Electronic Percussion

Lost In Percussion Translation

So it's been a better part of six years since I last was actively involved as a percussionist. I originally started playing when I was in middle school and did very well during my high school years. I was the typical teenager who spent all of his part-time job earnings buying my favorite favorite artist's drumsticks and pretty much anything else that my drum teacher would let me buy at a "student discount" at the studio where I took lessons. It really never dawned on me exactly how much this industry was changing every year and what new methods I could use in honing my percussion skills until last year.

After having returned home from my second deployment to Iraq, and all of the extra pay was gone; my wife and I found ourselves in the same boat: paycheck to paycheck. I'm sure that a majority of other Americans constantly find themselves in the same boat year after year, and regardless of what they try to cut out of the budget, it seems like the bills never get any smaller. I decided that while I took a little "education vacation" courtesy of the army, that I would do something about it.

After hours upon hours of dead-end phone calls and countless emails to big name manufacturers, I realized that the percussion industry had changed a great deal. Finding a wholesaler (who actually carried items that weren't shipped from china or were legitimate), was ridiculously difficult, if not impossible. I switched my store line to include musical instruments in general and thanks to a few distributors of some name brand products, I was able to open a store on eBay.

While constantly trying to track down a main stream supplier, I kept running across updated, digital products that were percussion focused. I asked myself, "What ever happened to Ludwig Rockers, Sunlite Drums, and Gibraltar Intruder double pedals?" I recalled that I had purchased an Intruder II double pedal at Mars Music for around 300 bucks or so when I was 16.

Nowadays, there are brands that are making bass pedals out of aircraft grade aluminum and titanium. Take a look at Axis Percussion for example. I was first introduced to Axis about ten years ago when the brand was first coming into the mainstream market. I thought you needed an engineering degree or at least a profound knowledge of quantum physics in order to simply adjust the pedals to one's liking. As I am writing this, I have the Axis page pulled up and am researching where the brand has gone after a decade. Axis Percussion now offers pedals that have seemingly endless ways that they can be adjusted. I think it's a novel idea to be able to dial in the exact comfort that suits your playing style the best, but is all of that stuff really necessary?

Don't get me wrong, I think that with the uprising of electronic drums, synthetic drumsticks and indestructible hardware, drummers are really just going to get what Honda and Toyota purchasers get with a new car: quality for a great price. I mean who wants to buy a new snare stand and it breaks a year later? Furthermore, how many gentle drummers do you know? I personally don't know any.

This "article" is really more of a rant and a plea for help to educate someone who's been out of the business for quite some time. On top of that, not to sales pitch or anything but the reason I'm trying to get educated is that I recently opened a new store and thought I would have enough product knowledge from the past to keep my clients informed, but I think I would rather get advice from the more knowledgeable public.

Thanks for your opinions and thoughts! (and for reading of course)

Greg Priebe
http://www.therhythmsource.com
http://www.twitter.com/therhythmsource

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Electronic Percussion

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