Uncle Mo-BEEL's Copypasta Library of drumming advice

Fair warning: unlike other volumes that I offer as fact-based information, this is pure opinion and speculation based on just a few facts. I won't tell you that everything I'm telling you here is truth - I'm just saying that it sure seems this way to me. And full disclosure: I am speaking here in my capacity as a chapter president and three-decade member of The Offset Toms Galaxy Brain League Of Geniuses, so consider the source: Mounting more than one rack tom to the kick is a dumb, cheap, un-ergonomic standard that the drum industry saddled us with a lifetime ago, and there has never been any sense in it from day one. And I'll tell you why, while clearly stipulating that a large part of my explanation is IMHO conjecture based on circumstantial evidence from the historical record of our instrument. First, the observation-based opinion on which this accusation is based: You may have noticed, no matter how you configure your drums, that when you are seated on the throne w...

This was originally written in response to an r/drums question: "Advice to your former drummer self," which asked: "If you could go back in time and give your younger self some drumming advice, what would you tell him?" To which I said this: <grabs 21-year-old self by the collar> Listen, self, I know you're in college and broke as a joke, and I know drum gear is expensive, but there are some things you just have to spend the money on. You know what's going to happen if you spend too long playing while seated on two stacked milk crates instead of a proper throne? You're going to fuck up your hips for life. Flexing your hip joints over those hard edges will give you tightness and cramps and discomfort in all the muscles and connective tissues in your hips for the rest of your days. If you keep doing that, you will live every single day of your life with an actual pain in your actual ass, and you will learn firsthand why that became a figure of speech...

One of the easiest mistakes made by new drummers - and even established as a bad habit in older ones - is to get in your own way by not configuring your kit properly. But your Uncle Mo-BEEL is here to help with that. Tl;dr: You don't fit your body to the drums, you fit the drums to your body. The right way is the best way for your very own body. Here's how you find out what way that is. A couple of things before we begin: This is not a recipe for a specific way to set up your drums. I'm not telling you that your kit should look like mine when you're done, or that all your instruments should be located where I like all my instruments located. This is simply a method, a technique, for you to determine the ideal setup for yourself as dictated by your body, with your kit, to help you play your music the best, not mine. This is the process I recommend, but that doesn't mean that you should get the same results as I do, other than increased comfort and facility and a...