Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE
I think people who are passionate about small kits are desperate to make some kind of creative statement, while people who are passionate about large kits are trying to compensate for lack of ability or confidence.
That sounds a bit ham-handed to me. Here's my take:
The small-kit crowd seems to operate on the notion that a
really good drummer could play anything in the world on a coffee can, and anything more than that is a waste of space. They have simply bought into a notion popular with non-drummers (and VERY popular with soundmen) that drumming is and never need be anything more than "boom-BAP-boom-boom-BAP!", and thus all you REALLY need are kick, hat and snare . That's absurd.
By the same token, the big-kit crowd is assuming the superiority of tonal variety without much consideration for the rhythmic variety asserted by "small-kit K.O.", although not with as much vigor, and I think most of us are guilty at some point in our drumming lives of dragging a monster around for looks or whatever even if we didn't admit it at the time, even to ourselves. Big kit players can convince themselves of a need for anything regardless of the musical reality at work.
I play both as it suits me, and I'm trying to go down the same road as Bozzio here, so I am staring down the barrel of a 22-piece kit soon, and all of the challenges inherent in the transportation and playing of such a thing. I like smaller kits as well, and I'm working on compositions that deal with the limitations and the possibilities of those kits, but there is a different focus for each one. With the huge kit, my approach is much more about melodic expression along the lines of a mallet player than a drummer, so much of the textural stuff takes a back seat to the melody. Similarly, the small-kit compositions are the reverse and rhythm and dynamics are what sets up the drama of the piece. I can play a nice solo on a 2-pc. kit, but it will be fundamentally different from the nice solo on a 22-pc. kit by its very nature.
I think the small-kit crowd has a valid point if traditional drumset drumming is what's being called for. Most of those situations are going to be pretty straight-ahead and most drummers won't get too far away from the kick, snare and hats/ride there. However, the big-kit crowd makes a fine point: there is a four-piece kit lurking within every large drumset, and it does you no harm to carry it and not use it, versus needing it and not having it.
As far as Bozzio, Collins and others like them are concerned, keep in mind that they are the only one on stage when doing a solo drum show, so the only thing they are making up for is the lack of a band, which is of course, the whole point of what they are doing. I have no doubt that there still exists some yo-yo out there who thinks his bitchen' quad-bass monster will make up for his inability to keep solid time or identify a paradiddle, but most of us are smarter than that (I hope).
And I don't care about dead horses. These threads are fun from time to time!
