I disagree with your assertion that tuning drums is easy. I find it a chore. However, I understand that a drummer should find his own sound. Perhaps, though, if you have experience tuning drums, or you have a sound that he likes, you could teach him how to set up that sound. Take the request as the compliment it almost surely is.
I NEVER said it was “easy” (I said it was a “personal” thing) and in another setting, yes, I would have been happy to show him how, but Drum God, this was something he should have known before going onstage.
Yeah, it WAS a compliment (of sorts), but if I had set his kit up like MINE and he couldn’t play it that way, THEN what???
I DID call Jason and tell him if his friend wanted a basic “lesson”, I’d be happy to do that, but not at the last minute before a gig!
This is the line that I equated to your saying tuning drums is easy. If I misinterpreted, please accept my apology. I meant no offense.
I was just thinking that an inexperienced drummer might want to use your tuning an set-up as a starting point. All of us start somewhere. However, how did this guy get the gig if he didn’t have the drums set up somehow, somewhere?
By the way, referencing a comment you made in the cymbals thread, I once heard a high school jazz audition where a kid used a China. Imagine a swing ride pattern on a China. Pang pang pa pang. Goofiest thing I’ve heard in a long time.
And yeah, I know… maybe I was too hard on the kid, and maybe I should have gone, and it was a compliment, really, that my son asked me to do it, and under different circumstances I would have been there for him, but you know as well as me, that musicians have to get “comfortable” with themselves, and he SHOULD have known his set and his sound.
This was a “bar gig” during the holidays, and now that you bring it up, I have mixed emotions about it, but my dad would have just “thrown me in”, so I guess that’s what I did.
On the China?
Okay… I’ll keep an open mind! Always willing to hear new things!
I think that you did the right thing.
If the guy had your son for a friend, then he knew long ago that you knew what you were doing. Why didn’t he ask then?
The punk wanted somebody to be his roadie. He probably was telling all the chicks that he hired a roadie for 2 beers and letting you carry his drums.
As for its being a compliment: Yes! You get to set up the drums of the next Neal Peart! You get to do this because you are *smarter *than the other people who want to carry his drums around, and he chose you!
