With marching season fast approaching, we thought it would be a good opportunity to create a comparison chart of the current marching bass drum heads from Evans and Remo. Experimenting with different thicknesses, dampening systems, and coatings will help you achieve your desired marching bass drum sound. When you increase the thickness of the head, you increase the articulation and get a more focused, lower fundamental tone.

1. Remo Smooth White Ambassador Marching Bass Drum Heads come stock on marching basses from most manufacturers, including Pearl and Yamaha.
2. External/Internal Dampening can be added using Yamaha MA200 Tone Foam or Pearl TS14 Tone Foam.

We would love to hear your opinions on the different types of marching bass drum heads available. Please post in the comments section below.

One of our employees, Bill, had this Philadelphia Flyers Custom Gong made. Looks and sounds great.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wODNTjayubA

Steve Weiss Music, your “All-Things-For-All-Drummers” place to shop and the leading drum and percussion product and information specialists since 1961, is going to change the way you shop online for your percussive needs. On Monday June 22nd, the Steve Weiss Music website will undergo a change that will enable you to more easily, quickly, safely, and effectively search and shop for all of your drumming needs.

We redesigned the site from the ground up to take advantage of cutting edge web and browser technologies. Along with the many things you will notice and immediately be able to use, there are a ton of features and benefits that are behind the scenes and will be working for you to ensure that your shopping experience with us will be more enjoyable and far more informative than ever before.

To help everyone discover the new features and benefits of our upgraded website, we are giving away FREE gifts with purchase during the week of June 22nd…..Monday thru Friday. Simply visit our website each and every day of this week and be one of the first 100 customers to purchase anything, that’s right ANYTHING, and you will receive the Giveaway-Of-The-Day for FREE!

Steve Weiss Music has been your trusted partner when purchasing every kind of percussion product known to man, both standard and strange. And since the inception of our website in February 2004, we have worked vigorously to provide each and every customer with a selection and shopping experience that is second to none.

We proudly present our upgraded and improved website, designed to better help everyone find and purchase all of the drum and percussion products you need and desire. Thank you for your continued support for the past 48+ years of our business and 5+ years on the world wide web……enjoy the show.

SWM

Steve Weiss Music has teamed up with Thomas Burritt from the University of Texas at Austin to offer a unique opportunity to learn interactively on the web. Thomas caught our attention with his Percussion Axiom TV online show and we thought it would be fun to team up and create a contest around learning a piece of music interactively online.

Starting June 15th, Thomas will begin teaching the marimba solo Katamiya by Emmaneul Sejourne in online videos as part of his PATV show. Katamiya can be found in the book 7 Stücke für Marimba. The winner of the contest will be selected based on who is the most “interactive” online with Thomas Burritt and Steve Weiss Music.

Click Here to Watch the Introduction Video with Thomas Burritt and Read About Contest Specifics

Several years ago, Pearl Drums introduced the Eliminator line of bass drum pedals that featured many adjustments and options that were not available on any pedal to that point. Today, they introduced the Pearl Demon Drive Bass Drum Pedal series that takes any pedal currently available to all new heights. Direct Drive, a first on any Pearl pedal, enables the foot board to act perfectly in sync with the players foot to eliminate the slight “hick-up” feel that a chain or belt drive produces after the beater strikes the head. Combine that with all of the other features that the new Pearl Demon Drive Bass Drum Pedal has, and you can literally adjust it to any feel and positioning you desire. Some would say that too many adjustments is a bad thing or that you will never need that many adjustments in your life. Having too many adjustments is not the point, and neither is the fact that you will most likely set-it-and-forget-it (ah….the long awaited Ron Popeil reference). The point is that you actually have the ability to set this pedal to whatever YOU want it to be; that is the beauty of it. If you never mess with it again, it has accomplished what it is designed to do, give you the player the ability to put your own feel and touch to it. This pedal will not be available until late April or early May, 2009. This is a bit of a drag and it is certainly not the least expensive pedal ever made. But, when it does hit, the wait and expense will be worth it.

   

I recently picked up a Vic Firth Heavy Hitter Tenor Pad to find out what the multi-tenor world was all about. So far, it has been an interesting and rewarding side venture in my practice time. I came across a lot of great material in Bill Bachman’s Quad Logic and Julie Davila’s Modern Multi-Tenor Techniques and Solos. These books are totally worth checking out if you want to get a taste of the tenor world.

One challenge I came across with my new Vic Firth Quad Pad was mounting it in a comfortable playing position. I started off by placing it on my desk at home. This option was not happening due to the desk being too low. I then moved on to placing it on top of my dryer. Yet again a no go due to the pad being to high. The next day I brought the pad back to work to test out some alternative stands to get it in the perfect playing position.

Option 1 utilizes a Pearl S1000LS Concert Height Snare Drum Stand. The overall stability was pretty good. A small amount of “wobble”, however I’m sure that it is nothing out of the ordinary for marching tenors. When it comes down to it there will be a small amount of instability when you wear a set of tenors anyway. The great thing about this option is portability. This stand will fit easily into a small backpack. The height on this model is adjustable from 27″-36″.

Option 1

Option 2 utilizes an Ultra KKS700BK X-Type Style Stand. This option was the best as far as stability goes. Minus the tallest height setting, the stand is rock solid. When I initially tried this one out, I thought that height adjustment would be a concern. I soon found out that the height settings allowed this stand to go from 27″-40″. This height adjustment was versatile enough to get a blessing from one of our vertically gifted co-workers (He is 6′ 8″). The one downside of this option is the size of the stand. It’s relatively portable, however the S1000LS has the poratability side of things locked up.

Option 2

We would love to hear the stand solutions that you have come up with for this pad. Feel free to leave a comment so we can check out what you do with your tenor pad!