A Zendrum appears on the cover of Mix magazine's July 2009 edition, in direct contrast to a dumbeck.

That is all -- I just found it interesting.

I threw together a quick template for jotting down mapping ideas for the Zendrum. I find it more useful to work out ideas on paper rather than by fiddling with trigger settings or sysex directly.

Use it in good health.

So I've been trying for the past month or so to get a Jazz combo going on the side. I need more Yin to balance the Yang of the other two groups I'm working with and the moment (Blues and Hard Rock).

Things are starting to pick-up and the first decent tracks from this outing are up.

Some random thoughts from someone who hasn't played any serious Jazz in nearly 20 years:

1. 20 years is too long to go without! It's going to take a bit for my chops to come back it looks like.
2. I'd forgotten just how fun and liberating Jazz can be. This is just what the doctor ordered right now!

I really can't wait to see how far we can take this.

My new rock maple Zendrum arrived the other day! I truly haven't been this geeked about getting a new instrument in a long time, I feel like a five year old on Christmas morning!

The learning curve will be steep -- general consensus is that it takes about a month to become proficient -- but it's going to be a fun, rewarding journey for sure!

It won't be suitable for every gig of course, but for ones where it is, the benefits are simply huge. I won't have to tear down my kit, shove it in the car, unload and setup it up, etc. Nope, I'll be able to gig outta just one or two bags. What's more is I won't have to sit behind a kit to perform, after already having to sit in the car for an hour to get to the gig in the first place.

Ergonomics and back pain avoidance aside though, it's pretty clear after fiddling around with it for only a short while that the Zendrum is going to allow me to do things that I couldn't do before, even with my electronic kit. Likewise there are things I won't be able to do at all with it, at least without some trickery (cymbal swells and press rolls come to mind). But I think that this just reinforces the fact that this isn't meant to be a drumset replacement, it's a completely different instrument.

This is gonna be fun!

Lately I've been getting back into the DIY trigger spirit. Dusting off the toolbench and trying to complete the project I started last year.

The triggers I'm building right now are of the cross-bar variety and one of the frustrating aspects of these is getting the height of the trigger cone just right. I utilize rubber grommets and nylon spacers in my design to reduce vibration and increase isolation between the head and rim sensors. Finding the right size spacers can be a pain and even more than that, can quickly run into money as most hardware stores insist on selling them individually and at a premium.

Well today by happenstance I stumbled on a spool of polyethylene tubing in the plumbing asile and the heavens opened. This stuff when cut to length is vitually indistinguishable from nylon spacers. It handles being compressed like a champ, I can cut it to exactly the length I need and best of all it's damn cheap. If you're using plastic spacers in your designs you should do yourself a favor and pick some up. Why continue buying milk when you can have the cow!

So despite my previous dragging of feet, I finally went ahead and preordered a TDW-20 after I heard through the rumor mill that Full Compass was offering them for around $360 USD, shipping included.

What really gets my goat though is why this isn't their advertised price? At the time I placed my order, their reported list price was $599 and the price they were offering under their "low price guarantee" was $495. I'd never before encountered a situation before where phoning in an order resulted in a nearly 30% savings over an Internet price, especially one that claimed to have a "low price guarantee".

Look, I'm not complaining -- $360 was low enough for me to take the plunge and buy the card. It does make me wonder though how many times I've gotten the shaft by paying what seemed to be the lowest price on the Internet. I guess we should all start getting quotes over the phone again.

So the word that Roland was finally coming out with the much anticipated module update to the TD-20 has kinda knocked me off my footing. I've been waiting (sometimes less than patiently) for over 2 years now for this card to come out and you'd think I'd be overjoyed now that it finally has, but somehow the final product just doesn't seem like it'll live up to the waiting. At this point, I'm not even 100% sure I'll pick one up.

Don't get me wrong, the TDW-20 does add a lot of new features -- but the MSRP of nearly $500 doesn't quite seem justified. The only features that I truly know I'd be interested in are the enhanced hi-hat resolution and support for fitting all of my kit collection onto one compact flash card. The rest of it, while nice, just doesn't blow my skirt up. I really was hoping for positional sensing and interval control on the toms, and while the unit does have 300 new sounds, I've yet to see a list or hear samples of what they actually are. Historically I've only ever found about 10% of Roland's sounds useful anyhow, so chances are there are only a few new ones I'd be interested in.

*sigh*

Maybe I'll pick one up if they drop below say $299. Paying anything more just doesn't make sense to me right now.

Digging into the waaaaaay back machine this time... all the way back to 1994.

Listening back to these certainly conjures up a certain "cringe factor" -- and I'm sure that's why a lot of artists try to bury their early work. But hey, I like to think I'm thick-skinned enough to take it :)

So here you go, 4 tracks from the early 90's group Wallace Hartley (scroll to the bottom).

Just please try and go easy on me :)

While I completely disagree with the preachy anti-copyright law ending, this is still an interesting history lesson on what is easily the most popular drum beat ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

Warning -- this is long, 18 mintues long.