For what drummers are Silent Sticks perfect?

Thanks for asking. We manufacture the silent sticks and have seen a huge success with them. Still, they might not be for everybody. The concept of the sticks is to give you the least loud stick possible, while keeping sound and feel stick-like. Now, certainly every stick plays differently, and having a very light drum stick, which also is a bit flexible, does not feel like a 2B hickory at all.
When you are being told by your metal band that you are way too loud, and you would not consider switching from baseball-bat sized sticks to something lighter, like, say, 5b or even 5a, you most certainly will hate our sticks. Yes, they are less loud, most definitely, but they do not play like 2B or thicker sticks.

When you already use rods and light maple sticks to dial down your drum volume but still run into issues with volume – or you play e-drums and need a solution to do so even more quiet, as when playing late at night, you have come to the right place. Most drummers not only can archive playing way less loud this way, but also enjoy the new found volume so enjoyable they use silent sticks on every day basis. They are great for workshops and drum lessons, as you can talk while playing without yelling all the time; they are awesome to get the volume adjusted to acoustic guitars etc.

When you are one of those drummers, you will find that the sticks last really long and will be a good companion in your stick bag. You already know that having cymbals set up in a 90° angle will kill your light sticks, so I do not have to tell you to tilt them a bit to prolong the lifespan of silent sticks too. Something that comes as surprise to some drummers certainly. Now, swirling the stick instead of simply smashing the cymbals will also give you more control of the volume.

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Drums are loud, no question. Sometimes just too loud, no matter how hard you try to play quietly.

Here are our 7 top tips to get the volume under control, but not just by bluntly masking it with tissues or similar counterproductive actions that ruin the sound of your drums. Because let’s get one thing straight: a good sounding drum kit is by definition quieter than a bad (loud) sounding one! All actions we take to make the drums quieter must therefore always improve the sound, which unfortunately is not always so easy. But the result can be seen, or rather heard.

Who this article is for: Drummers who regularly have to play quietly, e.g. small club gigs, at rehearsals, in churches, etc.
Who this article is NOT for: drummers who want to practice extremely quietly without changing their playing style, and are willing to give up sound completely for that.

Prelude: There are already countless tutorials on how to get drums quieter. There are practice pads, neoprene covers for cymbals, rubber covers for sticks, lousy-sounding but quiet low-volume cymbals from surprisingly prominent brand-name manufacturers, and so on. However, these solutions all have one thing in common: they massively worsen the sound, and are therefore no means of getting the drum volume under control at concerts, for example. Here, even a few dB quieter would make a very big difference – every 3dB doubles the required energy; so to drown out a drum kit, the music system must have twice as much power for every 3dB. It’s often a battle between the stage sound – dominated by the drums – and the PA, and usually you can’t get a good sound in the room until the PA has been drowned out. At normal gigs, it’s common for the PA to therefore have so much power that the stage can be drowned out effortlessly. At smaller gigs – and such are likely to be the norm in the days of Corona and long after – the stage volume now becomes the biggest problem. We can’t afford to sound bad on stage when the stage sound dominates.

The battle against acoustic drums is the sound engineer’s daily bread; drummers are often unaware that their instrument is not really acoustic – it only sounds balanced and pleasant when mic’d and amplified. Without mic’ing, snare and cymbals dominate, and without proximity effect drums sound thin and – loud. If drums sounded better – more balanced – like a piano, amplification would only be necessary to make it louder – not quieter! In fact, amplification is used to make drums sound better – and therefore less loud. Of course, this requires a powerful PA. But there is a more excellent way…

1st tip: Sticks

2nd tip: Heads

3rd tip: Tuning right

4th tip: correct damping

5th tip: Weapon of choice – the right drums

6th tip: the right cymbals

7th tip: Room treatment – sound absorbers etc.

1st tip: sticks
(effort: very low; cost: low)

We start with the sticks. If you want/need to play quietly, you should first turn to lighter sticks or alternatives. It should be clear that baseball bat brand sticks are not particularly suited for quiet play. Some technique freaks might argue that it’s all about the right technique – yes, that might be true, but a heavier stick will also build up more velocity, you’ll automatically play louder, and you’ll go further when playing. Conversely, when playing with lighter sticks, the movements will usually be much smaller, as the sticks will bounce back less, and thus be thrown far less distance when played with the same force. Our movements therefore become almost automatically smaller with light sticks, adapting to the sticks.

Alternatives to the normal sticks can be for example the very light ProMark JazzCafe MJZ11 (unfortunately no longer available…) or Rohema Tango Hornbeam. With these sticks you still get a pleasant sound on the cymbals and toms.

If these sticks are still too loud, one usually resorts to bundled sticks called Hot Rods, which unfortunately are usually hardly quieter than normal sticks, and still have a rather unique sound. A laudable exception here is the Beech Soft Rod with rubber core, which is actually surprisingly quiet for rods.

Really quiet – and we are talking about up to 80% quieter than sticks and rods – are Adoros Silent Sticks, for which we have already posted a review here on the blog. These sticks alone would justify concluding this article here as successfully mastered. Honestly, if you don’t know these sticks yet, and want to play quietly from time to time, check them out, and get some, because there’s no easier way to switch from normal to quiet without a huge effort! And who already knows them, test if necessary the new Silent-E-Sticks, actually intended for e-drums, with fatter Soft-Grip, and a softer tip, this sounds even slightly quieter than the original Silent Sticks, which I already did not think possible. These sticks are also very suitable for percussionists to play hand percussion like bongos or conga, tabla etc with sticks without ruining the skins.

Of course, your arsenal should also include alternatives such as brooms and drumsticks.

But the point was to preserve or even improve the sound when playing quietly. Therefore, we will now go a little further. The concern that many drummers have is that they fear they will no longer sound good if they play quieter. This can be helped with this and the following tips – it’s not necessary to play loud to sound good! On the contrary, often your sound will actually improve when you play quieter, provided you consider the following tips. Starting with:

2nd tip: Heads – the right skins.
(effort: low; cost: medium)

A simple rule of thumb is that the thicker the skin, the more energy I need to make it sound. While thick double-layered heads were actually invented to withstand the brute playing style of some drummers, today they are often the excuse for persistently loud playing – they usually don’t sound as good played quietly. So, if you want to play quiet(er), you should stay away from all double-ply drumheads, and rather choose single-ply heads like the Ambassador by Remo, or even the Diplomat skin. From Adoro, the experts when it comes to quiet drums, there is even a special Heritage skin, an Ambassador-thin Mylar skin with an applied thin celulose layer, which not only gives the skin a harmonious overtone spectrum, but also significantly reduces the attack, as with a real natural skin.

If you like this sound and would like to go even further in this pleasantly warm, very round-sounding direction, we also recommend real natural calf skins, such as the Litik calf heads. These are even available already mounted on a ring, so that they can be used without prior experience with natural skins, just as normal drum skins made of plastic. However, you can immediately hear that these do not contain plastic. As pleasant, as warm these drumheads sound, as harmonious, they are easy to tune and harmonize.

3rd tip: Tuning right
(effort: low; cost: low)

Single ply heads also have a higher tuning range, and can be tuned lower than double-ply heads. Although they sound duller, due to the immense friction losses caused by their two plies – the basic tuning of the heads is usually a bit higher than with single layered heads. This is important to know, especially if you want to play softly. Because here the rule is: tune as low as possible. On this topic I like to link again to our workshop “Warm tuning, what is it and why do I want it“. I will only summarize it briefly here, for more details please read there: Warm tuning means that the batter head is tuned lower than the resonant head; this produces a pleasantly warm tone, as the heads are enriched by overtones an octave below the fundamental – in German: it sounds fat. As a rule of thumb you can say: hand-tighten the batter and resonance heads in turn – without a tuning key. This will give you the lowest tunable tone (make sure there are no wrinkles; if you can’t avoid them, check if the shell is flat… more about that later!); on the reso side, simply tune each screw about half a turn higher, this will bring you into the warm range, and you’ll end up with about a third above the batter head tone. Since the shells have different diameters, these are usually about the same tension among themselves about a third apart, very practical.

When tuning, it is best to play with your lightest stick, this will reveal inaccuracies in the tuning. As a general rule, detuned shells sound better when played louder than softly, so make an effort when tuning, if necessary buy a book, such as the drum tuning classic by Nils Schröder, highly recommended.

Tip 4: proper muffling
(effort: very low; cost: very low)

Taping the head as a means of choice to reduce volume can backfire badly. It’s okay, if you still have too much overtones, to dampen them a bit with gaffa or a moongel (better yet, half a moongel), but sticking tissues on them, preferably in the middle of the skins, kills any pleasant sound. If it makes the drums sound better, they probably sounded really bad before, so please start all over again… ?

So, stay away from too much muffling material, both on the toms/floortoms, and on the kick and snare. After all, our goal is not to resurrect the sound of the 70s (hello cardboard box!), but to improve the drums’ sound so that they are less loud – that is, quieter!

Ultimately, we reduce the sound with the damping, and thus make the attack all the louder, which subjectively makes the drums louder again. If, on the other hand, the instruments have a complex sound with sufficient harmonics, they usually blend better into the music and seem less loud. So here less is really less, namely less loud!

5th tip: Weapon of choice – the right drums
(effort: low; costs: very different)

This can almost be considered an insider tip, because now comes something that hardly anyone knows: drums are not so loud by chance, and they haven’t always been! Even in the 40s and 50s, drum sets were musical instruments which, mostly thanks to pleasantly warm-sounding calfskins, sounded terrific when played indoors without amplification. Contrary to what many drummers believe, these sets also usually had a rather small bass drum – 18 and 20″ were common – and smaller snare drums – between 10-12″ pancake snares. The modern 14″ rock snare was actually borrowed from marching music, partly because drums were incredibly expensive in the 50s and 60s, and it was very easy to get used marching equipment – but then also because they were so much louder, which was a nice side effect with the amplification of stages (see this post…). The 60s and 70s not only saw a boom in drumsets due to the popularity of the Beatles, they also permanently changed the design of drumsets – praised was that which makes loud. Unfortunately, this made the drum set not just louder, but also less balanced in sound – especially the snare, but also the cymbals, are now usually up to 10dB louder than the rest of the set, making mic’ing to readjust this glaring disparity become more or less the status quo – drums are now per se always mic’d and amplified. Therefore, it can be well argued that the normal, acoustic drum kit is actually a semi-acoustic instrument. Not only do manufacturers rely on technology for volume ratios, but they also benefit from the proximity effect, a combination of compression and bass and depth-mid boost, when it comes to sound. No wonder unamplified drums sound louder than mic’d ones; they lack warmth and balance in sound, even without equilizing.

With this knowledge it should be obvious that there are drums that have not been trimmed for volume. But if you don’t want to fall back on – mostly very expensive and rare – drum sets from the 50s or 60s, you’ll have to search hard – or not, because fortunately Adoro has something in store again with their worship drums, which continue the legacy of the truly acoustic sets with modern, easy-to-tune drum sets.

What if you don’t have the cash to buy such a set? As a general advice, take drums with 1-2 numbers smaller shells, and if possible, with thin, short shells. So rather the 10 than the 12 inch tom, the 14 instead of the 16″ FT, and an 18″ or 20″ instead of the 22″ kick. Also, a quieter snare – no steel shells or similar infernally loud ones, please. If you do not have a smaller wooden snare, you can put some foam in the steel shell to keep it reasonably in check – best placed so that the skins are not touched. This also reduces the air volume, another way to reduce volume.

Tip 6: the right cymbals
(effort: low; costs: very different)

The opposite is true for the cymbals: if you intuitively want to take smaller cymbals for quieter playing, you will quickly find that they are usually much louder. The following applies to cymbals: large, dark and warm-sounding cymbals are preferable to bright, shrill cymbals! So rather a 15er or 16er Hihat, 18er or 20er Crashes, 22 or 24″ Rides. Since the volume of cymbals is related to their thickness, profile and texture, you can sound much darker and more pleasant with thinner, low-profile cymbals, and an unfinished surface usually comes with a very short decay. Here I recommend Dream Bliss or Vintage Bliss cymbals, as a ride a 24 Small Bell Flat Earth or the 22 Dark Matter Flat Ride for a great sounding but also affordable choice. When looking at the major brands, be prepared to pay quite a fortune for simillar cymbals – for some reason the mellow sound is reserved for the pro’s, while the cheaper cymbal packages usually have rather thick and loud cymbals aimed for rock (loud music). Sigh…

7. Tipp: Room Treatment – sound absorber & co
(effort: high; costs: very different)

And what about the usual noise makers like acrylic walls and co? It’s expensive, and makes the sound worse rather than quieter. But you can still do something about the room and the positioning. Make sure that the drums are positioned in the room so that they are not made even louder by the prevailing acoustics. Just play the kick and snare in different areas of the room and see where they get louder and where they get quieter. It’s best to use a thick carpet for your drum set anyway, it absorbs a lot of reflections. The set should also not be placed too close to a wall or even in the corner. If the walls are bare, they reflect the sound. Sound absorbers can help here. You don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of money on this, anything that absorbs sound is welcome. A thick curtain should be hung behind the drum kit, it usually absorbs quite a bit, especially the high frequencies of the snare and the cymbals. Molton, but also felt blankets etc. are very suitable for this. And if the church has already purchased an acrylic wall, don’t put it up in front of the drum set, but behind it, hang thick blankets on it, and build your own absorber.

With these measures, your drum set can not only become up to 15dB quieter, it will also sound much better when played quietly. And especially with the Silent Sticks from Adoro you get an instrument that can be played almost as quiet as otherwise only Cajon.

I am looking forward to your feedback as well!

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Sure, 1940s big band jazz was a sweeping sonic experience, 1950s rock ‘n’ roll could get raucous, and the Beatles and Kinks could shake it up in the early 1960s. But there was a moment in time when drumming got loud. Really loud. It started in 1965, took hold in 1966, and by 1967 a full-fledged assault by high-decibel, chandelier-shaking volume was underway. And it was here to stay.

This matter of volume arose soon after the arrival of the Marshall amplifier, most notably the Marshall 100-watt ‘stack’ (there was also a 200-watt stack and a 50-watt half-stack…both also lethal), which the firm of Jim Marshall, himself a drummer, developed with input from Pete Townshend and John Entwistle of the Who. Their idea for a massive 8 x 12” speaker cabinet proved to be much too big and heavy for their roadies, so it was cut across the middle, creating the much revered (or reviled) Marshall 4 x 12” cab. With all that Marshall power cranked to the max, Townshend bashing his guitars into the realm of intense feedback, and Entwistle playing basses strung with piano wire (‘round-wound’ strings were his idea), stage volume not only drove the meters into the red, it shifted the balance away from the drums – the beat was getting lost in the churn of screaming six-strings and rumbling low end. That’s because drums were not mic’d at the time, so even with the drummer bashing harder and harder, they were no competition for the air being shifted at full volume through stacks of 4 x 12” speakers. And it would be several years before on-stage monitors, so, paradoxically, they played even louder just to hear themselves. And with Keith Moon on drums, that means The Who were plenty loud before the amps were even switched on!

A year later, by the end of 1966, blues-rock trio Cream had arrived. With Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass, and Ginger Baker drumming, it was a formidable trio formed by three of London’s hottest players. And they too had Marshall stacks. First there was one for bass and one for guitar. Then there were two for bass, so there had to be two for guitar. Drummer Baker, whose double bass kit was – as with Keith Moon’s – inspired by seeing jazzer Sam Woodyard of the Count Basie Band at a London gig – was furious about the volume, claiming it was deafening him as well as forcing him to bash his drums, not play them. Despite selling millions of records the band split after only a couple years, due in part to Baker constant arguing with Bruce about the bass being much too loud. Even after the band’s 2005 reunions in London and New York Baker was still furious about Bruce’s volume. The bass-playing Scotsman was much too loud!

But as 1966 advanced into 1967, the volume of the Who and Cream took hold. And those Marshall amps, well, they looked and sounded so cool that soon Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group, then Led Zeppelin…all the major British bands had stacks lined across their stage. In America the trio Blue Cheer led the revolution. They were so loud that it was necessary to record part of Outside/Inside album with their Marshalls out on Pier 57 in New York Harbour. It was costing them over $1,000 per day to be there…and be loud.

By now, the late 60s, with bands playing outdoor concerts and bigger venues, microphones were being used to make those amps even louder. Drums too, as mics, typically two or three, started to show up around kits. One for the bass drum, an overhead and maybe one on the snare. Everything was now louder than loud, with some drummers following the likes of Carmine Appice, the archetype of heavy rock drumming, and going with bigger drum sizes (Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham’s played a kit based on Carmine’s). Others removed the bottom heads of their toms and stuck a mic inside, something started by session ace Hal Blaine but popularised by Appice. Same with the bass drum – stuff a pillow in it to make the sound punchier and add a mic to make it louder. With the blisteringly hot Beck, Bogert & Appice, Carmine had two massive monitors, one on each side of his kit – a Fender Dual Showman, and a Marshall stack. Crazy loud!

By the mid 1970s, with bands playing much bigger venues – 20,000 to 80,000 capacity arenas and stadiums had entered the picture – high-powered sound systems took over from big amps in terms of music projection. But the big amps and big drums stayed, even in small clubs. They’d become a token of coolness. Single- and double headed power toms, bigger and longer bass drums, deeper snares, thicker heads with power dots or EQ rings, and larger and heavier cymbals on heavy-duty hardware were the things to have. Sticks got bigger and heavier too, with some being made of virtually indestructible fiberglass or carbon fibre. There were also carbon fibre drums. And harder, non-porous synthetic shells including phenolic and fiberglass, which sounded bright, cutting…and loud. At least one company devised a metal liner for its bass drum as a means of increasing its volume, though later settled on high-gloss urethane paint for the same purpose. Other companies created metal drums of stainless steel. Volume had become the currency of rock ‘n’ roll. Indeed, Loud had become big business.

And it stayed that way through the eras of hard rock, soft rock, arena rock, speed metal, the MTV 80s, the LA ‘big hair’ bands, the grunge of the 90s. Even jazz got loud when in the early 70s, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever and Weather Report, with the double drum kits of Billy Cobham, Alex Acuna, Chester Thompson and others, the blistering guitar of John McLaughlin and the soaring synths of Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul emboldened the spirits of Bud Powell, Grant Green and John Coltrane with high-wattage energy. Call it jazz-rock, call it fusion; it was quite a few notches up the volume ladder. Even Miles Davis, inspired by Hendrix, got kinda loud.

Volume ran rampant and unchecked for about forty years, until about 2005, when, inspired by 1950s amplifiers, some guitarists started to downsize their wattage and develop their tone. Instead of 50- or 100-watts, they went with 20- or 30-watts, often with the ability to switch down to 15, 10, 5, even 1 watt. The ‘lunchbox’ amps – tiny terrors that fit on a dinner plate gave visual meaning to ‘the reality that the game had shifted from the power rating of the amp to the tonal quality of the sound it projected. It was no longer about Loud; it was now about Tone. Less powerful amps enabled more dynamic playing within a tighter volume range: There was no need to turn it up to eleven. The Spinal Tap era of Loud had met its match; common sense had finally kicked in.

In the drum world, because audio techs and recording engineers had trouble dealing with so much sound, some drummers had tried various things and techniques to ‘turn down’ their volume without actually having to hold back on their playing. Rubber mutes and pads deadened the response but killed the resonance and tone in the process, leaving only the sound of a wooden stick hitting a plastic head. Thwack, thud, ding.

For those seeking some serious quiet there were electronic kits. But those aren’t the ‘real thing’, are they? Rubber pads, electrics to plug in, cables to connect, the need for amplification…. But that is another story. They don’t resonate. They don’t have tone. With respect, they’re like the karaoke of drums in that they attempt to be like the real thing. But they’re not the real thing. And we’re talking about the real thing, so, moving along….

However, the rapid rise in popularity of electronic kits did spark drum and cymbal companies into doing something for those who out of necessity or choice wanted drums that could perform at lower volumes. It was easy with electronic kits because like those guitar amplifiers they have a volume knob and a headphone jack. Real drums and cymbals have neither. Instead drummers must choose their gear and adjust their playing to be quieter…or louder. For many drummers that is inconvenient, difficult, even impossible. “The drums are too loud…don’t play so hard” is commonly heard (or thought). So, what’s a drummer to do?

Those drum and cymbal companies, in their effort to compete against electronic kits and stymie the “Turn down” comments directed at drummers on acoustic kits came up with cymbals perforated by hundreds of holes, rubber or silicone drum and cymbal mutes, plus various heads to either bring down the volume of soften the attack. One cymbal brand’s marketing said, ‘Don’t Hold Back’. But largely it was about ‘choking’ the volume, killing the tone and, well, offering nothing positive sound-wise. Those options compromise sound for the sake of keeping the volume down in practice and rehearsal situations but offer little if anything in performance and recording situations. How can a drummer have their own personal sound when there is no resonance, tone or dynamic range to be had from their ‘turned down’ gear?

At Adoro, just like those guitarists with their amps, we recognised the need for drums designed to reduce the volume and boost the tone. Our Worship Series drums can get loud when you push your playing, but not as loud as other drums. Like those lower-wattage guitar amps, the achieve tone without being loud. And they don’t sound ‘muted’, ‘dead’ or ‘padded down’. Instead, their suspension-mounted shells resonate freely, with the air bouncing between the heads to generate warm, musical tone that sits inside the music happening around it. You can tune higher for brighter, more cutting responses, or lower for deeper, darker and more funky and soulful sounds. The vibrancy of the specially designed shells – choose Maple for brighter tone, or Walnut for darker responses and a tighter volume range – make these ideal for volume-sensitive venues including churches, schools, concert halls, clubs, studios…even the biggest stages because these drums sound phenomenal with mics. By not being too loud, the sound can be totally controlled by the audio tech.

Indeed, anywhere dynamics, tone and musicality matter, Adoro Worship Series drums deliver the acoustic sound of a well-balanced, amplified kit with perfect volume control.

How well do they do this? Readers of Germany’s Drumheads magazine voted the Worship Series Dream Drum Set of the Year. In America, where Adoro is known mainly by tone aficionados, music instrument retailers nominated it for the MMR Magazine Dealers Choice Award. Like perfectionist auto makers Maserati and Porsche, we focus on better, not bigger.

So, in a world where drums are often too damned loud, there is finally an answer that doesn’t mute your dynamics, kill you tone and take the fun out of drumming. With Adoro Worship drums you get to play as you normally do, sound great and never be too damned loud.

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Playing drums at room volume? On a normal drum set? Silent Sticks from Adoro make this possible. And thanks to innovative design features they provide an authentic feel and defined sound.

With Adoro Silent Sticks you can play drums much quieter than you ever thought possible – and without having to compromise the way you play! Adoro Silent Sticks are specifically designed to preserve the feel and sound of conventional sticks as much as possible, but at a significantly reduced volume.

Robust but lightweight high-strength materials include a hollow polycarbonate shaft that reduces the amount of energy transferred to the heads, while the tip of two twisted nylon inserts (Dual-Twist Reflex Tips®) simulate the rebound feeling of “real” sticks.

This concept works so well that Silent Sticks let you play without compromising on technique or feel, even on normal acoustic drums. Silent Sticks are not only suitable for a quiet practice at home, but also for all acoustic concert situations, as fellow musicians and singers need not play or sing louder when their drummer uses Silent Sticks.

Compared to rods or brooms, Adoro Silent Sticks sound more defined in terms of attack on the drums. This definition is also clearly noticeable on cymbals. Plus, Silent Sticks enable a transparent drum sound that makes even fine ghost notes dynamically audible.

Facts

* individually handmade in Hamburg, Germany

* much lighter than conventional wooden sticks

* due to light weight, extremely low volume is possible

* feel and rebound like “real” sticks

* clearly defined sound on drums and cymbals

* stable and playable without signs of wear

Published by www.sticks.de
Silent Sticks can be purchased at www.silent-sticks.com

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From: DRUMHHEADS! 
Author: Christian Svenson (translated)

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