Being comfortable behind your drum set is essential in order to play the drums effectively. Most of the time we musicians will base the set up of our instruments on a famous player, or another musician. I don’t believe this is wrong because you have to start somewhere. I would like to share some tips and ideas of why I set my drums up the way I do. One thing you will notice when you first look at my drums is the bass drum is lifted off the ground about 1 1/2 inches. By tilting the front of the bass drum, it brings the head of the drum closer to the beater of the bass drum pedal, allowing better contact. The beater of the pedal doesn’t have to travel as far to contact the head of the drum. Therefore, you don’t have to exert so much energy to make a stroke. In addition, you will notice all my toms are set up fairly flat with the drum heads facing the ceiling. Most of my playing involves a lot of rebound technique, having my drums face up allows me to hit the drums in a way that gives the stick freedom to rebound as if I was hitting the snare drum. If I was to tilt my toms I would have to exert more force into playing because it would be much more difficult for the stick to respond consistently. Furthermore, as a drummer I have found that it’s important to be comfortable behind your drum set. You should be at home when you sit behind them, rather then fighting them. Experimenting with different ways to set them up helps.
