Hi, my name is Wes Crawford. And today, we're going to talk about the ergonomic setup of the drum set.
It’s very important to set the drum setup so that you're comfortable playing it. You don’t want to wear yourself out if you're doing a four-hour performance or something like that somewhere. If you're not set up so that it’s comfortable for you, then that could be a problem. You’ll get tired and stressed.
So, first thing you want to do is set your seat up. Find a nice height that your thighs will be parallel to the floor or angled down ever so slightly. Next thing you want to do, you want to notice where your feet naturally land on the floor. So, set your seat up and your pedals up so that your feet are on the pedals in a very comfortable position. So now, it’s just like you're sitting there having a conversation with someone or something and there is no more stress or anything in your legs than something as mundane as that.
Then you want to set your Snare Drum up. I like mine fairly flat, angled toward me maybe ever so slightly. And you want your Snare Drum as low as you can get so that it’s leveled with your arms as your elbows just naturally fall to your sides in a relaxed manner but high enough that you can get a Rim Shot. A Rim Shot is hitting the rim, the middle rim and the drum at the same time. There will be times when you want to do that [Demonstration]. It’s a very sharp sound. And if it’s so low that you're running into your leg, then you have your Snare Drum too low. Then you want to set your Toms in close, close enough to be comfortable. And what you're trying to do is create as close as you can one plain, one surface that you could move across the Toms. I would probably want this low Tom up just a little bit, maybe angled a little bit so that you can move across the drums as if you're moving around a tabletop and so they're not at all weird angles or at different levels.
After you have this much setup, you want to bring in your cymbals. Now, you don’t want your cymbals out so far, particularly Ride Cymbal which you might play a lot so that you have to reach for it with your elbow up. That's what will tire you out very quickly. So, you want your Ride Cymbal in where you can still keep your elbow down; it’s very comfortable. And then you’ll have your Crash Cymbals, which usually you want one convenient for the right hand, one convenient for the left hand, which these are. I might sometimes place this Crash Cymbal over to this side. Either way, it’s convenient for the right hand, one for the left hand. And again, you don’t want it so high or so far away that you have to reach for them. So, these are the ergonomic considerations for setting up your drum set.
As far as the Hi-Hat height, if you're going to play right-handed, we typically play right hand on the Hi-Hat which is the busier hand, and then the left hand on the Snare. You don’t want them so close that you run into each other so it’s a compromise again. You want it high enough that you're still comfortable. You don’t want it too high but that you have room underneath. Some other compromises you might come up with in this regards so that you don’t run into each other is you might bring this stick in like this. You see some drummers do that so then they could bring their left stick over higher. I like this one. I like to move my right hand forward and play over here so then my left hand is never underneath it when I'm playing a beat. So a lot of these compromises in drum set setup are up to you also.
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