Drumroll, please.
When the Woodstock Music Trade Show kicks off May 13 in Kingston, along with three days of bands, 30 booths and the master classes, perhaps the world”™s finest drums will be on display. They are made in Dutchess County.
Until now, they were called My-Mi Drums. With the Kingston rollout comes a new name: Equinox Drums.
Mike Downing was first percussionist and president of the Northern Westchester Symphony Orchestra a decade ago when the topic of the free-floating drum came up. It was akin to medievalists dissecting angels dancing on the head of a pin. Whether for a timpani or a humble snare, the goal of removing the rattle of the drum”™s shell from the drum sound was a grail that remained elusive.
“The conversation came up in the pit one day and I said I could invent that,” he said.
Downing, who today runs Millbrook Motors in Millbrook with wife, Louise, was working as an account executive in Manhattan at the time. In his youth, he made machines from fishing reels and electric motors just to make them turn. He already possessed a tinkerer”™s bent when he took the drum problem with him to work.
“I began thinking on the train to Manhattan the next day and by the time I got to the city I had an idea,” he said. “I drew it out and refined it on the train ride home. I went to a junkyard, got a couple of rims of tires. I got some plumbing supplies. And I proved my theory. It outplayed anything you ever heard.”
The floating-drum solution involved a principal of physics that Downing would eventually copyright when copyrighting the drum itself proved impossible. To get there, he had to master three aspects of drums that had never before been mastered. He would later have to master patent law, as well.
Regarding the drum, “The quest, the first thing to consider, was whether you could build a drum where the chamber of the drum was suspended between the upper and lower head, so that the shell could resonate freely,” he said.
Another challenge arose from the shells, which today are made with birch and rock maple: “If no holes were drilled in the shell, if there were no mounting brackets mounted to it, nothing attached, which would impede that shell from resonating, that would be the second point.” The third point: “To tune the upper head and lower head to different tensions relative to each other.” Ideally, the drum sound decays between the two heads from sharp to flat or, with reverse tuning, from flat to sharp.
“If you could do that, you would have the best-sounding drum in the world,” he said of mastering the three points. “I”™ve solved all those problems.”
His work will be on display May 13-15 at Woodstock Music Trade Show at the Kingston Holiday Inn, which is open to the trades and to the public.
Downing”™s patent dates to 2005, but it was 2004 that proved an education in patenting: “I went to a number of lawyers in the tristate region and they all said, ”˜So, you invented a drum.”™ None of them seemed to catch on to what I had actually done.”
Downing bought law books. “I basically studied patent law for two years,” he said, citing research of past patents, patent ramifications and trips to the Washington, D.C. patent office. “It is like writing your thesis,” he said, noting the process comes with its own language.
In patents, a table with three legs 32 inches off the ground becomes, as Downing said, “A flat working surface at a comfortable height with plural supports” for reasons of protecting the table from minor variations that would eliminate the patent. “You always want the patent as broad as possible. I ended up patenting the drum not as a drum, but as a principle of physics applied to the drum.
“In layman”™s terms: it is opposing, bearing tensions,” Downing said, initiating a discourse on rigidity and tension.
The eventual result some six years ago was the My-Mi Drum, which was named by downing”™s wife, Louise, short for “my Mike.” This year, the drums debut under the name Equinox, a better name as Louise and Mike see it: “With an equinox, you have balance,” Mike Downing said. “On the spring and autumn equinoxes you can balance an egg on its end; something unusual happens when everything is in balance.”
Those who bang Downing”™s drums include Evelyn Glennie, the deaf Scottish percussionist who performs as a headliner and with the likes of Bobby McFerrin, Bela Fleck and Bjork; Kenny Arnoff, who drums for Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Jon Bon Jovi among others; Bobby Rondinelli, who drums for Black Sabbath, Quiet Riot and Blue Oyster Cult; and Wally “Gator” Watson, a member of the Brooklyn Jazz Hall of Fame.
To date, however, Downing said he has sold “not many. People can buy a drum set for about $1,000, One of my drums costs about $1,000 and the complete seven-piece kit about $7,000. I”™m at the low end of the high-end drums, but as far as quality and sound, nobody comes near me.” His competition includes drum giants California-based DW Drums and Germany-based Sonor.
Precision Drum Co. in Pleasant Valley manufactures Downing”™s drums. The heads are Mylar and the shells are plywood of birch (“a crisper sound”) or rock maple (“a warmer, more mellow sound, not as much crack”).
Downing admits, “I”™m a much better drum builder than I am a drum player.” He and Louise have now run Millbrook Motors for six-and-a-half years: “Rolls-Royces, Ferraris, unusual cars like the (British-built) TVR Vixen, right down to kids”™ bicycles. Tune-ups, oil changes, pretty much everything, plus limited restorations.” He said he takes on restorations during “the so-called slow season, but every time I take on a restoration it stops being slow.”
Paul Rossman has helped organize the first Woodstock Music Trade Show, which he said differs from other music meets in that it covers the full spectrum of instruments and is open to the public.
“This is a trade show, basically a mini-NAMM (National Association of Musical Merchants) show. NAMM has a show every year in California that”™s huge. And we decided to have that here. Nothing has been done like this in the Hudson Valley.” The show is not affiliated with NAMM, he said. His partners in the venture are Steve and Bob Marnell; all three are musicians.
“We started focusing on musical instruments made here in the Hudson Valley,” Rossman said. “Then we added clinicians, educators, a panel discussion of the music business.” One goal: “To make people aware of the amount of musicians in the Hudson Valley. And there are lots and lots of great musicians here.”
“This show is about music in the Hudson Valley,” Downing said. “It”™s about the small companies making instruments. The large companies are focused on the profit margin, making the sale.”
The booths cost $300 for three days, designed to appeal to mom-and-pop shops, and 30 to date have been rented. The website is woodstockmusictradeshow.com.
Rossman, who is drummer for The Dangling Success”™ (smooth jazz/R&B), playing locally, in New York City and May 29 at the Atlantic City Smooth Jazz and Wine Festival, cited Downing as an example of valley-born innovation: “The toms sounded like timpanis,” he said of first playing a Downing drum. “They were the most musical drums I”™ve ever played.”
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