Month: March 2016

Anatomy of a Drum Kit: A Tour of My Drums

Liam Smith Leave a comment

In between writing stories and blog posts I like to drum.  It’s a smashing hobby; cathartic as well as creative.  I started when I was sixteen, but I’ve improved since my first off-beat battering of Smells Like Teen Spirit.  I bought my own drum set, a Mapex Tornado Rock Fusion, back in 2013 after finishing university. But it’s evolved and spread a bit since then, and received a DIY tattoo on the bass drum.  Today I pulled it out of its usual corner and gave the whole thing a polish and spruce up.  Let me show you around the anatomy of a drum kit…

The Novice

I actually learned the drums on my dad’s Arbiter Flats Lite set.  It’s a great set for a beginner since it’s so much smaller (and quieter) than a full kit, yet still acoustic.  I’ve replicated the setup on my Tornado here.

My Mapex Tornado modelling the setup I learned on

This is called a ‘two-up, one-down’ setup.  This means there’s two toms racked above the bass drum, and one floor tom off to the side.  Toms, or tom-toms, are the bouncy-sounding drums; the ones that Phil Collins (or that gorilla from the Cadbury’s advert) use for the big fill in In The Air Tonight.  Some drummers use a few as two toms (Ghost’s ghoul drummer had just one!) but fancier drummers can have loads.  The bigger the drum, the deeper the sound. So drumming on them from left to right produces the descending roll that is featured in loads of songs.

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How to Write a Novel: The Midway Point

Liam Smith Leave a comment

It’s been about three months since I started work on my novel, Rosetta, and a little over two months since I described my first impressions of writing it.  I hit 50,000 words last week. That’s a little over half my forecast completed word count, which means I’m near enough halfway through.  At the very least, I’m in the thick of things! And I’ve got some new reflections on the subject of writing a novel to tell you about.  Some of them are pretty surprising; at least in light of my first impressions. It’s taught me a lot about how to write a novel.

I’m so glad I have a plan

A quick one this. I’d never have made it this far without a plan, telling me who is where and what they’re doing at any one time.  Using a plan means that everything is always facing the right direction, even if I can’t keep track of every plot strand at once.  Not everyone writes using the same techniques. But I couldn’t imagine taking on this, or indeed another novel, without a plan. It’s not an especially detailed plan, more just  broad strokes of the plot. But I wouldn’t know how to write a novel without it!

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