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Drums Accessories

 

There are a host of drum accessories available on the market - practice pads, metronomes, isolation headphones, drumsticks, brushes, drumstick bags, drum skins, cymbal stands, musician ear plugs and MP3 recording devices to mention a few.

Listed below are a few essentials for any drummer and an explanation of their uses.

Practice Pads

Muffler or Mute Pad Set Accessories
These are rubber pads that sit on the snare drum, cymbals and tom toms and fix to the bass drum. They are very useful accessories as they vastly reduce the volume of the drum kit thereby enabling you to practice almost all hours of the day without upsetting the neighbours! Playing a drum kit for long periods of time and at loud volumes can cause ear fatigue and also permanently damage your hearing. The ears become 'overloaded'.

Stand alone snare drum pads
Also known as desktop drum practice pads, these accessories are made of a hard or soft rubber. The softer the rubber the harder you need to work the stick to obtain a rebound or multiple strokes. The pad sits on either your snare drum or any flat surface enabling you to practice your drum technique and rudiments at a low volume.
The benefits of using a practice pad are :

• Clearly hearing the individual strokes of a rudiment
• Errors are much easier to detect
• Low volume
• Less ear fatigue

Practice Drum Set
A whole 5 piece practice kit is a consideration for anyone who needs a 'no noise' solution! There are a few on the market but the Gear 4 Music one is a good choice 5 piece Practice Pad Drum Kit + Stool.

Electronic Practice Pad
Alesis E Practice Pad is an electronic practice pad. You choose from 65 different drum sounds and it has a built-in metronome. It also has 50 practice games and exercises. Alternatively there are other similar accessories with just the metronome built in. For example: DRUM PRACTICE PAD WITH ELECTRONIC METRONOME. Both can be used with headphones.

Other Useful Drum Accessories

Metronomes
Metronomes are an essential accessory. They help to cultivate your own sense of time and feel. The Boss DB90 Dr. Beat Metronome and Boss DB60 Dr. Beat Metronome are two of the best metronomes on the market. Please avoid the old fashioned ‘tick-tock’ ones as they can be unreliable. If you have an iPhone or iTouch the ‘Tempo’ app by Frozen Ape is excellent. Here is a fantastic deal combining 4 essential drum accessories Drum Practice Pad Metronome, Sticks & Stick Bag

Isolation Headphones
These Electric Isolation Headphones made by Vic Firth are fantastic. They help protect the ears from hearing loss in later years by damage incurred from hours and hours of practice on the drum kit. Also because your ears are protected you can practice longer without incurring ear fatigue as explained earlier.

The headphones reduce the external volume of the drum kit by 24 decibels and therefore are a very useful practice accessory. When you need to practice along with a piece of music or a metronome click, it makes it possible to keep the volume at a sensible level in the headphones without straining to hear the music or click over the sound of the drums. There are also the cheaper non-electric headphones Vic Firth Drummer's Ear Defenders for general ear protection use. For very young children these Vic Firth Children's Ear Defenders are handy for a variety of situations i.e. loud concerts or festivals or even firework displays.

Recording Devices
The Zoom H4n with Bonus 16GB SD Card and Mini Tripod is a fantastic Mp3/Wav recorder. I have recorded many gigs and rehearsals with this device and the sound quality is amazing. Once you have finished recording you can listen back with a pair of mini-jack headphones or transfer the tracks via a USB lead to your computer then burn to a cd or send tracks to your band mates by e-mail or an upload site such as YouSendit.com.
There are cheaper recorders such as the Roland R05 Handheld WAVE MP3 Digital Recorder which is also very good. They both record fantastically well and with both devices you have a choice of recording in Mp3 (compressed file) or Wav (Uncompressed file).

Hearing yourself back can be an invaluable lesson because when you are doing this you are using your 'listening ears'. This is how other people/musicians are hearing you! Perhaps a section in a song you thought was really 'cooking' at the time was actually speeding up or it just didn't 'sit' with the rest of the band. When you are playing there are usually many distractions and maybe a few technical/musical challenges as well. Your brain is so overloaded that you cannot hear your playing in the same way as when you are using your 'listening ears'

Ear Plug Accessories
In a playing or gig situation you really should wear some kind of discreet ear protection. These are the choices; foam, rubber, molded and non-molded ear plugs. For a very cheap option Soft Foam Earplugs are quite effective, but they can make the music sound a bit muffled as they cut mostly the high frequencies (i.e.; cymbals, guitars,keyboards) and some of the low end. For a more professional and balanced reduction across of all frequencies a pair of specifically molded ear plugs fitted with 15db or 25db filters would be perfect. However, typically they cost around £150 and they need to be fitted by an audiologist.
The non-moulded ear plugs with filters are cheaper but are still very effective. They are made by Alpine, ACS and Elacin. These are all good makes.

Sticks and Brushes
Vic Firth is a very reliable make for lots of drum accessories including both sticks and brushes. Drumsticks and their different sizes (for children, teenagers and adults) has been discussed elsewhere on this site. Vic Firth Heritage Drum Brushes are a good choice for children as they are quite light and for an excellent heavier brush Vic Firth Jazz Drum Brushes.

Drumstick Bags
Drumstick bags are not only capable of obviously keeping your drumsticks, brushes and beaters but also they can hold all the other useful and essential bits and pieces in the handy pockets i.e. metronome, sheet music, drum key , pencil, rubber, Leatherman all-in-one tool, pegs (for outdoor gigs), etc.
Here is a really excellent one Protection Racket 6024 Deluxe Drum Stick Bag and here is a more luxurious one Vic Firth drum stick bag. Of course there are cheaper stick bags on the market but both of these bags are very sturdy and are built to last.

Drum Skins
Drum skins do wear out and they do break. There are various makes: Remo, Evans, Aquarian are among the very best.  A cost effective way to buy a set of skins is to purchase a Drum Head Pack Remo Emperor Pro Pack Rock Sizes (12", 13", 16" Emperor Coated + FREE 14" BA-0114-00) or Drum Head Pack 10" 12" 14" + 14" snare - Pinstripe Fusion .

This usually contains a 10” 12” 14” for the toms and 14” for the snare or 12” 13” 16” for the toms and 14” for the snare. Bass drum skins (front and back) are usually not part of the head pack and are bought separately. The 20" Aquarian Texture Coated Bass is one to consider and if you have a 22" bass drum try this one Aquarian Texture Coated 22 inch Bass. For the front head Aquarian Regulator 22-inch Small Port Hole Black or the Aquarian Regulator 20-inch Small Port Hole White. Both look and sound great. Do check your drum sizes first before you purchase any skins.

Cymbal Stands
For an extra crash cymbal or ride cymbal you could use either of these stands Stagg Crash Cymbal Stand(Straight) or Stagg Cymbal Stand (Boom). The difference between a boom stand and a straight stand is with a boom stand you can use the extra angle and length of the pivoting arm to place your cymbal closer to you and the playing area. They are usually slightly more expensive as well. Booms are used perhaps more for the ride cymbal but can in fact be used for any cymbal. Straight cymbal stands do not have the capability of angling towards you: they literally go straight up!

Damper Pads - Moongel
Moongel is a self-adhesive rubber type substance that sticks to the surface of drums and cymbals thereby eliminating any unwanted resonances. This is especially useful when the drum kit is being recorded in a studio or any 'live' situation where the drums are being miked. Moongel is also very useful because of its size, when placed on the drum or cymbal it doesn't get in the way of the playing area. The damper pad is washable and will last for a very long time.

Drum tuning
This clever little machine will help you to tune your drum kit effortlessly. Made by the respected drum manufacturer Tama the TW100 measures the actual head tension on an easy to read dial, so you can record the numbers and duplicate your best tuning time after time. There are also suggested sample tunings in the supplied directions.