Hi Warrenoids
was just wondering, what does your rack system consist of?
basically it's two V pipes, two curved bars, and two straight legs. There is a little bit of pipe cutting involved because the V pipes need extra support and they are a little bit too long for my purpose. At the top of each V pipe is a "3 way platform" and they hold the Sonor tom arms and a cymbal arm behind the 12" tom. The rest of it is just cymbal arms.
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Hi Pavel Ljubicic
I was always interested in your pedal settings. How do you set-up your spring tension, beater angle, beater height...?
It's very hard to describe exact settings - but I can tell you that the beater height is 11cms (from the underside of the beater down to the pedal) - and from the centre of the beater to where it hits the drum head is 18cms (so that will also give you the angle of the beater). I would say the spring is pretty low tension.
Hi LinearDrummer
My question is I still enjoy your Letterman performance and always wondered what you had in your in-ear - was it a just a straight click or did you use a bar counter? I imagine its a little tricky to play a long solo where the band will still come in after? I'm very curious what was the process with those arrangements?
When I was asked to play that show my only instruction was that it needed to be 3min 20secs long and that I had to include the band. So I worked out a tempo that I felt comfortable playing a solo at - and an arrangement of "The Chicken" that would fit into that format. So basically it is the head of the tune - followed by four solos (of 15 bars each and then on bar 16 the phrase with the band) and then the head of the tune again. I played to a straight quarter note click. The musical director of the show thought it would be safer if he counted through the solos for the band so no matter what I played they wouldn't get lost. I didn't hear his counting. I think the hardest thing was the vast amount of pressure I felt. To perform well - knowing how many millions of people would be watching it - and with only one chance of doing it - the pressure was enormous. When I rehearsed it for the first time with the band in the afternoon (and with not that much pressure) it went extremely well (probably better than the live version). Everyone was very pleased - including me. I had a plan of what I wanted to play in the four solos (I hadn't worked out every note but just an "idea chart" that I followed). Then the director wanted to do a second rehearsal - so I thought to completely improvise my second rehearsal run through. They didn't go nearly as well - as I soon dried up my solo ideas under the circumstances. Then that was the end of the rehearsal. Then I had a few long hours of sitting around getting extremely anxious. So I just said to myself "stick to the plan" - and it worked out (despite dropping a stick in the middle of it). The whole thing was very surreal.
cheers
Gavin
