I love this topic, and Royal Ace's comment here, from a response to a photo from my old Signature kit, because it deserves its own thread:
Royal ace wrote:
1. I prefer the old, shallower depths.
2. All my drum role models made do with 4 drums, excepting Elvin and Jack, neither of whom, in later days, had to shlep, set up and tear down themselves!
Ron
The reason I love the topic is because it addresses three issues; ego, reality, and style.
As an ego issue, nothing is funnier, sadder, or more awkward than a drummer with too many drums. He feels either compelled to use them all and thus plays way too much, or, like the guy with the Signature bubinga double bass kit with only one pedal, has them up there for show (the explanation was his, not mine). I guess that falls under the heading of Dumbo's Feather: what you don't need but don't know you don't need.
I played a four piece for twelve years before I got a five piece. More drums more music, right? Well, more drums more noise, maybe. Such was my case; I never learned how to play that five piece, and I had it for ten years.
Not certain that "reality" is the word I want, but it will do to describe the fact that the most we have is four reasonable limbs for drumming. So huge kits cannot really provide the ability to hit more drums than a four piece - or even a three piece- can. In the hands of a competent drummer, all sorts of sounds can be massaged from a small kit, and since sound is relative to the other sounds around it, a full spectrum is available to anyone who knows how to manipulate it.
How do we justify larger kits? In a word, style. Not fashion, which is something or somewhere or someone else - but not us. Some folks seem to have no style, or at least their style might be said to be fairly careless. Others seem to have none because they are attentive to fashion, so their style is dependent upon what others think - or what they think others think - about them. But style is a combination of who we are, what we've learned, what has happened to us, who our role models are and how we have assimilated that which resonates with us. It is the way in which we do a thing, how we walk, how we breath.
When I got rid of the "fashionable five" piece kit in favor of a four piece (it was what I could afford at the time), I suddenly found all sorts of patterns making musical sense, using all the equipment at hand. No additional temptations to lead me astray, no "gotta get that other drum in here somehow." Playing a four piece is enforced creativity.
Ron, my role models all use four piece kits, too. But I've changed a good deal over the years. I think of my six piece as a four piece, with a couple of extra effects at either end of the spectrum. I can absolutely get along without the two extra pieces, but it is my style to enjoy the frisson available from extra bits of tonality, whether it be the faux drop tone in a press roll from the 8 to the 12, or a closing of the barn door with a 16 (better yet, an 18) after all the horses have been put inside. The remarkable 8 to 16 drop is also very compelling, but in that case, the four piece is bass/ snare/ 8/ 16.
I am very comfortable leaving two drums behind when gigging, but the first to drop off is the highest tom. I love bottom!
Now then, I think I've said all that before, too.
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