Keeping stage volume under control can be a big problem when in small theaters, clubs or houses of worship. High stage volumes have traditionally been attributed to electric guitar players and drummers, but wedges and bass rigs are equally to blame. These days, it’s easier to tame stage volume for electric guitar and bass rigs, as the quality of amplifier modeling has evolved to the point where many guitarists and bassists get their tone using an amp simulator, thus avoiding plastering the audience against the venue’s back wall with excessive volume.
In many cases, wedges can be eliminated in favor of IEMs, but in-ears require a certain amount of both gear and tech support — i.e., transmitters, receivers, earpieces, battery changes, a mixer with sufficient aux sends, and an engineer (or some sort of personal mixer system) to manage the monitor mixes. Eliminating loud instrument amps and wedges leads us back to the one musician whose instrument volume is most difficult to control: the drummer. Let’s look at some options for controlling the stage volume of a drum kit, and how they affect the engineer.
The Obvious
Asking a musician to change their technique is a bit of a stretch, but if the drummer is open-minded, here are some suggestions: playing with a softer touch, using lighter sticks, smaller drums, or changing to brushes, “quiet sticks” or bundled-dowels. Silent Sticks from Adoro (Fig. 1) reportedly reduce drum set volume by 6 to 9 dB — a significant reduction, yet still allow the drums and cymbals to be heard on stage. (Adoro also offers a silent bass drum beater said to reduce kick drum volume by 50%.)
Drum Mufflers
Drums and cymbals can be muffled in a number of ways including filling the drums with packing peanuts, shredded newspaper or blankets/pillows (kick drums only, please), placing towels or bed sheets over cymbals and drum heads, or placing bed sheets between the shells and the drum heads.
Mutes are a more elegant solution. These doesn’t require heads to be removed (or a trip to the laundry) and also works for cymbals. Mutes are typically made of rubber or a similar material, and simply fit over existing drums and cymbals — making it easy to switch back to normal volume. Evans SoundOff mutes (Fig. 2) reduce the volume of a drum set dramatically, while still allowing the drums and cymbals to maintain some tone, but they might make the drums and cymbals too soft — which could mean that you’ll need to mic the kit and send it to the monitors just to make the drums audible to the musicians.
Foam rubber O-rings are also effective in reducing drum volume. Some of these simply sit on top of a drum head, while others employ a circular plastic tray that mounts between the head and the shell and holds the foam ring in place. Don’t confuse these with similar, thin plastic O-ring “tone control” devices that are intended to change the tone, but not necessarily reduce the volume of the drum.
Mesh Heads
An effective way to reduce drum volume is using mesh heads (Fig. 3), but — as with mutes —some mesh heads reduce the volume so much that they make the drums practically inaudible to the other musicians. A mesh head will be most effective when the drum’s bottom “resonant” head removed; some of the drum’s volume can be retained by leaving the resonant head in place.
Mesh heads are great in situations where the drums are triggering electronic sounds, but triggering is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the acoustic volume of the drums becomes less significant, enabling the triggered sounds to serve as the main sound source. On the other hand, adding triggers — along with the requisite cabling and drum trigger module —increases complexity, expense and set-up time. The payoff is a huge amount of control over the drum sound, not only in terms of levels, but also in regard to the sheer number of sounds available to the drummer. The same can be said of electronic drum kits.
As with mutes, mesh heads with triggers and electronic kits make monitoring a bit more challenging. Some drummers using IEMs complain that electronic drums are difficult to feel without wedges moving air, in which case a “butt thumper” such as the ButtKicker Pro (Fig. 4) can help. These devices are haptic motion transducers that bolt to a drum throne and provide low-frequency impact without the audio. In addition to the transducer itself, a power amplifier is required.
Occupying the middle ground are TruSound hybrid drum heads, which are made using a combination of mesh and Mylar (the plastic used to make traditional drum heads). TruSound Low Volume heads reduce volume by 75% while (surprisingly) maintaining much of a drum’s tonality.
When the volume of acoustic drums has been tamed, the same must be done to cymbals, and there are plenty of offerings on the market. Zildjian’s L80 Low Volume cymbals (Fig. 5) have perforations, making them up to 80% quieter than traditional cymbals (even if they remind me of the colander Nana used to strain the water from pasta).
Isolation
A totally different approach that doesn’t require modifying a traditional drum set is isolating the drums using portable baffles or shields. These can range in size from circular cymbal shields designed to reduce cymbal bleed into vocal mics to complete iso booths with ceilings. ClearSonic is probably the king of this hill, manufacturing a wide variety of clear acrylic panels in sizes ranging from 2×4 feet high to 2×5.5 feet high (Fig. 6). Panels clip together with hinges for expanding the size of the booth, fold for transport, and have cable cutouts at the bottom.
Plexi-type shields or baffles reflect mid and high frequencies back at the drummer, so this is probably not the way to go if the drummer isn’t on IEMs. Even when using IEMs, reflections can be loud enough that it’s a good idea to place sound absorbing baffles behind the drummer to help control them (otherwise they can bleed into the microphones). Reflections from the ceiling can also be troublesome, and a sound absorbing “lid” on the top of the booth can prevent all that HF energy from reflecting from the ceiling back onto the stage.
If panels or baffles are the chosen solution, it’s important to give the band at least one rehearsal with the baffles in place, because both monitor and FOH mixes will need adjustment. I witnessed a band place plexi baffles in front of the drummer after a sound check, and the resulting changes to the stage sound were so profound that when they started their first song, they all had a look of panic on their faces — particularly the drummer. When the first song ended, they had the stage crew remove all of the baffles. Yikes. Better warn the musicians ahead of time.
Steve “Woody” La Cerra is the tour manager and front of house engineer for Blue Öyster Cult. He can be reached via email at woody@fohonline.com.
