The Big Kits vs. Small Kits Debate

Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

Good points, Finn (and I'm totally guilty of buying gear "just in case" :) But…

finnhiggins said:
That's not thinking like a composer, deciding what tone is appropriate. That's thinking like a consumer, trying to justify impulse spending. And the divide there is the one that separates good big-kit players and bad ones. Unfortunately there's a lot more consumers in the world than there are composers, so that approach dominates overwhelmingly. Worse, composers are trained more than they are born. So if you let your consumerism dominate at the time you're learning your instrument then you're arguably letting the composer inside shrink away and die when deciding which things you want to hit.

My earlier point being that percussionists are gear-oriented instrumentalists. If you've ever played percussion in orchestra, one of the first things you do when you get a new score is go around collecting all the instruments the composer wants. A lot of times a composer will use an instrument for just one beat of one measure (the infamous "count 100 measures of rest to hit a triangle once" saying).

Anyway. It comes down to, for me – the big kit player doesn't necessarily hear nuance, maybe he/she hears several distinct, loud notes. Or fourteen different pitches of splash cymbal, or lots of bass drum madness. It may not be my personal way of playing, but I think it's a little elitist to dismiss the musicality of that perspective.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

rmedek said:
Good points, Finn (and I'm totally guilty of buying gear "just in case" :) But…

My earlier point being that percussionists are gear-oriented instrumentalists. If you've ever played percussion in orchestra, one of the first things you do when you get a new score is go around collecting all the instruments the composer wants. A lot of times a composer will use an instrument for just one beat of one measure (the infamous "count 100 measures of rest to hit a triangle once" saying).

I'm really glad you raised percussionists, because I started writing a post in reply to one of your prior points about how all this stuff intersects with the different roles of classical percussionists, ethnic/world percussionists and so forth. I scrapped it because I was too tired and stupid to make sense. Essentially the "small kit" approach is closer to the ethnic/world percussion philosophy of making a musical statement with more articulations on less gear. The "big kit" aproach is closer to the classical/orchestral approach of using single instruments for their defined, separate voices.

Now, the obvious difference there is that the approach I'm describing as the big kit/classical one differs from the small kit/world type one in that the world percussion performer is a lot more responsible for what they play. They have a repetior of forms, "grooves" if you will, and they typically improvise around these in various structures. In a more orchestral environment every note is carefully mapped out, and relates directly to the wider music. As you mentioned, you may end up reading hundreds of bars of rests before you get to hit anything whatsoever because the composer doesn't give a damn about whether your hands are kept busy or not - their focus is the musical result.

Drumkit, historically, came up as a jazz instrument with a heavy influence from marching snare techniques. A lot of its conventions and assumptions come a form of music which was heavily improvisational, with a lot less focus on the arranged side of things. So drum kits were traditionally smaller, and drum playing was focused again around the idea of improvisation around a central key pattern.

Then we get rock playing, and its offshoot prog rock in the 70s, and the growth of giant kits into the 80s. The thing is, while the kits might have grown to orchestral proportions I don't think there's a very good argument that the playing has outgrown a large number of assumptions that relate more to smaller, more "ethnic" styles of playing that are a core part of where drumkit is coming from. I totally get the idea of using more instruments on a kit as part of a composed approach - hell, I DO it. If you go look at my kit in my thread it's certainly a lot larger than I am advocating here. That's basically down to the fact that my main band at the moment - which that kit goes with, plus and minus some bits and bobs now - takes a pretty large leaf from the film composition book. That stuff is in and of itself a combination of contemporary "groove oriented" playing and orchestral "noises at a particular time" playing, so to some degree I do need more gear. I'm trying to cover what I can with electronics, as I advocated below, but to some degree I need my gear to do what the primary composer of the band is intending.

With all that said, that stuff is written on a computer by another person and me with my composers head on. When I write that I'm not thinking about orchestrating rudiments, or about what positioning the things have on the kit. I'm instead thinking, composer-style, about what sound is going to go with each section and programming things accordingly. Then the process of adapting it to the kit is a bit more like learning a classical score. I have detailed, note-for-note charts for the stuff that happens in this band.

The vast majority of big kit playing, however, is nothing like this. It's basically the assumptions of small kits and marching players scaled up to a vast scale, and I don't think it's that worthy of comparison. I do my "big kit" playing on a much smaller kit than Mike Portnoy, but while his kit is an orchestral percussion section in scope I don't think his approach to parts and orchestration is particularly orchestral in its vision - it's more doing the "find myself a space in the music" thing that comes decended from folk percussion playing.

It's certainly something different and new, but I'd argue that it's a major change that's been drastically under-considered by a lot of people attempting it. Big-kit guys with an orchestral background like Bozzio I can see a bit more rationale behind, but I don't think many would argue that drum kits swelled as big as they did in the 70s and 80s in most cases because it was musically justified. It was just *possible* and *fashionable*, which I don't think are necessarily the best musical explanations for why you'd want to do something.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

finnhiggins said:
I'd argue the ones that add gear because they "heard a new sound" inside something they were doing and wanted to get it are in a minority. Most people add gear because of something as basic as gear-lust, which we're all guilty of. I buy new gear because of it, I'm certain. And if I buy something there's certainly a degree of feeling like I'm obliged to use it somewhere.

well it certainly isn't a bad thing to add another texture or color to your pallete. i know you

never said that, but you would argue that with another object on the kit, it'd be more

difficult to focus.

i mean, sure everyone loves new gear, but no one would buy it if it didn't have a "new

sound". just like, if i felt my 14" floor tom wasn't getting a low enough tone, i'm not going

to buy a 16" just for more gear, but there is no possible way to make the 14" sound like a16"
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

Anyone ever heard the saying "different strokes for different folks"? Well, thats what the should be the end of the battle. Some people like to play big kits, some people like to play small. There are some that have a big kit to make it look like their good, but can't play at all. <----sounds like Dr. Seuss. Anyways, play what you want.... cause you bought it, nobody else!
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

This entire argument got started by inferring that one type of set is inherently more musical than another; but... what is "musical"? When Dogbreath says that a big kit is more musical than a small one, what does he mean? That you can get more sounds out of it?(duh) More sounds doesn't = more musical, at least in the terms we americans define it. If that were the case, wouldn't we be using quarter-tones in popular music instead of just the 12 (or 13 if you count the octave) notes we use exclusively? So to settle this, we would first need to come to an agreement of what is "musical", what isn't, which would probably be impossible. (everyone has their opinions about what is 'musical') The mistake made here was using musical as an absolute term (ie musicality IS this no matter what, and ISN'T this no matter what), when really, it's all opinion.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

I think if you ask a question like this you are probably not looking into why we have drummers. To mean that as a drummer we are apart of a group of music arranged to make (hopefully) nice music.

In reality it would depend on the music you play too. I couldnt really imagine neil peart setting his kit up in a little jazz club with a piano and double bass to play some nice quite swing songs. On the otherhand I couldnt see Buddy rich setting his kit up on stage with dream theater. It just wouldnt sound right...you think?

I play both large and small kits, I use what ever the music needs. I puchased a large fusion kit with a number of snares so that I could use it for multi purpose styles.
I also use electronics in the progrock band I am in...not because "oh ya look at me I have a massive kit", it's becuase I have to trigger different sounds for the songs, these songs require different sounds to set moods and so forth.

To say is smaller kit better and big kit is impossible becuase they both have there advantages!
If you can play good on a small kit I dont see why you can't play well on a big kit.
I think it's what the individual sees and hears that counts.
:)
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

I have a freind (hard to belive I know) who plays 5pc all the time. He is a VERY good drummer. When he comes over he always wants to play my 14pc TAMA and sounds great on it. I've asked him why he won't get a big kit and he says " I don't wanna have to haul all that around". Fair enough, he doesn't have the space either. Since when does a big kit make you less a player or a gear hog. Somebody tell Neil Peart,Alex Van Halen,Simon Phillips, and Billy Colbham, they're not that good. I dare you.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

personally i have a pretty big kit its not huge its not small i guess its just right (for me anyway) but i wouldnt judge a drummers skill and take it down saying yea hes a good drummer but his kits too big... i find that ridculous some people like the sound variations that a big kit gives some people like a nice small kit that they can find out tons of things to do with so little its all their own
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

hold-the-groove said:
aesthetically, i think small kits are better. I believe lots of tomtoms looks atrocious....

lots of cymbals is a different story...

two attched pics display large setups i hate the look of

Lots of tomtoms look atrocious? Shame, shame. LOL
I think lots of tomtoms look cool, to a point.

Yea I don't like Phil's set up either but Billy's looks cool.

I did get rid of one floor tom so now it's just a 10 piece set.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

I'm a reformed large drumset player. These days, I like a 4pc drumset -every once in a while I'll use a 5 pc -but not often.

Anyway, I know part of it's personal preference, but the argument of more drums = more sounds = more musical possibilities that seems so popular doesn't really hold water with me ...well, not completely, anyway. I mean, it does to a point, but it&#8217;s not that simple and after a bit it stops being true.

Think of it like this: Say you've got nothing but a pair of sticks and a throne. You can wave them around and make whooshing noises, or hit them on each other, or the throne, or yourself, but that can become painful after a bit and your possibilities are pretty limited. So, now you add a snare drum. That's a huuuuuuuuge return in musical possibilities for the addition of that one drum. Now, add a bass drum. Again, a huge return in musical possibilities for the addition of the drum ...but the return on adding the second drum to the first is less than the return you get for adding the first drum to nothing. You haven't doubled your musical possibilities: you've increased them substantially and so the addition makes sense, but you haven't increased them by 100&#37;. With each drum you add, your return diminishes for the addition of that drum. Think about it: consider the amount of amount you increase your musical possibilities by adding a 2nd snare to a complete drumset compared to the amount you increase your possibilities to adding a single snare drum to just the throne and sticks. This is an actual economic principal (you can apply it to lots of situations) and it's called the law of diminishing returns -read a better explanation of this principle than I could give here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns

Anyway, so to me, after you hit a 4 piece drumset you get to a point where your return for any additional drum is so small as to not make it worthwhile, in my opinion. This is partly where it becomes personal taste, but, I mean, the amount you get from adding, say, an additional rack tom, might actually be a loss because the amount of musical possibilities and new sounds you gain from that additional drum is less than the amount you loose because the drumset is becoming slightly more difficult to comfortably setup. I can get a lot more musical possibilities from a comfortably placed ride cymbal or hihat than I can from the addition of another rack-tom. But that example still depends on your situation -for some music that extra tom might be more important than the ride cymbal, but I wouldn't really call a 5 pc a big drumset either and it isn't going to be that much harder to play. After that, though, it just gets hard for me to justify adding more stuff. Again, just my opinion.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

Auger,
Regarding diminishing returns, correct me if I’m wrong but in order to apply this concept the input variable must be constant, because we are talking about drummers and not production lines this constant variable changes dependent on skill level and creative approach of the drummer, hence its not constant. For example a drummer with the skill level of Thomas Lang would be able to apply a creative approach to each additional drum added to a baseline set. This in essence increases the return per drum as it relates to Langs playing he finds an increase in return per additional drum and not a diminsh in return. One drummers input may become more creative with more drums to play and there for the constant is no longer applicable. I’m not saying that your wrong altogether we just have to keep in mind we are talking about drummers.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

I use a standards 5 piece with 3 cymbals + hi hat...
I think people that always play a small kit (no toms)
are better with accents, and controlling volume, snare
speed, better hi hat control, just more focused on the MAIN
components of the drum... As for the huge kits on videos,
are a look for the drum company as they probably sponsor
the drummer, and trying to make their drumms look the best
possible... And I think nothing looks better than a huge kit on
a huge rack with around 20 cymbals... I often play my snare
only to learn more about accents, rim shots, and the million
other effects that a snare drum hides...
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

Chip,

While I'm not familiar with economics; every aspect of the analogy doesn't need to carry over.

Your right, not every aspect needs to carry over to apply the similarities of the concept and Auger did do a good job explaining his point. However I believe that the goal of his post was not to apply similarities but rather the actual principals of diminishing returns as they apply to huge kits. Auger even goes so far as to point us in the direction of a web site to explain the concept. I simply indicated that the concept is dependent on keeping the fixed input constant , much like saying all drummers will react the same way when adding drums to a kit. This simply is not true. I myself play a typical 6 piece set and would never be able to apply creative concepts in drumming to a huge kit. I find it hard enough to do so with my simple kit. BUT I TRY!!! HONEST!!! Anyhow, my point was geared more towards drummers like Carl Palmer, Terry Bozzio and Thomas Lang. Such drummers are prime examples that the rule of diminishing returns as it applies to large kits is not valid, they as drummers do not react to the addition of more drums as we do which may help explain why most of us, like you, me and Auger do not benefit from a large kit, however, given the right skill set, practice time and desire more drums can in some instances be better in terms of returns. I’ve seen two of the three above mentioned drummers live and I would never use the term diminishing return regarding their approach to and implementation of playing a huge kit.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

I think big kits are pretty kick ass really. I used to play an 8 piece double bass kit for years but have scaled back to an 6 piece single bass drum kit and that is just right for me. I do like to occasionally take two drums away and play it as a 4 piece but I am at home with a 6 piece kit. I really dont give a damn what size kit you have as long as you can play on what you have. If you like a big kit great if you like a small kit great.....just have fun while you play them.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

you raise a good and thoughtful point gr8 -and, also, in terms of drumming all drums in a drumset are not equal either. But, the part where my analogy comes in tends to do more with repetition of similar drums (like a billion tom-toms or crash cymbals). The primary snare drum in a drumset doesn't apply to this because there's only one of them -no matter how many other drums you put around it. Once you add a second, however, the same thing starts to happen.

But, I disagree somewhat still too. I can't speak too much about Lang because, aside from the few clips here, I'm not familiar with his playing. But, here's the thing: While Lang certainly doesn't suffer any of the losses I would from that crowded of a drumset in terms of his ability to play whatever he wants on any part of it, how much would he be handicapped if you just took one of those tom-toms away on that monster drumset he uses sometimes? Actually, I'd venture to say it wouldn't hurt him one bit. In fact, If you just took one single one of those tom toms away and closed your eyes I'd probably say that, at no point would you miss it in terms of what you're hearing. So, I'd venture to say that it's adding no value to his drumset -or very close to no value, anyway. But, if he had a drumset that was just hats, ride, bass, snare, and one tom -if you took any of those things away, the music he's making would sound different.

...but I can't argue the have fun while you play / personal taste factor. If you like a big drumset and that's the statement you want to make as an artist (it is art after all, not a production line) then that's great and go for it! I guess the only thing is that I disagree with the simplified bigger always equals more possibilities assertion.
 
Re: THE BIG KITS VS SMALL KITS DEBATE

Well, well...An UN-arguable debate. Drummers are people. People are different. Hence the "ground-breaking" concept...Not all drum-kits will be the same.

Look, whatever the music calls for, is whatever tools you'll need. It's going to be different for everyone who plays different music and styles. Some need a small kit for what they accomplish. Some need a big kit to create their "product".

Drummers such as Bozzio, Peart, Phillips, McBrain, Portnoy, etc...use the big kit to create what the music calls for. Drummers like Watts, Starr, Colaiuta, Carey, and a lot of jazz drummers, use the small(er) kits to create their mastery.

This really is not a debateable issue. No one kit is better than the other. It's how each one is "hit with the sticks" that matters.

Merry Christmas...Play On!
 
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