A few years
ago I bought a drum kit.
Why?
Every boy
needs a drum to bang on. At least that is my philosophy of life.
The
back-story is I’ve always loved percussion. Those woodwinds and brass and
strings in the orchestra were OK but those guys in the back put the punch in
classical long hair music. They’d sit down or stand around most of the time but
when they started banging on kettledrums and crashing cymbals everyone sat up
and paid attention.
So I was in
a guitar shop I often frequent and noticed a stack of drum shells. I asked the manager
if he was selling drums too and he said they were his son’s and he was trying
to get rid of them. We bartered a deal and now I was the proud owner of a drum
kit w/ cymbals.
I’m not a
trained musician but I can tinker away on guitar, bass, piano but I know
nothing about drums. I’d admire the drummer in many rock bands keeping the beat
together and even filled in for a song or two but I’m left handed and drum kits
are set up differently than is natural for me to play. Ask Ringo.
So here was
all these drum things and I had to assemble them and put them somewhere. One
drum was missing a head and there were pieces that didn’t seem to fit anywhere.
Since I didn’t want to look foolish to my drummer friends, I went to YouTube. A
couple hours of Googling and found I had to get a key, just like a car, to
start my drumming experience with my new purchase.
So several
trips to the local music shops and some hands on trail and error sessions and I
had an assembled drum kit and it took up a rightly amount of space.
After many
months of cleaning and clearing out I’d made some space upstairs that would be
perfect for a studio. So all the drums and cymbals and stands and throne were
carted upstairs and reassembled. I was ready to rock…. well not so fast.
I had lots
of records and had seen a fair amount of bands and even played in a few to
recognize the sound of cymbals. I’d seen a drummer or two with these things in
their cymbals that made them ring and wanted to find out what that was.
Again the
Internet helped me find what put the “sizzle” in the cymbal. In my research
there were chains and necklaces lay on the cymbal but that seems very cluttered
and cumbersome. Then I read something about rivets.
I went to
the hardware store and even bought a box of rivet but couldn’t figure out how
they could work on a cymbal. More research and digging and a few videos and I
found the answer to my rivet conundrum.
Checking all
the local music stores for ‘sizzle’ cymbals went nowhere and no one carried the
rivets I was looking for. More research and digging and found the rivets were
made in Turkey and could be ordered online. Still more researching and I found
Bosphorus cymbals (seems many cymbals are made in Turkey) and ordered two packs
of 8 ‘cymbal rivets’. At the same time I started getting worried.
From all the
stories of cymbals I read, there was the horror of a cracked cymbal. I even
watched how to drill a cymbal and put the rivets in but worried I’d do it wrong
and kill the cymbal. Solution: buy another cymbal.
I matched
the Paiste ride cymbal with another and marked the 3” deep from the edge for
the holes to be drilled. I found the correct drill bit size to allow the rivet
to bounce and purchased a metal drill bit the same size. Still there was that
bugging image of me drilling into this piece of well-worked metal probably
hammered by some Jihadist and it cracking under the pressure.
So the
project sat ready to perform with the fear of failure.
Finally yesterday
I took the bait and brought out the cymbal and drill and took the challenge.
Place the drill bit in the correct marking and hit the power and pressed down.
The drill bit started skipping back and forth as expected and just kept at it
until the shavings started to pile up and the hole was done. No cracks so onto
the next hole and the next hole and the next hole and the next hole and the
next hole.
That went so
well and I had another bag of rivets I pulled a china cymbal to repeat the
process.
A ‘to-do’
now done I’ll reassemble the kit on its new rug to bang away through the winter
months. And that is how you get things done…. with a sizzle.
