Over the years, I have acquired a lot of knowledge regarding drum sounds by being open-minded, while experimenting and learning from others. You can’t always be married to what you think works. That attitude can be a dead-end. It’s helpful to be flexible and willing to adapt. Take a kit, preferably a good one, and learn how to tune the drums high, tune them deep, tune them wide-open, or tune them dead. This skill can help you achieve the best sound from night to night. Another secret is to befriend the front of house engineer. Remember, it’s not only about what sounds good while situated in the position of your drum throne. It’s equally as important to consider what the engineer is projecting to the audience through the PA system. If the engineer is not getting what he or she needs from the drum set, into the microphones, through the mixing board, and out to the people, then you’re going to sound weak. You might think that you have the coolest drum sound in the world, but that sound might not be transferring to all to the masses. It truly is teamwork. Both you and the engineer have to conspire together to invent the most wicked drum sound ever!

The skills I learned at music school were very valuable to me. My high school and college music professors gave me tools, inspiration, and encouragement when I needed them most. But, simply going to school will not make someone a professional musician. It can get you going in the right direction. Beyond being schooled, though, it is important to have the discipline to push yourself past the academics. You have to get out there in the world and play with working musicians. I think the best schooling one can have is the opportunity to go out every night of the week, by either watching or playing gigs with different musicians, clumsily discover what it is that works and doesn’t work in real-life settings. Patterns in textbooks don’t always work on a stage. There are many people who have never gone to a music school, but have risen to become very successful musicians. And there are others who have spent countless precious hours and dollars in schools, and have done nothing with their music degrees. I like to think of my experience in high school and at the University of Miami as my bachelors degree, and all the experience gathered since then as my post-graduate degree!

On any given night, many things can and will go wrong. Where do I start? During the set, a microphone may fall down, or a cymbal stand might vibrate off the riser. At an outdoor show, a strong wind could blow your floor tom or ride cymbal over. Cymbals crack; drumheads pop; drumsticks break; the coils on the bottom of the snare drum snap; batteries on in-ear monitor packs die; curtains don’t go up; risers get stuck; musicians space-out; sequencers shut down. All sorts of things can go wrong. All the electricity can go out on stage. That actually happened quite recently at an outdoor concert with Beto Cuevas. The entire stage went black, so we just kept the crowd clapping as the crew hurried to power up a back-up generator. If you sit there and expect every show to run perfectly, you’ll be sorely disappointed. I think the goal is to shoot for a perfect show, while at the same time, accept and anticipate all the chaos that could happen. In retrospect, the craziest shows seem to be the funniest, most memorable ones.

The drum set is like a giant monster of little parts; and there are so many things that can go wrong with this contraption. For the first fifteen minutes of sound check, I usually spend quality time going around the drum set, along with my drum tech, tightening loose parts and making sure everything is screwed in correctly. Then, I make sure the drums are tuned, because things like humidity and vibration can make the drums go way out of whack. I will also check for things like cymbal cracks from the night before. Next, we’ll test the sound with the monitor engineer to get the stage going. After that, we’ll check the front of house sound and make sure everything is cool in the room. There have been many times in which, after a two or three-hour sound check, and the audience doors are about to open, the sound is still totally messed up. When that happens (and it will happen), you just have to wing it and do your best with what you have.

A bad monitor mix can be distracting, and can make it very difficult to perform a show. I tend to prefer to have as little as possible in my in-ear monitors to lower the chances of a possible meltdown. Depending on the size of the band, I usually make a priority list of what I need in order to function. With the help of the monitor engineer, I put the people with the best time-feel the loudest in my mix. I prefer those people to be the bassist and percussionist. That way, we can get a nice, rhythmic, low-end machine going on the stage, and then we can let everyone else push and pull on top of that foundation. Sometimes, the rhythm guitarist may have the best time-feel, so I will go with that. Other times, the lead vocalist can have the best time-feel. He or she might have a unique phrasing-style which is essential to the music, so I’ll choose to lock in with that.