jorge wrote:With all respect, I don't think you are going to learn much from people you don't know telling you what they think they know about skins. There are dozens of rules of thumb about what makes a skin sound a certain way, some may have some truth to them, but often there are more exceptions than those that follow the rules. Being able to predict how a certain skin will sound, play and feel on a certain drum comes with years of experience putting skins on and seeing how they come out. That is how Junior, Jay, Sekou, Cali, and I am sure Matt and others have learned (and continue to learn). Even those guys can occasionally be fooled by a skin that doesn't sound the way they predicted, even on their own drums. I have put on over 40 skins on my own and other peoples' congas and bongos over more than 35 years, and I would say I have, at best, intermediate skills picking skins. There are a lot of variables in skins: stiffness, density, thickness, evenness, oiliness, surface texture, veins in the skin, type of processing, species of animal, location on the hide, and other less tangible variables. There are also variables in drums: size and shape, shape of bearing edge, heaviness of wood, diameter of bottom, strength or weakness of hardware and shell, and other variables.
If you want to get good at that, I suggest you make a business of mounting skins on peoples drums and keep careful notes about skin parameters, what you predicted, and how it actually came out. You will make mistakes and may have to do exchanges or refunds occasionally to keep your customers happy. Some customers won't be happy even with a perfect skin for their drum, maybe they can't play or they just don't know. Let experienced drummers take responsibility and choose their skins and see what and how they choose for a given drum, then how it plays after it is mounted. This is not a skill you can learn on the internet or learn quickly, you have to pay your dues.
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