I had a great gig with Trigger 5 Sunday afternoon at the Augusta Brewing Company down along the Missouri River. It was a beautiful place to play and a wild set as I didn't know the majority of the songs, but Abe (bass player) and Alex (lead guitar) did a great job of queuing me on the stops and start in the tunes. Also, thanks much Mike Heeter for the invite to sit in on the gig -- I had a blast.

I am primarily a modern/prog rock guy, so sitting in for three sets with a traditional country band was a terrific learning experience. There are few genres of music where the drummer is absolutely required to play for the song than in country. There are a few areas here and there where you can add some color to your playing but, for the most part, you are there to drive the beat and help establish the feel for the song.

From the drummers standpoint, there are basically three "grooves" in you need to be able to play to successfully pull off a country gig:

1. A 50's rock-n-roll beat
2. A shuffle/swing beat
3. A train beat

I got a little insight yesterday to playing an effective and grooving train beat I thought I'd share.

Dissecting the Train Beat

At its most basic, a train beat consists of eighth notes on the snare drum with accents on 2 and on the & of 3 and 4. Transposed, it looks like this:

This is one of those areas where you can add some nice touches of color, like accenting both eighth notes on the second beat, like this:

Depending on the feel of the song, you can play this rhythm as either straight eighth notes or by shuffling them, like so:

Traditionally, the train beat has been played using brushes. While you can easily play the rhythm with sticks, you will require a lot of volume control to avoid having the snare drum completely take over the tune. The only issue with brushes is getting enough volume to cut through at a live gig, especially outdoors and without microphones on your kit, as was the case yesterday at the Trigger 5 gig.

Enter the Tala Wand

I first bought a pair of the Steve Smith signature Tala Wands by Vic Firth a couple of years ago. I know that the other major stick manufacturers also have similarly constructed sticks, so if you don't care for Vic Firth, you can probably find something comparable. I've used these sticks on a few occasions where I needed to cut through the mix but still strictly control the volume. They sound great on my Zildian K Custom Session Hi-hats and really produce a nice pop on the snare drum.

The key to the unique sound of the Tala Wand is that it's a hybrid between a brush and a stick. Multiple thin wooded dowels surround a foam core and give it a scattered, brush-like sound but allow the stick to really pop off the drum head and cut through the mix at a live gig.

To get a feel for the difference in sound, here is a quick video of me playing a classic train beat using a set of brushes, Tala Wands and a standard pair of sticks:

*Note: If you see an image above for Microsoft Silverlight instead of a video player, please click on the link and download Silverlight. It's perfectly safe and will allow you to watch my video. 

See the difference? I picked up my pair of Tala Wands at my local drum shop for $14.95, so they're not a big investment and they can really add a different texture to your sound, whether that sound is country, rock, jazz or whatever.