cocktail playing tricks

[fw]

From the last thread, I started thinking it would be cool to start a discussion on tricks people use to expand the sounds they can pull from their cocktail sets. Of course, if you have magic secrets you don't want revealed, keep them to yourself, but if, like me, you have an idea or two and would like to borrow some ideas from others, take some and leave some.

Here's a summary of what the last thread produced--

1)You can similate hi-hat sounds with brushes or blasticks on the side of the shell, or woodblock sounds with sticks.

2)Turn the snares off and play the drum as a conga. At least on mine, the slap sound is awesome. I have to mute the drum a little with my finger tips to make open tones sound conga-like, but wide open gives me a doumbek sound. I use my 10" tom as a tumba.

Here are some of my findings:

1)If I mute my 17"cymbal slightly with my hand and use a triangle beater perpindicular to the edge of the cymbal, I can get a pretty good approximation of a triangle sound--better than the bell of the cymbal can offer.

2)I have a dub-inspired rim-click technique I like. Instead of starting the rim click with my palm and stick tip already on the head, I bring them down a fraction of a moment before I click the stick to the rim. The effect is a echo-like effect. It also allows me to sound like I'm playing faster figures than my effort would actually give me. Imagine eighth-note hi-hat paterns. The hi-hat would be the first note of a triplet, the palm and tip hitting the head would be the second note of the triplet, and the rim click would be the third note of the triplet.

3)The metal handle of a brush scraped against the closed hi hat makes a decent guiro sound in a pinch.

4)Another way to similate conga sounds is to turn the snares off, use the rim click in place of the slap sound, the open drum as the open sound on the quinto, and a small tom tom tuned medium-to-low as a tumba. Underneath, you can play a clave pattern or boom-boom boom-boom boom-boom boom-boom, if I may use technical language.

5)For drum and bass grooves, rolling from the center of the head to the edge of the head gives a cool pitch bend effect, and hitting in the two different zones gives the impresson of two snare drums.

6)I saw a great drummer pull this one off the other day: to get a sizzle effect from your cymbal at the end of a song, hold the butt end of a brush against the cymbal, then roll on it with your other hand with a soft mallet or two.

7)If you ever need a choo-choo sound, put your bottom lip on the top head and in a falsetto, go "whoo hooo"! That one comes in handy like in every single song I've ever played.

That's all I have for now. I'm eagerly awaiting the chance to gank any ideas anybody wants to contribute!

FW

[palacki808]

1. If you use a side snare with your cocktail drum you can take a heavy mallet and play the top head like a second kick drum. It takes some getting used to to coordinate your hand and foot, but it can create some cool patterns.

2. If you like triggering, try mounting the trigger over the screw of a lug on the inside of the shell. If you're not too heavy of a hitter, only rimshots will trigger your sounds.