Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: My friend and former Modern Drummer Features Editor, Rick Mattingly, long ago mailed me these photocopies of drummer Dave Tough advice columns. Tough briefly wrote columns for Metronome magazine.

Tough’s columns are fun and instructive reading. Here’s my list of advice or topics mentioned that caught my attention.

• Left-Hand playing quarter-notes on the snare drum.

• Writing out the various beats on paper, and explaining them as well as I can is, I’m afraid, a futile procedure. Granted that someone can in this way acquire a considerable technical equipment, the really important things, such as taste, experience, and the feeling for the music that the truly great drummers like Gene, Big Sidney, and Chick possess is an intangible quality that defies such black and white analysis.

• Silk drum heads??

• A tight (bass) drum has that shallow, sterile sound one immediately associates with curly-haired, sissy drummers with the smile full of teeth who stay out for half a chorus to swat the vibraphones and get up to sing a vocal. Leave the bass drum heads rather loose.

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• Tough solution for a ringing Chinese tom-tom: “I suggest…a few holes in the bottom head; better yet apply neets-foot oil to both heads and cover them with a damp cloth, or save…money and buy tunable tom-toms.”

• Practicing rudiments is “definitely beneficial. It gives you a smoothness and speed in execution, keeps you from tiring quickly, and above all trains your weak hand.”

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• Metal vs wood drum shells: “Metal shells for all kinds of work in all kinds of weather are infinitely preferable, so far as I’m concerned, to wooden ones. Some drummers I know, who like the tone of rim shots on wooden drums without sacrificing the assets of a metal shell, have wooden hoops placed on their metal shell.”

• Practice on a drum or pad: “He can make more noise, have more fun, and very probably get better results by practicing on a complete set. It’s so often the things you hit and when that are more important than the beats themselves.”

• A good cymbal is one that sounds good to you.

• (I am) the one-man society for the eradication of temple blocks and triangles.

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• (D)rumming should be pleasant for a chap learning. If it isn’t, he should quit before he starts; which is a good trick if he can do it. Personally, I don’t think it’s a matter of life and death if one can drum or not.

• Go to a drum teacher with a sound reputation in the profession. There are many who not only can play but can teach.

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• On hi-hat cymbals: (B)uy the best ones you can get your hands on. Ten or eleven inch Zildjian cymbals, both the same size and just a little heavier than paper thin, give good results. You can get a smoother swing if you keep the cymbals touching each other all the time. Raising your foot high and releasing them completely throws the accent too definitely on the beat, and tends to make the rhythm clumsy.