silence—will throw you off your game [Mori, et al, 2014]. And researchers keep coming up with mindfulness as a key component of focusing and concentration [Stringer, 2017]. It’s also clear that stress is the enemy of concentration, so do whatever it takes to feel calmer and more in control. What does it take for you to focus? To concentrate? They are not really the same thing. When you focus, you are zeroing in on your interest or activity. Researchers call it your “locus of attention.” But even though you are highly attentive, you may still notice that ravishing human who just walked into the room or get sidetracked by noise or distracting thoughts. Concentration, on the other hand, is your ability to give all of your attention or thought to a single object or activity, and nothing else. Researchers have discovered that the more difficult your task, the harder you will concentrate to maintain your desired level of performance [Sörkvist and Marsh, 2015]. They also found that concentration protects you from distractions by actively reducing undesired processing of the background. And they observed that sometimes this doesn’t take a lot of effort. An expert gamer, for example, may reach high states of concentration without much effort when playing a favorite video game. How can you increase your powers of concentration? Well, there are specific strategies to help you. Here are the ones that have been consistently found to be effective [Williams, 2017]. Stop Distractions Turn off your phone and put it facedown or in another room. Change items in your living space that distract you or grab your attention. Increase No-Distraction Time Start at 15 minutes without interruptions and gradually increase the time. Here’s why this is so important. In one study, researchers asked 260 middle school, high school, and university students to study for 15 minutes in their homes. The students couldn’t make it to six minutes without checking their electronic devices. [Stringer, 2017]. Practice Mindfulness Meditation This simple and highly effective form of meditation teaches you how to bring your thoughts back to the present. This is one of the things I love about being a musician. We are constantly shaping the present together in the energy we create through music. Bring that musical mindfulness into the rest of your life. I can’t recommend this highly enough. It also helps reduce stress and tension, which play havoc with our ability to focus and concentrate. Check out some of the many free apps and YouTube videos on mindfulness. Work in Blocks of Time Working in chunks of time, with rest periods in between, can help with concentration, because our attention tends to wane after a certain period of time—which is anywhere from ten minutes to 52 minutes. Experiment with a time frame that works for you. Don’t try to force yourself to keep going. Get up, have a stretch, drink a glass of water, turn your phone on to check your messages, and then turn it back off. Track your Lack of Attention Notice when concentration lags. What time of day is it? Does it happen when you are hungry or sleepy? Find out what time of day works best for your brain. Then, plan activities that require less focus during times when you know your attention is at its lowest. Daydream Seriously. Some of the greatest breakthroughs and acts of creative genius came into the world when the inventor, composer, artist, or scientist was daydreaming. Research is showing that the brain works best when it toggles between focus and unfocus [Pillay, 2017]. When you unfocus, you engage a brain circuit called the default mode network (DMN). It cruises under the brain’s conscious radar, rummaging around in old memories, flitting between past, present, and future, and recombining different ideas in different ways. From your re-shuffled inner data, new forms emerge, new dimensions are imagined, new drum riffs flow from your hands, or other acts of creation. Moving into 2022, we can set our course to grow, change, and reinvent ourselves. Focus, concentrate, daydream, and stay in your heart. Lauren Monroe (M.A., MT) is a healing artist, integrative-massage therapist, and energy healer. She is the co-founder of Project Resiliency and the Raven Drum Foundation. She has been a teacher and healing professional for more than 20 years, focusing on trauma recovery, PTSD, crisis care, and suicide prevention. laurenmonroe.com. References • Mori, F., Naghsh, F.A., and Tezuka, T. (2014). The effect of music on the level of mental concentration and its temporal change. ResearchGate, Jan. • Pillay, S. (2017). Your brain can only take so much focus. Harvard Business Review, May 12. • Sörqvist, P. & Marsh, J.E. (2015). How concentration shields against distraction. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(4): 267-272. • Stringer, H. (2017). Monitor on Psychology. Boosting productivity: Research identifies small changes that lead to big improvements in performance. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 48(8), 54-57. • Williams, C. (2017). Five ways science can improve your focus. BBC.com Worklife, Sept. 24.Founded in 2017, got pocket?, the brand has served as a universal message to musicians, aspiring musicians and music lovers alike. The streetwear brand started with t-shirts but has since expanded its offerings to a variety of items inclusive of joggers, hoodies, and branded accessories. Uniting aspiring musicians in over 25 countries, got pocket?, is more than a brand, it is the story of every musician’s journey with one common goal; creating captivating and compelling music. got pocket? Website: https://gotpocketapparel.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gotpocket/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gotpocketapparel/ Email: https://gotpocketapparel.com/pages/contact "Pocket is when a musician has the ability to play what’s necessary to complement the music while in sync and adding their own creativity."Modern Drummer February 2022 12 Words Versus Nuts and Bolts By Peter Erskine I ’m literally happy to be sitting in the jazz-drumming-column chair for Modern Drummer. It’s a well-worn seat that I’ve occupied from time to time over the years. If I stand accused of being too wordy, well, then I plead “guilty as charged.” It’s a tricky business putting licks into words. My first column for this year chronicled my sense of a change in my own playing—an arrival of sorts. I wrote it as a letter to my university students at the Thornton School of Music. I also sent it to my oldest and closest friend from high school. Here is his reply: “I’ve just read your mail to your students. Thanks for sending it to me. I paid attention in your letter— knowing ‘a thing’ had happened. That was super clear. Speaking this to your students is courageous and real and it is inspirational. What happened. No question mark. I’ll take my time to attempt to accurately speak to what’s happened to you—possibly. It may be like continuing to play the lottery or waiting for that bus that’s supposed to come but doesn’t. And then, the bus comes or your numbers hit. You had no control. It happens. You take the bus. You are left with money you didn’t have before. Where are you going and how to spend that money? Getting the bus and having the money have nothing to do with it, of course. “You just experienced the Wizard of Oz effect: ‘If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any farther than my own backyard because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.’ I suggest that what happened to you is a thing that’s held itself in you—waiting for you to find you. Frustrating? Maybe. But it happened. You finding you. Beautiful. Intense. Real. Real. It’s real. Let’s talk. Sunday sounds good. But no stress. Whenever. I really appreciate your letter to those lucky students, and I consider myself one of them.” Not tooting my own horn. So, let’s play some drums. Vic Firth counseled me some years ago that warming up would become more and more necessary as I aged. And though I have indeed grown older, my go-to warm-up exercise is the same routine that was first shown to me over 50 years ago by Professor George Gaber. Beginning with the right hand, I play 8 strokes, followed by 8 strokes with the left. Then, 7(R), 7(L), 6(R), 6(L), 5(R), 5(L), 4(R), 4(L), 3(R), 3(L), 2(R), 2(L), 1(R), 1(L), 2(R), 2(L), 3(R), 3(L), 4(R), 4(L), and so on. The warm-up can be played either un-accented, or with an accent at the beginning of each hand’s new sequence. You can also play these in unison (without flams). I’m certain that I’ve played this exercise dutifully over the years, but never so mindfully as I do now. Or as soft as I do now. You see, this warm-up is like a communion and benediction for me. This approach was inspired by learning the following about the late-great cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973.) “Casals attributes his long life and youthfulness to his habit of playing Bach’s Preludes and Fugues on the piano every morning. This communion with a great mind renews his spirit and creates in him a cheerful mood with which to begin the day’s work. ‘Each day I am born anew,’ he says.”— The Guardian. Okay, so “8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1” is not Bach. But I treat this mechanical exercise in much the same way. How so? I find music in these repetitions by concentrating on the tone my sticks are making on a practice pad (yes!) And the best way to do this, I have found, is to limit the rebound height as well as velocity of the sticks, and the speed of the strokes. Fast and loud are not the goals here. Quite the contrary. I am using this moment to say “hello” to my hands and my fingers and my elbows and my back and my ears and my mind and my sticks and the pad and the room and life itself. 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 and back again. Then, I migrate to improvised singles and doubles on the pad. Always paying attention to stick heights, rebound angles, and sound. And then, I migrate to playing eighth notes on the kit. Softly and slowly, or at a medium tempo. (I would recommend no faster than quarter-note = 160 bpm.) I listen to my playing as I play these simple repetitions. Different tempos. Different volumes. Do any of the rhythms sound or feel out of place? If so, then that’s our music eco-system telling us what needs work. Improvising my way around the kit is my favorite way to go, but for those who enjoy a bit of rigor, try the following exercises. Single (alternate) stickings, as well as doubles or random combinations of singles/doubles. Accented, unaccented, or randomly accented. Try what works best—as well as what doesn’t work best and learn to recognize the difference. Mutsy ErskineFebruary 2022 Modern Drummer 13 ™ ™ ™ ™ A ™ ™ ™ ™ B ™ ™ ™ ™ C ™ ™ ™ ™ D ™ ™ ™ ™ E ™ ™ ™ ™ F 4 4/ keep playing A - F / / >>>>> > > > > > > > > > > > / >>>> > > > > > > > > > > > > / >>> > > > > > > > > / >>>>>> >> > > >> > > >> > > >> > / >>>>> > > > > > > > > > > > œœ¿œœ¿œœ¿œœ¿œœ¿œœ¿œœ¿œœ¿ œœœœœœœœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœœœœœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœœœœœœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœœœœœœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œœœœœœœœœœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœœœœœœœœ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ œ œœ 2s and 3sModern Drummer February 2022 14 ™ ™ ™ ™ G ™ ™ H ™ ™ ™ ™ I ™ ™ ™ ™ J ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ ™ K / play as written G - K / >>>>>>>> / >>>>>>>> / >> >> >> >> >> >> > / > >> >> >> >> >> >> / > > >> > >> > >> > / >> > >> > >> > > > / >>>>>>>>>>>>>> œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœModern Drummer February 2021 16 A Bigger Boom Producer Jacquire King on Reamping Drums By Michael Molenda P roducer, audio engineer, and mixer Jacquire King is a multiple Grammy winner who has worked with Tom Waits, Buddy Guy, Kings of Leon, and many others. His commitment to crafting distinctive and idiosyncratic sounds and placing them in a mix to give a track something special guided him to explore reamping as a creative tool. Originally used as a way to transform previously recorded guitar and bass signals, reamping is a process where a track is sent from the recording medium to an amplifier (and/or effects pedals) using a dedicated reamp box, and then re-recorded with the new, amp-colored tone. For years, engineers have “saved” crappy guitar sounds by reamping them using a hipper or more appropriate signal path. Of course, with engineers and producers always on the hunt for extraordinary sounds, it didn’t take long for reamping techniques to be deployed for vocals, keyboards, and other instruments. King was an early adopter of the reamp process and he has refined his techniques and concepts on numerous album productions. Here, he shares his sonic journey with Modern Drummer readers who may seek to experiment with reamping for their own home-studio recordings. This isn’t just a strategy for renowned professionals. With just a few relatively inexpensive pieces of gear, anyone can reap the benefits of reamping. Reamping has been a tool for guitarists and bassists for years. What inspired you to try the reamping technique with drums? As long as I can remember, I’ve used reamping in unique ways— putting keyboards through guitar amps, drums through speakers and amps, and so on. I’ve used revamping with pretty much everything—such as recording foot stomps on a board and routing the signal to an amplifier in order to make the reamplification part of the sound. Reamping drums is a natural extension of my exploration process with these other elements. They are a part of the palette of instruments that I experiment with. How does reamping the elements of a drum set differ from reamping other instruments? Using the reamp process on drums is a bit more about exciting a space, rather than just capturing a single element that has been reamped. For example, I came to the idea of miking a kick drum and reamping the signal through a bass amp as a way to increase the volume of certain frequencies, resonances, and different properties within a space. What is one of your go-to techniques for reamping drums? Depending on how the kit is put together and what the drum part is, I’ll take a dynamic mic and place it on the floor, or on a short stand near the kick drum, or perhaps in front of the kick drum. The mic placement is used to mostly capture the kick drum and get away from some of the cymbal sounds. Obviously, you have to route the mic into a microphone preamp. From the mic preamp, you go through a reamp box to get the +4dBu signal used by professional recording equipment down to the high-impedance operating level [-10dBV] that works with guitar amps and pedals. Then, I can send the kick- drum signal through some guitar pedals—maybe add a little bit of distortion—before plugging into the front of an Ampeg B-15 bass How Did All of This Start? San Francisco engineer John Cuniberti got the idea for a reamp box in 1993 to solve a problem with the live tracks on Joe Satriani’s Time Machine album. When he started to mix the album, he noticed Stu Hamm’s bass-guitar tracks from the live performances were unusable due to a very audible buzz. A clean, direct bass track was available, but Cuniberti was looking for a more exciting, live-amplifier sound with some grit and growl. The usual trick of feeding a recorded track into a passive direct box “backwards” to get the +4dBu signal level of pro studio gear to as low as -50dB—allowing it to be plugged into guitar amps and stompboxes—was disappointing at best. The low end tended to suffer, and the sound was not accurate enough for what Cuniberti was trying to achieve—which was fooling the amp that a guitar pickup was plugged into it, rather than a tape-recorded signal. So, he came up with his own way of reducing a hot signal to a level that could be routed to an amp and “repair” Hamm’s bass tone for the album. It was genius. Soon, other audio engineers were constantly borrowing Cuniberti’s homegrown Reamp box, inspiring him to build five more. “It was the beginning of a very long trip into the world of manufacturing, patents, trademarks, and licensing—none of which I cared about at the time,” Cuniberti told TapeOp’s Allen Whitman. Unsure if there was a viable market for his Reamp box, Cuniberti gave away about 100 Reamps to fellow engineers and big-time studios in Los Angeles. Eventually, even the most skeptical engineers bought into the concept, which meant it was time for a patent. Cuniberti was granted a United States patent in 1999. It had cost him about $10,000 to get there. But Cuniberti had proved his concept, and he sold more than 3,000 Reamps between 1994 and 2011, when he sold his patent, trademark, and business assets to Radial Engineering Ltd.—a pro-audio company based in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia that was founded by Peter Janis in 1991. Radial continues to manufacture a series of Reamp devices to this day. Jacquire King in the studio. John CunibertiFebruary 2021 Modern Drummer 17 amp. The B-15 is usually placed a few paces from the drum kit and facing out into the room. In essence, the bass amp becomes an extension of the kick drum. It excites the space and creates a little bit of a tougher sound. I can adjust the bass-amp tone to be low-end focused, or I may even turn the treble control all the way down. Or if the distortion pedal has a tone control, I’ll darken the sound to get it a little bit further away from the cymbal sounds. Because you have a live mic and a live amp in the same room, the potential for feedback may limit the volume of the amp or its placement within the space. This is why it’s important to get the sound to a place where it’s approaching that level of feedback and creating resonances you can hopefully shape in a desirable way and capture it all with room mics. Basically, my approach to reamping drums came from not finding the sound I wanted out of a room. So, I figured I’d try to manufacture some of the sound I was trying to capture at the source. Sometimes, you have to dig around to find the character and frequencies you can shape to optimize the source sound—in this case, the drums—and add color, depth, and uniqueness. What is your favorite reamping gear? The Radial reamp boxes are the most thoughtful and useful in terms of application. I’ve had the Radial JD7 since it was first introduced, and I’ve used it quite extensively for drums. Lately, I’ve been using the Radial EXTC-SA, and I also have some Radial EXTC 500 units to insert pedals or otherwise affect signals for the drum mix. Do you experiment with amps and microphones? It depends. For guitar amps, I’m generally thinking about a sound with a little bit of dirt, grit, and edge. Typically, I don’t get into doing any sorts of wild effects. It’s really more about tone shaping. I’ve even gone as far as using floor monitors to pipe signals back into the room—maybe adding reverb or effects to give the instrument sounds I’m reinforcing a unique color that can bleed into the room mics. As far as mics, I generally like starting with a condenser mic. If the drum performance is sort of light dynamically, then I’ll use a more sensitive mic. However, if someone is pounding way at the drums, you’re going to get in trouble with a condenser mic, so I’ll go with a dynamic or ribbon mic. Are there any EQ or processing adjustments you tend to make once the reamping signal path is active? Typically, cymbals need the most adjustment. Cymbals are your worst enemy because of how much those frequencies seem to get into everything. That’s one of the reasons I choose a bass amp for reamping. EQ-wise, I roll off the top end, and I may have to shape the midrange pretty aggressively to get the resonances I want. I don’t want the sound overloaded with undesirable frequencies. It’s mostly a combination of mic choice, mic placement, the right amp, and adjusting the tone until it’s usable in the space. Could you give us an example of a song on which you’ve used drum reamping? A good example is “No Good,” which was on Kaleo’s A/B album [Elektra Records, 2016]. I used the bass-amp kick-drum process to excite the room for that song, because of the powerful size I was trying to create with the drum sound. It’s not unique to “No Good,” but that song has logged more than one-hundred-million streams, so it has a pretty high profile. Where do you see the future for drum reamping as a production tool? The idea of reamping as an additive process has been going on for a long time. Producer Jack Joseph Puig [U2, Green Day, John Mayer] would send the recorded snare out to a speaker placed under a secondary snare in the live room to capture a different room tone and ambience. Andy Wallace [Run DMC/Aerosmith, Prince, Paul McCartney] always had a reverb sample— or a snare reverb sample—he would add to the sound. But how reamping drums will be adopted and adapted in the future, I’m not really sure. Something I’ve done for a while now is to take samples, and use reamping to send the samples to an acoustic space. There are a lot of samples used in production now, and chances are that somebody else is using the same sample as you are, unless you’ve created it yourself. So, I use reamping to tailor the sound of the sample. I want to give it a sonic signature that helps that it stand apart from the other recordings it may have been used on—a unique color or dimension. I think one of the biggest jobs in being truly creative in making recorded music is that you need to find a few small things you can add into a production that will not only make it appropriate and timeless but also give it depth and feeling. How has reamping fueled your own sound explorations? As a producer and engineer, I’m so much about the source sound, but I’m always looking for some uniqueness, right? I discovered very early on that reamping is a creative tool I can use on drums. It gives me an edge. I was never a very disciplined musician, because I was more fascinated with records. So, I decided when I was about 18 years old that I wanted to make the studio my instrument. I wanted to use the space I’m recording in as part of my palette of sounds. For example, if you walk into a room at a famous studio, you know you’re going to get a great signature sound, but how do you set yourself apart in that space? You look to do something that’s just a little bit unique, and reamping drums in those types of rooms helps me create my own sound in a commonly used space. It will sound and feel familiar because it’s a known space, but reamping provides a powerful way to create a little bit of sonic uniqueness to the drum mix. King has used the Radial JD7 for reamping since it was first introduced. Radial’s EXTCSA reamp box.Next >