BATS!

This is Luke Taylor. He is the owner and operator of a fine Providence business by the name of Hope Street Tattoo. He is also my friend and one of my favorite people.

Since moving into my apartment and being dead set that the vibe of my bedroom would be "October".  I thought of a cool idea. Since I cannot even draw a perfect circle, let alone a distinguishable image of any kind, I called in Luke Taylor to aid bringing my idea to life.

What was my idea? Well, it was bats and webs!!!

Here is the end result: Bats and web at the head of my room/web in the right hand corner on the right hand wall.

I'm very happy with how it came out. Its exactly what I wanted it to be. A big thank you goes to Luke Taylor for taking some time out of his day to do it and being a good friend and artist, even though I didnt exactly challenge his artistic ability with a standard of "the more it looks like shit, the better!" but hey, Thanks Luke!

Snare Re-Doins Pt. II

Project number 2 was just finished yesterday! I took my sweet ass time with this one. I've been lazy. It happens! It also doesnt help when I go to get heads, finally, and they are out of Hazys. What can you do?

This bad boy is a 14x7 steel Tama Rockstar snare. Rockstars usually arent the best thing on the market, but I really like this snare drum. It looks like a serious beast. Appears so much larger than my 14x7 yamaha birch. Its strange. 

BEFORE:

This is the kind of stuff I was dealing with! WHO DOES THIS!?

Again, I didnt really DO much. I just took everything off and then just used Brasso to just shine everything up. Nothing really all THAT special, but I think it came out pretty good, yet again. The finish could have come out a little bit better. It almost seems a bit scratchy or foggy? maybe? I dont know if its something I did. I used a green pad, it wasnt rough at all, but it had a little something to it. So maybe thats what did it. It had too much shit all over it and like, deposits? stuck all over the steel. Using an ordinary rag didnt seem like it would do anything for it. So I went with one of those green pads. No idea what its called, but it comes on the back of sponges to do dishes with, know what im saying?

Here is was it looks like now!

Now as for tuning. I went with the standard, using the dial of course. Bottom head 82, top 85. I think it sounds pretty good. Its a looser tuning than what I like but im not use to steel snares nor their tuning, but after I played around on it a little bit and heard it mixed with everything, its pretty good. Id like to re-do it again in the future with a tighter tuning, maybe 85 bottom, 90 top. I think thats what I use for my yamaha.

Then again, I assume steels are supposed to be tuned lower. Essentially im going for that Death Cab For Cutie sound with it. If you listen to "summer skin" off Plans or "grapevine Fires" off Narrow Stairs, youll know what I mean. Thats what I was going for. Something loose, little ringy, long sustain, give you lots of play for stick work.

Its loud as fuck when you really bang on it too, so overall I guess thats just its nature. Ill see what happens in a couple months. I would really like to re-do it and tune it differently.

Snare Drum Re-Doins Pt. 1

I took up a project 2 weeks ago. I saw this snare drum sitting in Luke Taylors basement. Its a Pearl Piccolo 13"x3". Its been in his basement for lord knows how months. It wasn't being used since the top head had exploded, there was a VHS tape sitting inside the thing for gods sake. So since I have nothing else better to do with my spare time, I decided to take it home and refurbish it.

It was my first time ever taking a snare or any drum for that matter, completely apart, tuning both TOP and Bottom heads on a snare AND replacing snare wires. I figured it "good for me" since I love drums and don't ever shut up about them or stop looking at drums, drooling on the internet. So why not learn more, since you can never know too much about something you're sincerely passionate about.

Here's what it looked like BEFORE:


Now I was really trying to refrain from using the word "refurbish". Since it sounds really intense and like hard work. Where I didn't really do much. I just kinda "cleaned" it. Though I did take the time and got some polish from my grandfather and clean all the hoops, lugs and tension rods so they'd shine real nice.

Here's what it looks like NOW:


I think it came out pretty good. The only thing that stresses me out is the tuning of it. I don't know what it sounded like before hand. I'm also not familiar with Steel snares, especially piccolos. I think its way too ringy, but i'm not sure if that's just the nature of this drum/steel drums in general. Maybe I choked it or the strainer isn't set right, it could definitely be something with the bottom head. It doesn't sound awful but I personally don't particularly like the sound very much but that could have been because I did something incorrectly. 

Though for a first try, I give myself credit. You have to learn some how so its an experience. There's another snare to "refurbish". So i'm going to try my luck with that one. It is also steel, but I believe its deeper, so this one will also sound different, but I am interested in seeing the difference between a 5-7 inch steel snare and a 3".

When my kit is finished and I get my new snare, I plan on changing the bottom head on my 14X7 Yamaha and see how that goes. So if I struggle with that one its only my back up and not my ONLY snare that I have.