I have been teaching drums at Bethel University and Northwestern College for 6 years now, and I’ve been freelancing as a player for over 10 years. Guess what… I still have TONS to learn. Seriously, everyday I feel like I learn something huge. The biggest example recently would be…

Last year I spent some time with Michael Bland. Bland is a very accomplished player and a huge figure in the local scene in Minneapolis (where I live). I was certain that I would learn something from hanging with him, and on the very first day I was with him, he dropped this bomb:

“Man, you need to play your cymbals with less volume. You’re hitting both your drums and your cymbals at 100%, and the cymbals should really never go over 70%. You need to mix yourself… don’t just expect the engineer to do that for you. Grooves sound best when the drums are louder than the cymbals… so think about the overhead mics. They need to hear more drums than cymbals. So play that way.”

Wow. It seems so obvious, and yet no one had ever explained it to me that directly. Engineers would tell me to “play softer”… but I always thought they just meant my sound as a whole. Besides, other engineers would often tell me to “play louder.” Some of them would occasionally specify then need for my cymbals to be quieter, but in those instances I foolishly assumed that the real problem was a mic placement issue and not my fault.

So, I of course took Bland’s advice and it immediately made a huge difference in my playing. It took me a few months to get comfortable with physical aspect of hitting the cymbals differently than the drums, but I can really see the benefit of that effort. The philosophy has even spilled over into what cymbals I choose to play. I’ve found that really thick, bright, and cutting cymbals are just not very useful… especially for the hats and ride. Now I’m using very dark and warm sounding stuff almost exclusively. Cymbals with those kinds of tones just help the overall mix of my sound that Bland was talking about.

Anyway, there’s an example of a hugely important lesson that I’ve learned only recently… age 27 to be specific – after playing drums for over 16 years. I wish I had learned that lesson sooner.