Diplomacy in a band, the drummers too loud

[Gary75]

Do you find that having your backline low enough is tough when you have guitarists and drummers in your band?

 

I think Im right in saying that you only need your backline just loud enough to hear it and let the FOH desk do the rest. But damn this drummer im with is seriously loud. He's a big guy and Im sure this does not help, but the backline is too loud now to compensate for his playing.

 

Its got quite bad that I got an email from the sax player saying he was making a perspex screen to go round the kit for gigs, and did I think the drummer would mind.

 

The only thing I could say was 'can you put a lid on it'?

 

It's one of the most annoying things to me, a too loud backline, grrrr!

[Dave Horne]

The drummer could always meet with an accident.

 

I've never run into a drummer who played very loudly who then could play softly when asked; it's a genetic impossibility.

 

I once duct taped paper napkins to the underside of the drum heads to quiet a drummer. I didn't ask. I just did it. It wasn't appreciated.

 

It's been my experience that musicians with little technique cannot play softly ... and I'm aware there are guys who can play softly but choose not to. It simply takes more technique to play softly. Good luck ... and good hearing.

[Joe Muscara]

I give the drummers *some* credit. A snare sounds very different depending on how you hit it, and you can get a much better crack sound when it's loud.

 

That being said, it's not always appropriate to play loudly, depending on the style and venue.

 

Here's my theory on the evolution of rock. The guitar players turned up to be louder than the drummers, and that's when they discovered distortion.

[Joe Muscara]

P.S. Get yourself good earplugs before your ears get damaged like mine are.

[RABid]

It's usually a mental thing and getting him to change could be a big battle. The only thing worse is a drummer that needs to play everything at the same tempo. Drums can be muffled with some degradation to sound quality. I did it myself as a drummer when playing small dinner settings. The other option is to convert him to an electronic drum kit. If he does not want to cut back, audition drummers who can play soft or have electronic kits. Roland V-Drums are great for achieving a good mix on stage.

[ITGITC]

Get another drummer.

 

 

[Joe Muscara]

Get another drummer.

 

I dunno, Tom. I think having two drummers would be worse for him than just one.

[Gary75]

Believe it or not but drummers in this neck of the wood are hard to find. Can having different grade sticks help reduce the noise or does this only inspire the drummer to hit harder to get the desired effect of having harder sticks?

 

I'd love to have a drummer who uses a Roland kit, but they are few and far between that will accept them.

 

I always feel like i come across is the whiner in the band over noise, but I play far better when im not flattened by a wall of sound as we all do (apart from guitarists and drummers it seems)

 

 

[MikeT156]

An electronic kit can solve all your problems. Getting a drummer that is willing to use it, much less pay for a new kit is a major feat. I have a friend that plays in a rock trio, and their drummer has an electronic kit. It does sound a bit different than a standard set, but you can't beat it for consistency in the sound level. It can be run through the PA or through its own sound system so the FOH gets the right volume mix, without making the rest of the band deaf.

 

Stage volume SHOULD be only loud enough for the band members to hear everything. Once the on-stage volume war starts, it doesn't end until the entire band is too loud for the audience. People leave and stop coming to hear your group, then no more gigs. You might want to relate that to the drummer. If all else fails, threaten to buy a drum machine and fire his ass.

 

This is just another one of the many reasons I started doing a solo act years ago.

 

Good luck,

 

Mike T.

[yannis D]

try to use "we" imstead pf "you" whem refering to the general sound on stage. Try to persuade him to set up on the other corner of the stage or to buy an electronic set and have your own monitoring. Put your earplugs to avoid the ear damage. Finally...fire him (or find yourself another band!). There's no such an annoying think as a bad drummer, this can easily ruin your night (and your overall performance)

yannis

[ProfD]

Believe it or not but drummers in this neck of the wood are hard to find. Can having different grade sticks help reduce the noise or does this only inspire the drummer to hit harder to get the desired effect of having harder sticks?

 

I always feel like i come across is the whiner in the band over noise, but I play far better when im not flattened by a wall of sound as we all do (apart from guitarists and drummers it seems)

Different sticks will not help. The drummer has to play with more control and finesse. Talk to him about it.

 

While you are in the unenviable position of town crier, it ultimately benefits the entire band i.e. preserved hearing and sanity.

 

Good luck in resolving this common problem amicably.

 

 

[MusicaL]

A couple of suggestions:

 

Talk to him about the problem and try to make it a band problem, not a drummer problem. You could suggest he play with bundled sticks.

 

If all else fails, use ear plugs.

 

aL

[loumi]

Can having different grade sticks help reduce the noise or does this only inspire the drummer to hit harder to get the desired effect of having harder sticks?

 

Yeah, have him play with hot rods for a while until he settles down. Another thing you could do is make a recording with him playing. Let him hear how loud and dominant he is. If he likes that, get a new drummer. But just in listening it might convince him to improve his light playing technique, which I sense he has little of.

 

Lou

[ITGITC]

Get another drummer.

 

I dunno, Tom. I think having two drummers would be worse for him than just one.

 

Clever, you are.

 

I had not thought about that.

 

George, a drummer friend of mine who I seem to be speaking about quite often on this forum, plays loudly. Too loudly.

 

He and I go back. Waaaaay back. He grew up 'round the corner from me and I've known him since he was knee-high to a chicken.

 

He's always played too loud.

 

And he's demonstrative - he wants to take control and have the band follow him... always.

 

In my world, we follow the vocalist if an arrangement isn't worked out specifically. The vocalist is out front. He/she should be the one to cue the band to stop/start & breaks.

 

I've worked with him when he's played electronic drums on tracks we recorded. Before that he did a fantastic job making MIDI tracks sound good. He was on the cutting edge of using that technology. When he bought his electronic kit he still used real cymbals because he liked the sound and the long sustain/release. So he miked those.

 

Here's a link to a bedroom-studio Christmas project that George and I did back in 1993 - that's 15 years ago. LINK

 

This was in the days of Cakewalk running on PC-DOS. I think I was using the DX7 and a Kurzweil 1000PX-A rack. George had a Yamaha drum machine and a few others, but he edited his tracks in Cakewalk.

 

I also remember a discussion where George didn't want reverb on the whole kit. He would isolate the kick drum and leave it dry - no reverb at all. I argued with him at first until I realized that it did indeed sound better.

 

 

Yeah.

 

George now plays at church - behind a plexiglass panel/cage. Of course, he's got each drum mic'd.

 

But he has never changed his technique to play softly.

 

And because of this, it makes it tough impossible to write any dynamics into arrangements.

 

Can't teach an old dog...

 

That's why I said that if the drummer is too loud, get another drummer.

 

If you can't do that, then perhaps you can persuade him to consider an electronic kit. BluesKeys' band, The Castaways, has everything going through the FOH with no amps on stage except for the guitarist - he has a small tube-type Fender amp pointed at him as a monitor with a '57 on it. Everyone uses IEM. Their dynamics are very controlled and they sound great out front.

 

As far as I'm concerned a great drummer can make the band. A bad drummer can make me pack up and go home.

 

Tom

 

 

 

 

[humannoyed]

Sadly, quiet set playing is nearly a lost art. Back in the day all drummers had to not overpower piano and upright bass. UB used to not even be amplified! THAT is VERY restrained in volume for drummers. Yet most good drummers knew how how to smoke at that volume!

 

Also most drum heads are thicker than they used to be and some claim that they must be struck harder to get the right tone. Of course the "right" tone is style dependent...

If you are playing a style where the drums on the recording sound like they are being pounded, then he may feel like he is just doing his job well.

 

Unless he is a sensitive self-effacing personality then he is probably set in his ways and won't try to re-evaluate his drumming from the other musicians' perspective.

 

But then if he was the talented, self conscious, constantly re-evalutating type, he might already be playing with [insert big time artist with well paid musicians here]

 

[ITGITC]

But then if he was the talented, self conscious, constantly re-evalutating type, he might already be playing with [insert big time artist with well paid musicians here]

 

 

You KNOW drummers like this?

 

Really?

 

 

[Blue JC]

Personally, I don't believe in band diplomacy. It never solves anything - it just defers little problems until they become big problems.

 

If something is wrong, I will say something after the first song where it is wrong. I don't wait for the break or an off-site band meeting. You lose the context that way.

 

If he is too loud on the first song, turn around and tell him. And keep telling him until his volume is in line or he quits.

 

It is not your responsibility to figure out ways for another musician on stage to do the right thing. That way lies madness.

[montunoman]

Believe it or not but drummers in this neck of the wood are hard to find. Can having different grade sticks help reduce the noise or does this only inspire the drummer to hit

 

I don't know what type of music you play but muti-rod sticks and diffenet types of brushes can be a big help. I used these on latin and pop type gigs that require low volume.

[timwat]

My son (bass player) joined a band last year with a too-loud drummer. Was a talented drummer but only had one volume, which proved to be the scourge of the whole band, the bane to sound men, you name it. They NEVER got it worked out, my son dropped out of that band over the summer break when he came home from college.

 

Catch up this year with the guy, and he told my son, "You know, I've sort of discovered another aspect to playing, I'm playing a lot quieter now." Don't know what precipitated his epiphany (could be the other band members all moved to San Francisco without him...ha ha ha), but like so many things for us as musicians, sometimes the light has to go in one's own head no matter how many times someone diplomatically (or not so diplomatically) tries to drill it in from the outside.

 

 

 

[MikeT156]

I wonder just how much of the volume problem with drummers is because they are trying to get the right tone from their drums. The same is true of guitarists. In order to get the right sound and the greatest amount of sustain out of their instrument, they had to crank it up. Guitarists that were playing Marshall stacks had to play at 120+db in order to get the right tone. Solution, buy a small stage amp and leave the Marshall stack at home. That way they can crank up the little amp to their heart's desire without the band going deaf too.

 

Electronic drums are a better solution.

 

 

Mike T.

[cnegrad]

Guitars, drums, sometimes bass; they 'all' play way too loud. It's all about ego. That's how they rationalize the pyrotechnics, the volume, the haircuts, the onstage prancing and facial expressions. Ask them why they're doing all this stuff and the response is usually, 'Hey man, that's how I get the chicks'....

[MikeT156]

Quote by cnegrad:

 

"'Hey man, that's how I get the chicks'...."

 

Imagine that!

 

Mike T.

[timwat]

Well, as a KB player who's been playing in worship ministry for 20 years, I never got the chicks that way. I must not have been playing loud enough.

[Hammodel AV]

Talk about diplomancy with drummers on worship teams! We had an extremely bad incident, where a GUEST drummer caused people to leave our church and not return. The people who left thought the 'band' was just too loud. During the previous practices, I had even told him that I was going deaf (my eardrums hurt). He said "well, that is the way I play". We had wanted to go with electronic drums and as a result of that Sunday with that drummer, money was finally provided to get a Roland kit. But, as a consequence, certain drummers will not EVER play for us again (not having an acoustic kit) and the Christian band that practiced at our church also moved to a facility with 'real' drums.

[Dave Horne]

Personally, I don't believe in band diplomacy. It never solves anything - it just defers little problems until they become big problems.

 

If something is wrong, I will say something after the first song where it is wrong. I don't wait for the break or an off-site band meeting. You lose the context that way.

 

If he is too loud on the first song, turn around and tell him. And keep telling him until his volume is in line or he quits.

 

It is not your responsibility to figure out ways for another musician on stage to do the right thing. That way lies madness.

 

+1

[Hammodel AV]

I forgot to mention that the church that the guest drummer came from normally has their drummers in a enclosed drum room onstage, with a headphone feed. He (while he was blowing out my ears) was also wearing a headphone to "protect his ears". Additionally, we had to use a hunk of train-track rail and a Fender combo amp to keep the bass drum from moving forward while he drummed (from the basskick force).

[timwat]

Drummer to KB player: "You know, I'm not sure if I'm going to be comfortable playing with you."

 

KB player to drummer: "Funny, I feel the same way. Why do you feel uncomfortable?"

 

Drummer: "Well, you're so brilliant. You've got this amazing technical command, your boards sound fantastic, you always play with such passion - and the chicks just adore you. And to think you do it all with those newfangled keyboard tabs. I'm a little intimidated. Say, since we're talking about it, why aren't you comfortable with me?"

 

KB player: "You're just too darned loud. But I could hook you up with some drum tabs if you like."

 

 

 

[RABid]

I would never let a drummer I don't know play my V-Drums because drummers that play too hard can mess up the heads. Those drummers are less likely to do that when THEY are paying for the equipment.

[RABid]

Keyboardist to drummer - "Let's make a deal that will help the band. Since we can no longer play together let the band start looking for replacements. If they find a keyboardist first I will leave and you can stay. If they find a replacement drummer first you leave and I will stay.

 

Drummer - "But there are 20 drummers for every keyboardist looking for work."

 

Keyboardist - "That's correct, and many of them know how to play without making us deaf."

[marino]

This thread makes me recall an episode from a couple of years ago. (I won't start a new thread for it because... well, I don't think many others could relate, as you'll see)

 

In short, for the first time in my life I encountered a drummer who played too soft!

I was researching to find musicians for my new jazz trio, and a bass player friend wanted me to check a drummer from Eastern Europe he had played with recently. So we met at a reharsal place, and it was a really wierd experience. This guy played with such a restrained attitude, it was hard for me to hear him from the other side of a medium-sized room. I lowered my dynamics quite a bit - but he lowered his even more. Even when I asked him to switch from brushes to sticks, he remained difficult to hear. I don't know if he felt intimidated or maybe he was trying to check me out or whatever; for sure, it wasn't lack of technique, because he was a hell of a jazz drummer, with fantastic timing and phrasing. He just seemed to think that his role was to never surpass the volume level of the others. (in a jazz trio!)

 

We didn't have time to speak much after playing, but in the end I didn't call him for the trio, because I felt he lacked a bit of soul and blood in his playing, which I need from a drummer even in a delicate context. But he was a great drummer, only incredibly restrained.

 

I've encountered a few "wishpering" musicians in my experience - even an electric guitarist among them. (We're still friends... ) But *never* a drummer. You never stop learning.