Steve Weiss Music Blog

Roland SPD-S Sample Pad

May 1, 2007 – 8:23 am
The Roland SPD-S is a great sample pad, and allows for even the least tech-savvy of us to be able to run it efficiently with ease. It is a great way for a drummer to be able to start incorporating electronic sounds into his or her live setup as well. You can use this pad to do what you want in four easy steps. 1) Connect an external audio device via 1/4" jacks. 2) Hit record, which is started by hitting one of the pads. 3) Play the sample from the external audio device. 4) Hit the pad again to stop the recording. I have used this on plenty of gigs, and it is perfect for all styles of play. I found it extremely helpful on club dates and wedding band gigs, as well as super helpful in the studio. Also, the on-board sounds are of relatively good quality. You can find anything in ...

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Steve Weiss Music Welcomes Yamaha Combo Products

April 26, 2007 – 11:19 am
All of us at Steve Weiss Music, Inc. are very happy to welcome a "new" vendor to our product lineup, Yamaha Combo Division Products. Yes, we are once again officially authorized Yamaha Combo Dealers, which means we can help you with all of your Yamaha needs. Newly added products include Yamaha Drum Sets, Snare Drums, Hardware, Electronic Percussion and Accessory products. We have had a lot success with Yamaha Educational Products and we are looking forward to helping all of our customers by expanding into the Yamaha Combo product offerings. You may be familiar with the strength and versatility of Yamaha Hardware and the tremendous value of their Electronic Drum Sets, but you also may want to check out their Drum Set lineup that features the new Tour Custom line of drums. All of the Yamaha Combo products are available to purchase from us however, we do ...

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Taiko Drumming

April 13, 2007 – 1:29 pm
Although not as popular in school and community circles as Brazilian Percussion groups or Samba Schools (primarily due to the overall cost factors), Taiko Drumming is becoming more popular and more affordable. The gain in popularity is due to the increase of awareness and instrument availability. With the addition of this line of products into such "mainstream" companies as Remo and Pearl, Taiko Drumming is being made available to more and more schools and individual community groups than ever before. The word Taiko literally means "fat drum" in Japanese and has been a part of Japanese culture for many centuries. Its roots lie in the many temples and shrines scattered all over Japan and are based in their religious festivals and ceremonies. In addition to marking the edge of a village (it is said that as far as you could hear the Taiko Drum was the edge ...

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AKG D112 my choice for kick drum

April 10, 2007 – 8:39 am
The AKG D112 is the standard kick drum mic, well it's my standard at least. There are a ton of great choices out there for the kick. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a vintage AKG D12 or maybe you prefer the Sennheiser 421. In any case, the D112 is the mic I always go to for the kick drum and bass guitar amp. What you get with it is a nice low end thud without ignoring the upper mid thwack. Over the weekend I was tracking some drums for an upcoming project. We had our choice of a few large diaphragm condenser and dynamic mics. After messing around with a few we got a huge, but defined sound out of the D112 just outside the resonant head and an SM-57 oddly enough on the batter side of the kick. Even with the bass drum stuffed with muffling we ...

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Handsonic and SM-57

March 30, 2007 – 8:58 am
Being a player that does a lot of live playing as well as studio recording, I couldn't be happier knowing that we are now carrying the SM-57 mics by Shure. It is by far my favorite mic to use on my snare drum, and gets a great sound, whether you mic the drum from the top or from the bottom. It is ultra sensitive, and just picks up the full tonality of the drum in either setting. I had a chance to play around with the Roland Handsonic HPD-10, and I was pretty impressed with it for the most part. The first thing that I noticed when I plugged it in and started tapping on it was the velocity sensitivity on the individual pads. Somehow, the "instrument" notices when you are playing a "slap" type of hit on the pads when trying to perform a conga "slap." The pads also ...

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My thoughts on the Pearl MBS2000 Marching Bass Drum Stand

March 28, 2007 – 2:14 pm
This past weekend, I was able to check out the new Pearl MBS2000 Marching Bass Drum Stand while teaching the Percussion Ensemble at Villanova University and thought I would pass along my findings. This stand was designed to be a lower priced alternative ($79.95) to Stadium Series Hardware ($150). There are no movable legs on this bass drum stand, but unless you are actually in the stands for a football game (and those stands are so narrow that the movable leg is needed), I can’t see many other reasons why this stand wouldn't work. Actually, the other reason I took one to practice to check out was because one of the two bell players in the Percussion Ensemble had to place the set of bells on top of chairs because we only had one X-style stand in the band room. I thought this MBS2000 stand could also double as a ...

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