Ooops
Well. I finally went and did it. I bought myself a drum kit. I am impossibly excited about it.
This is, for background information, almost exactly 18 years (half my life) after being told, in no uncertain terms, that not only would I NOT be geting one for my birthday, but also that I wasn't even allowed one in the house as they were "too bloody noisy". This is despite the fact that I was in (the beginnings of) a band and was playing on a borrowed drum kit. Badly, but playing. All self taught and making it up as I went.
But hey, I got a pay rise, yesterday, so I decided to celebrate. This and the news that my dad would stump up some of the money as a combined birthday/christmas present (it took him 18 years and having me 4,500 miles away before he was prepared to tacitly approve my having a drum kit, it amused me to realise. I'm pretty sure he won't hear it from there) made me decide to go for it.
Putting it all together last night was really very difficult - not from a technical point of view at all, but from a "must....finish... everything ....before......playing it!" aspect. I had to follow instructions and everything to make sure my enthusiasm didn't get the better of me and allow me to screw something up by plugging it in too soon, or mounting it badly and having it fall off. But it is up, and I was beating seven shades of crap out of it last night and this morning.
Awesome.
I have been toying with getting one of these (you really can't hear a whole lot of noise, as all the drum-type sounds are in the headphones) so it is ideal for my flat, and also possibly the only exercise that I could do that I will continue to do, if you know what I mean. After all, this is the bloke how bought himself some running shoes and shorts in the spring, and the damn things have only come out of the box when I dropped it yesterday while tidying up...
So. Despite confirming my initial fears that I am 'rusty' to the point of almost entirely being unable to actually 'play', and that I have completely lost the abillity to separate my left and right feet (possibly from years of using my left foot to tap along to the bass drum line while driving for 18 years) I am all set to start up again. I think I will follow a proper teaching book or something - rather than just playing along to music like I used to - so that I have some depth of knowledge as opposed to just re-learning the machanics of hitting things in the appropiate order, but I'm really looking forward to it.
Oh, and in case anyone is wonder, yes I max'ed out my credit card. Yes, it cost more than my car, but no I don't regret it at all. By way of penance, I cleaned my entire flat, top to bottom yesterday and redid all my clothes storage, dusted everything, hoovered and mopped the floor, cleaned the bathroom... the whole lot. Then I drove off to the music shop.
Comments and faves
Spiralz (52 months ago | reply)
Woohoo, and I see you already have your first "fan" in the corner!
Congrats, and happy drumming.
Tin Corner (52 months ago | reply)
What was the damage? I'd never considered electronic as a solution to the 'only the Queen could afford a detached house in Kenilworth' problem.
Brock (52 months ago | reply)
$1600 including all the sticks, the seat, the bass pedal (double, so more than it strictly needed to be), the rack and a drum teaching kind of book/dvd set.
Comparable to this UK price, except that the base price for the kit and frame here is $1200, so I think that is slightly less.
I was looking at a cheaper one (Roland is pretty much there in terms of quality) and played around with a couple and they are much more on the 'this feels like a toy' side than this one. Andrew has a Roland TD8, but he lucked in with his drum teacher selling it second hand at the time.
You could get some good second hand deals on one, I would have thought, but it is a lot of moolah.
styler* (52 months ago | reply)
well thank god you never used the running shorts, those things are evil.
Neuköln (52 months ago | reply)
great score! you realise it's gonna end in tears for the jaguar; as soon as you've attained rock-god drummer status, you'll be pulling a moon, off to the nearest swimming pool in your jam jar.
--
Seen on your photo stream. (?)
Tin Corner (52 months ago | reply)
"you'll be pulling a moon, off to the nearest swimming pool in your jam jar."
Eh?
Anyway - do they physically feel like drum skins when you smack the shit out of them?
Brock (52 months ago | reply)
(Keith Moon drove a Rolls Royce into a pond after a party. Someone else drove on into a swimming pool, I think, to disentangle the urban legends).
Pretty much, yes. More so (oddly) when you can't hear the noise of them hitting. If you play with no headphones on the sound makes you think "Oooh, I'm playing on rubber pads" but you soon forget when you can't hear that noise.
Andrew says they're pretty realistic, and he's a better judge than me.
sarah.c (52 months ago | reply)
Thank god you weren't wearing the running shorts when we met.
Tin Corner (52 months ago | reply)
Yeah! And thank God you didn't care if he knew when to use the objective first person. Phew.
Jim Skea (52 months ago | reply)
I particularly like the thick vertically hung cymbal, top left.
sarah.c (52 months ago | reply)
I was raised in the states, Tin Corner, so I'm not very fussed by it, as you can probably tell by reading any of my comments on flickr.
It is fun, though, to watch him grit his teeth when I intentionally 'verbalise' nouns.
xmark. (51 months ago | reply)
Yay! Congratulations, credit immaculately spent.
I have a TD8 and it is beautiful. Whatever you do though, do not buy one of these. It chews up so much of my time. I swear, if you could access the internet on the handsonic, I would never move again.