Worst drum mistakes ever committed in a gig?

I once played a bass pedal on stage that was secured by masking tape. Half way through the song, the beater flew off to the back. Everyone thought I dropped my sticks...
 
School days in the concert band... Played in the Raffles city... super echoish... Came in one bar late for the solo!!! whole band kinda sounded weird!!! Kana butter by my conductor!!! Bad!!! All this years... some major n minor screw ups too... Count in a song too fast... drop sticks, pedal came loose while playing... But one thing haven't committed yet and that is walking around stage with zip down... Did that many times in Orchard though... haha
 
Some competition back in poly... In the finals. Grooving along.
Coming in from the bridge, had a brain fart - crashed in from a busy fill one beat early. Thankfully, my bandmates were alert and quick on their feet. They made it sound like we did a 7/8 bar on purpose.
 
Don't mind if I share some mistakes I've encountered personally due to my own negligence :mrgreen:

- Wanted to choke cymbal but reached too far and too fast and the whole stand literally crashed into the floor instead in the middle of a song
- After attaching back the kick pedal to the bass drum, forgot to check overall drum distance from seating position and had to play one whole song with arms almost fully stretched just to reach the toms and cymbals and leg almost fully stretched also just to kick
- Playing too fast due to anxiety until vocals from rock become rap
- Getting totally drunk right before the gig and screwing up everything
 
Some competition back in poly... In the finals. Grooving along.
Coming in from the bridge, had a brain fart - crashed in from a busy fill one beat early. Thankfully, my bandmates were alert and quick on their feet. They made it sound like we did a 7/8 bar on purpose.

I can remember that! Bonus points for your band for the speedy recovery from the mistake! hehe ;)
 
Hmm my most common mistake is to drop sticks. My bandmates call me butter fingers because of that lol.

There was also once when I took the wrong cue from my vocalist and went into the next song immediately. It caught all my band mates off guard. Thankfully they were alert enough to come in together lol.
 
not rehearsing the songs prior to the gig, not hearing any of the songs before, and just go up on stage and whack...
 
about 3 years ago I played a gig that had a smoke system.
so during a nice strong build up they would let loose the smoke.

assholes....

I was more or less blinded by the smoke. there must have been some freak breeze that pushed all the smoke back or something... I couldn't even see my hands...

as a result of that, i missed my crashes and my fills. gosh, that was my first gig and alr kena all this kind of problems.
 
2 week back was jamming with my band mates.

The drum is on a stage while my band mates were standing below. Guess i hit the cymbals too hard and then :X the whole cymbal with the stand drop hitting the wire of guitar. Guitarist's leg was just beside the cymbal and he was like " HENG AHH". The wire outer housing broke, haha that was so close! LOL
 
Cool thread!! Let me share mine.

Like wat Alvin said, I was playing halfway when the whole beater gave way. The whole band was wondering where's the bloody kick and was looking at me. I can only give them a poor look at try to signal by looking at my pedal. Poor soundman gotta run up and try to resolve the problem. Poor me gotta tell him (soundman) in the midst of the song with the noise. Luckily i have a SPDS and i actually need to subsitude my kick with the SPDS kick.

This is worse. Same venue (I play in a club) I actually told the soundman before that i seriously need to change my bass drum skin as i can actually see a crack. "On the way" tats the only thing he can tell me. Midst of a song, rock song some more, my whole beater went INTO the bass drum skin and got trapped inside, dont know whether you guys understand what i mean. In the end, I need to do the same to remedy the song. Blessing in disguise maybe cos after the song we actually need to stop performing..hehe

Drummers always have this 'problem.' I mean you see, if a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist make a mistake, unless you are a musician yourself among the audience, if not not much people will actually know you made a mistake. BUT drummers i feel that as long as they make 1 simple mistake like over doing a fill in, or maybe just hit the rim of the snare instead of hitting the whole snare, everyone will know, unless they are not concentrating la.

Kudos to all!!
 
wow, i thought im the most error-prone drummer in soft.

anyways, the recent mistake i did was i miss the crash cymbal when im supposed to hit it and it was pretty obvious mistake as i try to hit the cymbal but no sound comes out.the cymbal was not screwed properly and became very loose as the performance progressed...Lesson learnt.

The other incident was i missed one drum fill but luckily it aint tht obvious as the previous incident mentioned. Another incident was i hit the metal rim of the snare or the toms and its pretty obvious with the 'thung' sound coming from it.

Try to focus on the music and dont focus on the headbanging or bopping your head to the music as you tend to lose focus and miss out on the vital parts of the song.
 
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I was halfway though a song and the bass pedal came off. My singer apologized to the crowd and said it won't happen again. We started from the start again and yes, it happened again. Haha. I guess I kicked too hard.

Also, there was once when I was doing a fast roll (it was like almost 2 yrs ago, it actually isn't that fast) when my stick somehow got stuck with the screws of the floor tom's rims and the pressure cause it to fly like 7-8 metres away from the drumset. I went like wtf but luckily I had spare sticks lol
 
my drummer committed a horrendous mistake, but we forgave him for it. heh. he tried to do the drumstick spin thingy, then the stick flew out, hit the guitarist's head, and he had to play the whole song with 1 stick. and his hand. the song we played happened to be 8 minutes long. LOL.

lol i usually have spare sticks nearby in case dat kinda unexpected stuff happens :)
 
Cool thread!! Let me share mine.

Like wat Alvin said, I was playing halfway when the whole beater gave way. The whole band was wondering where's the bloody kick and was looking at me. I can only give them a poor look at try to signal by looking at my pedal. Poor soundman gotta run up and try to resolve the problem. Poor me gotta tell him (soundman) in the midst of the song with the noise. Luckily i have a SPDS and i actually need to subsitude my kick with the SPDS kick.

This is worse. Same venue (I play in a club) I actually told the soundman before that i seriously need to change my bass drum skin as i can actually see a crack. "On the way" tats the only thing he can tell me. Midst of a song, rock song some more, my whole beater went INTO the bass drum skin and got trapped inside, dont know whether you guys understand what i mean. In the end, I need to do the same to remedy the song. Blessing in disguise maybe cos after the song we actually need to stop performing..hehe

Drummers always have this 'problem.' I mean you see, if a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist make a mistake, unless you are a musician yourself among the audience, if not not much people will actually know you made a mistake. BUT drummers i feel that as long as they make 1 simple mistake like over doing a fill in, or maybe just hit the rim of the snare instead of hitting the whole snare, everyone will know, unless they are not concentrating la.

Kudos to all!!

so true about drummer errors :p
 
Missed my cymbal choke and ripped the nail on my index finger off, slammed the bass drum beater into the batter head, broke my throne because i tend to get hop around on the throne, playing happily and harmonising totally out of tune HAHA. that was the most epic and classic mistake EVER.
 
I was playing a gig, and i had just moved the drum kit to its place about a few minutes before behind curtains. then first thing, one of my floor tom screws came loose, and fell on my right leg, which was powering the bass pedal. then my bass pedal became dislodged 3/4 during the song, at the same gig.

some gig for me la, somehow people still loved the drums.
 
stomp in johor

hello everyone! =D I got a really fun time doing stomp in malaysia =D This whole team of us are using dustbins and different things to play the drumbeats and the storyline is 2 groups of gangster fighting with different drum beats... During one of the fighting scene, I hit the pail and soon the bamboo stick hit my head really hard, I was like OUCH! I cannot stop playing but continue with a big big rounded pain on my head... It was fun yet painful experience....
 
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