My improvised drum kit ... Part 3 ... the frenzy cools ... for now ... !!

This excitement lasted exactly for two days … now, I only got to hear the dhub dhub sound of the cardboard box (my substitute for the bass drum) and the dull thuds of drum sticks on a rubber pad (my substitute for the snare drum) … it was not very satisfying … what could I do to enhance the sounds of my version of the snare drum and the bass drum, so that I could hear actual sounds of drums or something thereabouts … and the solution has to be inexpensive …

I was also not too pleased with how the cowbell was fixed … it sat just on the edge of the bent rod I was worried that it might just slip off and fall …

So, anyway, another light flashed in my head … it might be tricky … but in case what I had in mind didn’t work out, the things I was going to purchase would have other uses … and since I knew these were not going to be expensive, I felt I should go ahead and then see what happens …

I was supposed to pick up Mamoon from school and I asked Raju to come half an hour early, so that I could take a detour … go to Music Cabin, Secunderabad, first and then go on to her school … I had done my homework and more or less knew what I wanted and also knew that it would work … I was actually keyed up … for some reason, there was some delay in the shop and I was getting a bit annoyed … then I asked them if they had what I wanted … and yes, they did … and I bought these two simple khanjira-s or tambourines …

  

All right … the red one is 8 inches in diameter and I wanted to use that in place of a snare drum … I had taken the measurement of the surface of the practice drum pad and I wanted this khanjira to sit on the practice drum pad like this …

And the yellow one … the bigger one, is 12 inches in diamater … I wanted to use this as a substitute for the bass drum … I could arrange the bass pedal in front of it and thump this khanjira instead of the cardboard box … but this would still be propped against the cardboard box … I soon discovered that the yellow khanjira required some sort of stand, as it couldn’t stand propped against the cardboard box for long … some sort of a box, which would hold it or at least a part of it … I rummaged around in the loft among lots of empty cardboard boxes and found one which fit the bill … and I put this contraption together and pushed it against the bigger box and pushed the pedal in front …

and lo and behold … I had my bass drum … and this is how it looks … ha ha ha … very good, ya … you are a genius, ya … arre burbak, rulaoge kya …

This was a big relief … I could hear real drum beats now … and this set up could articulate the beat patterns in a much better manner than before …

There was this problem with the cowbell still unresolved … I wanted a sort of rod or pipe similar in thickness or diameter to the metal pipe on which now rested the cymbal … I checked in the hardware store at the top of our lane … I had carried the metal pipe (around 1 ½ feet in length) in my bag and showed it to him and asked for something similar … he is used to my strange queries for odds and ends … he smiled and said he didn’t have such a thing with him, but asked me to check in ‘plywood’ stores … the area around Nacharam and HMT Nagar has a number of such hardware and plywood shops … I wore out my sandals a bit climbing up and down these shops … at least 10 shops … one of these plywood shops had a sort of rod which was very long … around 4 feet in length … and was smaller in diameter than the pipe I had with me … I was not very convinced … I checked other shops … zilch … that long rod was the only option now …

I waited for a couple of days more and then unable to bear the tension, I went out in the evening and bought that rod … and on inspecting closely I discovered that the rod had these threads all through its length and at mid-point there was a nut wound around the rod … I then realized that this rod was made for some kind of fastening jobs … I didn’t venture to ask, maybe I should have … and maybe I will when I pass that way again … anyway, this was a sort of blessing … I asked the chap to give me two nuts as well … he threw in two nut gratis … two nuts for one nut!! 

I hurried home … first thing I did was to remove the cowbell from the bent rod, and then removed the bent rod from the tripod … I put the pipe back into its parent tripod, and inserted the threaded rod into the other tripod … fortunately, the base tube was hollow till the bottom and the threaded rod could go through almost till the end … around a foot and a half stuck out and I threaded a nut, then placed the cymbal, and then threaded another nut on top of the cymbal … great … just like I wanted...

… the cowbell went back to its previous tripod … and all was well with the world …

and my drum kit now looks like this … cool, na ... the floor tom is missing though … but, I will figure out something …

My improvised drum kit ... Part 2 ... frenzy continues ...

Well … the excitement lasted some days … and I was banging away … and Abhinav had taught me the roll, but I couldn’t do the roll with the combo I had … the magic of the drum roll slowly started building up inside me … during classes, twice every week, I really couldn’t indulge in doing things I wanted to do, which was to do the drum roll … we are well into doublets and double bass beats and interstitial beats and so on … and it takes a lot of concentration to get these going … if I’d get the beats right, I’d goof up on the rhythm sometimes … so, it takes a whole hour to get one pattern right … no time for indulgence, then …

I wanted a crash cymbal, where I could go dishhhhhhhhhh … I checked music stores online … all bloody expensive … but what do I do with a crash cymbal when I don’t have the tom drums (the ones on top of the bass drum…) … how do I roll?  Just snare (or whatever I had as a substitute…), which doesn’t make any sound (it is a practice pad, remember…) and a crash cymbal is no good for a roll … as I was pondering over this intense dilemma, another bulb lit up … I had a set of bongo drums that I shanghaied as a gift from Shruti long long ago … yessss … I could use them as tom drums … 

and there was a music store in Secunderabad, Music Cabin, where I could get a crash cymbal that wouldn’t be too expensive …

I was in a sort of frenzy now … I went to buy that crash cymbal, without thinking about its stand … that chap asked me if I wanted a stand too … when I heard the price for both, I demurred … no, I said, only the cymbal … now all thoughts were on where to fit in the cymbal … I tried my camera tripod … na, won’t work …  doesn’t have a pipe or rod … I knew I could do something, but if only I knew where I had kept that stand … it was another of those experiments when I had bought a really low priced note stand after Shruti had bought me a guitar (again shanghaied … Shruti can be termed as the really long-suffering wife, who has to put up with her husband’s delusional musical aspirations … one day you will see me on stage, Shruti, even if I am 60, at least for 10 minutes, playing the drums …)

I began hunting for that long neglected and discarded note stand … after three days, I found it under the cot, all dusty and lint-clinged … one if its foot was dodgy and I strained to remove the rivet and put in a screw and nut … but it had a sort of rod which was bent at right angles at the top to accommodate the sheet tray … it couldn’t hold the cymbal … short of breaking it off, I tried everything … 

then I tried switching the tripods … I removed the cowbell and put in the crash cymbal … it wouldn’t stand, so I put in a used ball pen shell into the pipe and with the help of a nail created a sort of stopper which would prevent the cymbal from slipping down … 

and now I fitted in the cowbell to the bent rod … it sat awkwardly … it is supposed to be fit in horizontally, the the flat surface parallel to the ground ... now it sat sort of vertical ... very shakily ... I feared it would fall off … but somehow it held on …

Phew … that was something … I now had substitutes for the snare drum, the hi-hat, two toms, bass drum, and a crash cymbal … of these, only the crash cymbal provided the original sound … the snare drum was more or less silent, the hi-hat gave off a cowbell sound, the bass drum resonated with the sound of a cardboard box … and the two toms sent out bongo sounds … but what the kangaroo, I had all elements except for the floor tom!!  I was really excited … I could do some kind of roll now … and this is how my cut and paste drum kit looked like at that point …

Looks like Samuel Johnson's description of Metaphysical Poetry ... "heterogeneous ideas ... yoked by violence together," no?

My improvised drum kit ... Part 1 ... the beginning of frenzy ...

I mentioned in my previous post that ‘I thought I’d improvise’ because Abhinav was going ahead with teaching more and more patterns and I only had my practice drum pad and a table for practice at home … and as I said not enough pocket power to buy a full drum kit … this really set me thinking …

I had a pair of drum sticks and I was using the practice drum pad as a substitute for the snare drum … and a table surface for the hi-hat cymbals … and kept time with my right foot for the bass drum … after 3 weeks this was going nowhere … I kept missing the bass beats …

Abhinav suggested that I buy a cowbell to substitute for the hi-hat cymbals … it is not very expensive, he said … he had one and he showed me … and it is anyway better than hitting a table … this brewed in my mind for some time … I checked in one shop in Secunderabad, confident that I’d get it there … they hemmed and hawed for a while and then said they didn’t have it and could I come tomorrow … what the hell … all spirits went down … it was already late in the evening and I didn’t have the time to explore other shops …

The next day, after college, I went to Musee Musicals, Begumpet, Secunderabad, and asked for a cowbell … they had it in two sizes … I bought the bigger one … the drum kits on display there looked fabulous and tempting … hold on, I told myself … I made some general enquiries, as I didn’t want to leave so soon … I asked about the bass drum pedal … would they sell it separately?  Yes, they said … price? … they told me that and I found it was manageable, but not on the same day …

So, I bought the cowbell and wondered where I was going to fit it … can’t keep it resting on the table … it has to have a tripod kind of stand … suddenly, a bulb glowed … oh yes, that score-sheet stand that I got along with the guitar stand as a combo offer!!  Yes, I could put that score-sheet stand to better use now … I was impatient to reach home and see if this worked … and tried to remember where I had stowed that stand and mentally searched lofts and cupboards …

Fortunately, I did not have to search too much … I remembered where I had kept it ‘safely’ … I took it out, freed the tripod of its score-sheet tray, and screwed the cowbell in to that metal pipe … and voila, I now had my substitute for the hi-hat cymbals … no hitting the tables anymore!!

As I practiced with the new combo, the bass drum pedal kept going in and out of my mind … couldn’t ignore it … if I could get that, I can really move on properly with my practice … and moreover, I had seen it and it wouldn’t leave me now … and the next day, I was back again at the same place and bought the pedal …

Now that I had the pedal, what do I do what that … I didn’t have a drum … but I had a really big cardboard box, which was propped against the wall and which we used as a newspaper and magazine stand … so the cardboard box became my bass drum … 

ha ha ha … and now I had something for the snare drum, the hi-hat cymbals, and the bass drum ... this combo was my basic drum kit for a couple of weeks … and this is how it looked ...

Well ... this was only the beginning ... and there were further improvisations ... 

Learning to play the drums … ei babua, pagla gaye ho kaa?

One of the dreams of my teenage years is coming true at this late middle-age of mine … as with many middle-class households of that time (1970s – 80s), the most that many youngsters could pursue as hobbies were stamp collecting, coin collecting, reading novels, comics, etc. … any other interests that meant attending classes and paying fees were considered as eroding the middle-class family’s tight monthly budget … of course, some families encouraged their children and some children turned rebels and left home to pursue their interests and all that … I too collected stamps, coins, read novels, and comics and life was generally moving along … I didn’t have the guts to rebel and go away and learn to play drums … I drummed on tables … and all those beats and rhythms would play in my head … diga-diga diga-diga diga-diga diga-diga dishhhhhhhhhhh … dhing-chaak diga-diga chaak … diga-diga diga-diga dishhhhhhh … and so on and so forth … he he …

It so happened that Mamoon expressed a desire to learn dance and we tried various options near our apartment, but none worked out … and then Shruti learnt about a kathak class at Tarnaka … then, both went there and discovered that the teacher was a senior kathak dancer and a Bengali to boot … and she had already started a batch of 5-6-7 year-olds and Mamoon was too happy to join … and all that chitty chitty bong bong feeling strengthened the bonds … two weeks into the learning and one evening Shruti came home with Mamoon after a class and asked me if I would like to learn to play drums … what is this out of the blue!! … it turned out that the kathak teacher’s son is a drummer and he has started classes for ‘aspiring’ drummers … and Shruti was fervent in her request … I was excited but I was in two minds ... no, more than two actually … all kinds of doubts – what will I do with learning drums at this age? Would I have the time to attend classes? Would I have the patience and concentration to learn something new now? I haven’t been a ‘formal’ learner for the last 25 years or so and I am extremely restless … all these doubts nagged me … 

But Shruti was almost adamant … just meet this chap … talk to him … join and see how it goes … and thus firmly cajoled, I went and met Abhinav, the drum guru, and we talked and talked of Indian percussionists and drummers of various Indian bands … and discovered that to some extent, our likings were similar … and he was just starting out as a drums teacher and if I joined I would be just his second student … and the timings of the two classes per week just suited me … and most of all, he asked me to feel free with the drums on the first day itself … and my dream came true … I told him that … I took the sticks and struck my first tentative beat on the drums … I tried to do a roll … what the hell, I was sitting on the ‘throne’ and banging away … aahhh … this was my teenage dream and all doubts receded (they still remain though) … I decided to enroll myself as a student … and my classes started … two days a week, one hour each day …

  

This is the drum kit I practise on ...

And this is Abhinav, my drums teacher ... 

The first classes were not that difficult … and after three 4-beat variations learnt separately, I was asked to do a combo and then a 3-beat roll … I managed to do the combo and did a 3-beat roll and Abhinav was surprised and shook my hand and said I did the 3-beat roll perfectly and said that not many are able to do a 3-beat roll so early while learning because they have a 4-beat roll in mind and get confused … this was indeed high praise for a ‘old’ novice like me … but, I liked it …

All this while, I had only a pair of drum sticks with me … which I had purchased on a whim a couple of years ago … how prescient, no?  ha ha ha … and Abhinav told me to practice at home using a table and another surface, as we were using only the snare drum and hi-hat for those early classes … After two weeks, Abhinav wanted me to buy a practice drum pad … after buying the practice drum pad, my desire to have the full drum kit intensified, but I didn’t have the pocket power to go the whole hog … I stayed with this practice drum pad for a couple of weeks …  

 … and then I thought I’d improvise …