Some Recommendations!!
Prologix Percussion
Vortex Pro
Quad Pads
There are several great options in the market for quad pads. Prologix Percussion is a great company that makes a wide assortment of well-built pads for all kinds of percussionists. They provide two primary quad pads, the Vortex Pro and the Vortex 5. Both have great build quality and are made of recycled rubber to be eco-friendly! Unlike its laminate counterpart, the recycled rubber doesn’t crack or fall apart as easily after long-time usage. And it also offers some slight resistance when playing scrapes which helps reinforces vertical motion and build chops.
Our second pick would be the Vic Firth Quadropad. This pad has stood the test of time due to its simplicity and reliability. While it lacks rims, it makes up for it by offering replacement laminates. Laminate on certain quad pads tend to crack and fall apart after long-time usage. Thankfully, Vic Firth offers replacement laminates so that you don’t have to purchase a completely new pad! On top of that, this pad is built to have a single pitch so that even while playing arounds, you can focus on the quality of your rhythms and sound without being distracted by constant pitch changing.
Bill Bachman’s
Quad Logic
Music Books
Even quad players have books they can relate to. The most influential quad book out there has to be Quad Logic by Bill Bachman, and for good reason too! This book covers just about every major aspect of quad drumming in detail with articulate text and exercises to go with it. This is a must have for any quad player at any level. Whether you use the exercises to improve yourself, use the text to expand your quad knowledge, or reference the solos for cool around ideas. This is a fantastic book to own.
An even more influential book in the percussion world is Stick Control by George Lawrence Stone. To say this book greatly influenced the percussion landscape would be a gross understatement. More than 80 years after it was written, this book is still used as the standard for what all good percussionists should know how to play. It has hundreds of sticking and rhythmic patterns that you will encounter in just about every piece of music you play. While there are no arounds it in, it is easy to create your own arounds to the existing patterns therefore expanding your arounds repertoire.
You can also check out Gridbook Percussion who specialize in rudimental percussion. They offer a range of books that cover marching, gridding, technique, and mentality. Their Instagram and YouTube channel also offer a plethora of free knowledge and videos to get yourself inspired!
Promark’s
Sean Vega Signature
Sticks
There are numerous options for marching tenor sticks in the market. One of the most popular is Promark’s Sean Vega Signature tenor stick. It is the perfect length and balance to hold the stick towards the end thus preventing anything sticking out the back of your hand. It even has an enlarged handle to fill up your hand a little more, giving you more control as you maneuver across the drums quickly.
If nylon isn’t quite your taste, another great option is Innovative Percussion’s Paul Rennick Signature tenor stick. It is a unique looking stick with its enlarged bead and latex butt end. But don’t let it’s look deceive you, it is well balanced and a very appropriate length to get around the drums without issues. If you like different textures, a quick flip of the stick gets you a warmer tone with the latex side of the sticks. This can provide more freedom with how you compose the tenor voice and increase its utility as a midtone instrument.
If you want to reach outside of the realm of sticks, Vic Firth makes the best tenor mallets. Their MT1A-S tenor mallets give you all kinds of benefits that regular sticks can’t. When used correctly they can produce a huge sound with less effort and its wide tip reduces accidental stick and rim hitting. It has a rubber handle to prevent any slipping and it is noticeably shorter than most sticks to give you more room to move around the drums.
Sometimes tenor sticks just aren’t long enough or heavy enough for your playing style. That’s ok! There are plenty of snare sticks that are appropriate for use on tenors as well. A couple popular ones are IP’s Jim Cassella Signature sticks and Vic Firth’s M-Dawg (Murray Gusseck Signature). Both feel fantastic in the hands and work well on a pad.
There are also a couple other creative sticks you can buy as well for training purposes. Promark’s Scojo X-beat practice sticks can turn any surface into a practice pad with it’s tough rubber tips. Great for traveling without a pad. For chop building purposes, Vic Firth’s Magnum sticks are heavyweight sticks to push your chops to the limit. Not only that, it is a shorter stick, making it great for playing arounds!
Daniel Coyle’s
The Talent Code
Non-Music Books
Being successful in this activity is not all about studying the craft itself. Getting taught better technique and reading books about percussion may make you more knowledgeable, but how you shape your attitude, choices, and discipline when you practice will determine your overall success. These are a few books to help you understand how to do that.
A very insightful book is Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code. Coyle takes complex psychological and behavioral theories about how “talent” and skills are honed, and simplifies it so that any layman can understand. It explains the practice habits of the most talented individuals in the world and how you can apply it to your own craft to facilitate your own progress. The best part is that this process is not specialized for music; it’s made for anything you want to become skillful at. It is a short read that will empower you to make progress at an alarming speed!
Another insightful book by Daniel Coyle is called The Culture Code. While the previously mentioned book focuses on the skillful individual, this book delves into how the most skillful teams in the world cultivate a culture that enables skillful individuals to flourish. It unearths how the San Antonio Spurs, the Navy SEALS, and KIPP Academy (and more) became the epitome of their respective activity. If you are a teacher or a section leader, this book will provide you some great info on how to foster your group’s environment to enable their potential to be realized.
A lesser known and even lesser taught skill is how to play the Inner Game. Our inadequacies at playing this game is what bars us from overcoming our greatest barrier to progress; ourselves. We tend to be our own worse critics and in some cases our own worse teachers. We beat ourselves up and demand all the wrong things such that our body is doomed to fail. Timothy Gallway’s breakthrough book, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance takes a deep dive into how we unlock our body’s enormous capacity for greatness when we quiet our mind and trust ourselves to learn naturally.
A major facet of progress is habit and what kind you make. Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a world renown book that offers suggestions of habits that will help you succeed. Building good habits is an imperative part of the practice routine and the more good ones you can make, the quicker and cleaner your progress will be.
More To come...
Websites, channels, etc!