PASIC 2012 - Austin, Texas

What a great PASIC this year!

It was almost non-stop on my booth. I sold every last triangle and - as you can see - I had a few! Interest in them was already pretty high, but it was boosted further by the use of my triangles by Nicholas Ormrod of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, London in his Symphonic Accessories masterclass and also by Keith Aleo of Zildjian in his clinic.

I had visits from players with all the local symphony orchestras - Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, plus the Florida Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic and others. There was a lot of interest also in the 100% reliable bowing capabilities of the Bat-Wing gongs. I was told to rename them "Lord of the Rings" gongs!

So, besides the triangles, I also sold a bunch of cymbals, hi-hats and smaller gongs. A very successful show.

I had the pleasure of meeting with old friends, plus making a whole load of new ones including Johnny Rabb, Ari Hoenig, Todd Sucherman, Luis Conte, Richie Garcia and Ralph Humphrey.

PASIC has a lovely relaxed atmosphere. It's all about the art and about percussion education. This show, more than others, is much more about cameraderie than competition. The setting too - Austin in Autumn - was a lot of fun. Great people, great vibe, great food.

I believe PASIC is back in Indianapolis next year - which is nice enough, especially the selection of "brewpubs". But, I'm looking forwards more to a return to Texas at some point.

Most illuminating

Each time I shoot a promo video for my work, I try to do it a litle better than last time; learning from mistakes and experience. Apart from the ones where I've had direct help from Andy Mac (which are of vastly superior quality!), hopefully you can notice a gradual improvement from video to video.

The latest one was a medium scale production for me. Not too long, elaborate or fancy, but not a short, thrown together with little care piece either. Here it is on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUQOZ4_b_zQ

I wanted to get the lighting better than before. But without spending any money on fancy equipment. Before, I have used multiple small spot-lights (the ones from my exhibition booth rig), but these are actually pretty dim for photography / videography and they cast hard shadows and give you over-sparkly point reflections.

What I needed was flood-lights in "soft-boxes" - to create a larger, more diffuse light source to soften the shadows and make reflections of the lights less offensive.

I made 2 of them in very Heath-Robinson fashion. Both from cheap halogen flood lights that I already had. One with two microphone stands and a large sheet of tissue paper:



The second, I made with a cymbal boom arm stand, a microphone stand and an old coated drum head:



I had them either side of the scene so the drums were illuminated quite evenly from both sides (and also from the existing overhead lighting in the room):



Seemed to work pretty well. I had to add a "flag" to screen off the right hand soft-box later on, when I had a video camera with a wide-angle lens on it out in front of the kit. The light, even though out of shot, was still getting into the lens and creating a lens flare. So I hung a black sheet (like the ones I've used as the backdrop) from one of the microphone stands that was actually being used to hold a microphone to block the light to lens path, but not the light to drums path.

So, you don't necessarily need proper, expensive Gobos and soft-boxes to do a reasonable job...

The Shows Must Go On

Well, the Hollywood Drum Show has been and gone, as has PASIC - the Percussive Arts Society International Convention, this year held in Indianapolis. I had an expo booth at both and had a great time.

The Hollywood Show was very much a drummers' event, plus a few sound-track type folks. Plenty of great artist clinics - but none that I got too see, being glued to my booth.

PASIC was fantastic. The world's largest percussion event with over 150 different performances / workshops / clinics over the 4 days and the expo running alongside for 3 days. A real wide range of folks coming to see the expo - drummers, percussionists of all sorts, young students, old masters and everything in-between. And, even the man who is in the guiness book of records for having the largest hand-shaped-things collection! A real pleasure to meet all the people who came to my booth. It was great to hang out with industry friends old and new in the evenings too. I hope I can afford to make the trip over and exhibit again next year.

While in Indianapolis, the home of the P.A.S., I visited their newly opened museum - the Rhythm Discovery Center. Some cool stuff in there - an enormous drum head from Remo, feel the low frequency vibes man! But, I must say, I was most fascinated by the Musser designed Glock and Vibraphone type instruments. Fantastic.

So, what's next? Well, I've got orders from before and after the shows to make and new things to create. That's going to keep me busy until January. And what's happening in January? NAMM of course! I'll be at NAMM, on the Pork Pie Drums Booth. Booth #3378. Their main drum kit will be furnished with my cymbals and a very special custom gong.

Hand crafted cymbals alongside hand crafted drums. Perfect!

Ich bin ein Frankfurter

Well, sort of ;-)

I'm just back from spending the best part of a week in Frankfurt, exhibiting my Artisan Cymbals and Gongs at the MusikMesse trade fair - the largest music industry trade show in the world. The culmination of a few months' hard graft and preparations.

The Frankfurt Messe is vast - absolutely huge. The place is like a major international airport: 9 or more large exhibition hall buildings, some of which have multiple floors, plus a handful of stages and marquees. 80,000 people come through the doors over the 4 days of the show. Really the place to officially launch my new business!

And what a response! Thank you to everyone who came to the stand. The trade and the public seemed more than a little curious about my creations! It was great to see the variety of people who came to my booth (many of them more than once, often the 2nd and 3rd times with someone else in tow - "you have got to see this..."). I made some great contacts, new friends, met up with some old ones again and even made a few sales - La Baguetterie in France placing quite a large order, for one.

Big hits were the 1.25m Stainless Steel Bat-Wing Gong, the 60cm Nickel Silver round Gong and the 1m tall, 7kg Bronze Hand Gong. The latter has a wonderful delay in it's response to the mallet - you strike it and then the sound swells up noticably afterwards. This took a few people by surprise. They'd hit it, not get much, hit it again harder, still not much, hit it harder still and then WAAAHHHH!! Then they'd cover their ears, or run away, or both. Most amusing to observe!

Watching people play the Stainless Steel Rides was interesting too. 2 types of people. Those who "get it" and are fascinated by the new sound. And those who don't hear what they expect from a cymbal - end of story. Those people in the second camp were ushered quickly over to the Bronze Ride Cymbals - haha!

I was helped out greatly on the stand by my good friend from Dachau, RaBe. He was very enthusiastic and his German was, naturally, rather better than my half-forgotten schoolboy abilities. Another friend, Roger, from the UK helped for a few days too. Thank you both!

I think I may well have collapsed from exhaustion without the assistance. The last couple of weeks before the show were very busy - lots of late nights, microwave meals and take-away food at the workshop. The drive, from Bath to Frankfurt via the Dover-Calais ferry was quite gruelling too, given that I had very little time to take breaks. Ha! Packing the car took so long, I was 2 ferry crossings late. By the time the stand was set up on Tuesday night, I'd been awake for about 40 hours solid. I tell you, my display nearly fell down a couple of times as I tried to assemble it single-handed and half-shot!




But, it all worked out well in the end. Lots of "big name drummers" came to visit the stand. But, to spare their blushes (and endorsement deals with other cymbal companies) I'll not out them here. My Bronze ride cymbals were a particular hit. I had great support too from fellow independent cymbalsmiths Michael Paiste and Roberto Spizzichino. It's a small and friendly world between us hammer-wielding guys. The bigger and smaller companies came to have a good look too. I half wonder if I'll see my designs reproduced from other quarters next year.

I was filmed / interviewed 4 times - I'm getting used to it now. The first one is out there already - see here on youtube. Plus, 3 or 4 major drum / music magazines should be doing articles in the next few months also. Keep an eye out!

It was nice to have a good look around at the other exhibitors in the "Beat" Hall too. Some great cymbals and drums being produced. The same as last year, I think UFIP, Dream and Istanbul Agop were my favourites. One incident that particularly made me smile as I walked round was being grabbed by a guy from the Sabian stand - "are you Matt Nolan?" Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me...


Outside of the 9am to 6pm of the show (well, more like 8:30 to 6:45!), my "crew" and I had a great time sampling the local restaurants and beers. We also took this opportunity to meet up again with some locals that we know. A great night (not without incident) on Wednesday with Michael Paiste and his friend Marcel. I'll not forget that one.



The return journey was much smoother than the outward. No swearing at the sat-nav either. I even arrived several ferry-crossings early at Calais. Typical.

Now I must tidy my flat a bit (i.e. undo the mess that accumulated during the build-up to the Messe) ready for the arrival of Steve Hubback tomorrow. Steve is going to stay for a couple of days and borrow my workshop to make some pieces for Paolo Vinaccia.

Next stop, The Rebeats Chicago Drum Show!