The Beat Goes On - 25 months

(This post was originally written by Martin.)

Edward is still very much into drumming, eight months after he first picked up a plastic stick and used it to make sounds. He's been drumming daily (almost hourly) for 1/3rd of his life.

One reason we love living in Eugene is that it has pretty much everything you could ask for in life. Today we asked for two drum shops with kits set up for Edward to play with, and found Sam Adato's Drum Shop and The Guitar Center.

We went to Sam Adato's first. Sam is a rock drummer who moved up from San Francisco, and runs a business selling and servicing new and second hand acoustic drum kits. When we got there on a Saturday afternoon we were the only customers, and only one man came in during the twenty minutes or so we spent there, so we hope Sam can continue in business, but he had plenty of stock, so he seems to be doing OK. If Ed does end up getting seriously into drumming he may come here a lot. Sam had a secondhand kid's drum kit available for $250, but we decided to look further before spending that much.

On to The Guitar Center then, which has a drum department. I've bought guitars and ukuleles there, and we've looked at drums before. They had a kid's size kit set up, more expensive than Sam's second hand kid's set and I think maybe not quite as good quality at a higher price, but here's Edward having a blast on it. 

We're learning a lot about drums through Edward's interest, so I can give you a brief beginner's guide. 

The main drum is the snare, directly in front of Edward on its own stand. Add to that a hi-hat cymbal, which opens and closes with a foot pedal. That gives you two more sounds, open and closed. Then the bass drum, with another foot pedal, sometimes two. Ed is too short still to easily work the pedals while sitting on the stool. Those three elements make up the basic rhythm or groove. Say, hit the hit hat (closed) every beat (of eight) with the right hand stick, hit the snare every second beat (2,4,6, 8), and the bass every 3rd and 5th. That requires a surprising amount of co-ordination and practise just to keep going. 

Now we move onto the toms. A standard kit has three toms, 8" and 10" attached top the top of the bass drum, and a third on its own feet to the right hand. To give variation to the basic groove set up on the hi-hat, snare and bass, you can do runs on the toms, or just substitute a tom hit for a snare hit. To the right of the big tom is another cymbal, which might be a ride or a clash. The name says it, a ride is deigned for constant taps much like the hi-hat, and a clash is for one big hit as an accent. 

For convenience a drummer may have a second clash off to the left in the gap between the hi-hat and the small tom, but it's not vital, it just makes more frequent clashes easier.

Having looked at price tags and had a discussion about noise, possible kit location, a second child soon to be in the house, and so forth, and also looking at electronic kits, we bought the small portable set that Ed is playing with below.

This is big enough for an adult to practise with, and small enough for Ed to reach everything. As you see there are two foot pedals, for bass and hi-hat, which can be located anywhere. The main unit has snare bottom left and three toms in an arc around the hi-hat, plus clash to top left and ride to top right. Being electronic it has 25 different sound sets, plus back beats with adjustable tempo, volume etc. It can also record temporarily, though the recording is lost when the power is turned off. 

If Edward is still playing with this when he's three we're thinking of clearing a space in my den above Beth's wood shop and putting a kid's acoustic set in there. That would keep the noise out of the main house while still contained, allowing kid #2 to sleep undisturbed.

Beth built this timpani set a couple of weeks ago for outdoor playing. She designed the frame to hold four upended buckets: two 5 gallon, one 3 1/2, and one 2 gallon.  It requires heavier strikes to get a good tone, so Ed uses these PVC tubes or rubber ball tipped sticks that Beth manufactures as required. I augmented the set by adding lids to the 3 1/2 and one of the 5 gallon drums, so there is a clear four note progression. Ed has been watching a drumming instructional DVD avidly, and tends to drum on the bottom left (snare to him) drum with the left hand, and add notes on the other drums with the right.