I use smaller bass drums because of the ease of moving them. I play mostly blues and jazzy blues. Some jazz. With a mike I have played an 18 for an audience of 7 or 8000 people on more than 1 occasion. Just as it is possible to play a small room with a 26, it is also possible to play a large venue with an 18. As I said in my earlier post, amplification changed everything.

It's easier to be articulate with the smaller sizes. They lend themselves to the Bop vocabulary more than big drums.

Agree 100% with everything you said, Bill.

That's exactly why I think most of what is called jazz is not jazz.

I find this hard to believe. I had a New Classic Ludwig 18" kick, with an EMAD batter and Ludwig reso. I tuned it as low as it would go, without sounding like a paper-bag (it was fine for home practice), and it couldn't come within 10 zip codes of the hugeness of sound of my 24 x 14 Gretsch kick. Please, enlighten me.

The Bose salesman says that the "Wave music system" sounds just like a big stereo. People believe what they want to believe. All the physics of sound are against an 18" bass drum sounding like a 26".

In the end it doesn't matter what bass drum you use because music isn't about sound it's about feel and it can sound like doggy-doo and if it feels good it's a pass.

Yeah, I know where you're coming from. There is so much cookie-cutter, mindless, boring, formulaic, been-done-a-million-times jazz out there that it's hurt the music in a lot of ways. Just the same as there's tons upon tons of crap that's trying to be new for the sake of being new, usually odd time signature stuff that doesn't swing. It's no wonder the audience for "jazz" is dwindling year after year. It's either really boring or way too complex with no soul.

I don't really believe that in order to be called "jazz" something must be new, or innovative. A New Orleans group playing "When the Saints" is still jazz to me. Joe Henderson's album Lush Life is to me one of the best jazz albums of the past 20 years, and there is certainly nothing innovative or new about it. But it does add another level of greatness and artistic importance when the output is fresh and innovative, or at least somewhat original.

Thanks,

Bill

Playing "Meditation" out of the Real Book and everyone feeling like they have car sickness is not jazz. And I just had a brainstorm - at the end of all the solos, we'll trade 4's with the drummer - it's jazz!!!! Ya!!!! Everyone, Jazz!!!

I always thought that the Jimi Hendrix Experience was for sure a jazz group. I didn't think the Modern Jazz Quartet was, I liked them but thought it was European chamber music playing jazz rhythms.

Almost invariably, when something has "jazz" in the title, a band or an event, it isn't jazz.

Thank you. Knock on a big door; big sound. Knock on a small door; well, you know where I'm going with that. With that said, I'm not bashing small kicks, I like the mid-punch they offer, it's a distinct sound (or, "sou-wind", for you Zappa fans). I was just wondering, if there's a way to emulate that big-gate sound of a larger kick, with a small one, I'm all ears and want to learn.

PS - Love the Bose analogy. Coincidentally, I just killed a set of old Bose AM5's and replaced them with some Boston Acoustics in-walls, with 8" woofers. Now that's a big sound!

Lol!!!

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