Why do drum sets have descending toms?
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Why do drum sets have descending toms?
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Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#2Drum sets are pretty weird in general. I play the drums but I don't know much about their history or development and I've always felt the kit feels like an arbitrary arrangement of circles for me to hit. There's nothing "unifying" about it for want of a better term.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#3Drum sets are pretty weird in general. I play the drums but I don't know much about their history or development and I've always felt the kit feels like an arbitrary arrangement of circles for me to hit. There's nothing "unifying" about it for want of a better term.
That's my impression, too. I once did some research on toms for some audio code.
Toms are pretty tonal, as far as drums go, yet, as far as I could tell from my research there's no standard tuning for them. That would make sense if pop musicians all tuned their toms according to the music they were playing, but to the extent that they do, the tunings I read about were mostly flakey (ie: ungrounded in music theory)
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#4The title doesn’t match the article. It’s not about why toms descend in tone (typically - unless you are Jimmy Chamberlain and a handful of others). It’s about why toms have variable lengths.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#5Drum sets are pretty weird in general. I play the drums but I don't know much about their history or development and I've always felt the kit feels like an arbitrary arrangement of circles for me to hit. There's nothing "unifying" about it for want of a better term.
That's my impression, too. I once did some research on toms for some audio code. Toms are pretty tonal, as far as drums go, yet, as far as I could tell from my research there's no standard tuning for them. That would make sense if pop musicians all tuned their toms according to the music they were playing, but to the extent that they do, the tunings I read about were mostly flakey (ie: ungrounded in music theory)
Maybe the sounds are too short to disturb the user’s perception of tonality?
Sure some people have the absolute ear (ability to tell a note from the sound), but those are rare and rarely enjoy music with drums.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's my impression, too. I once did some research on toms for some audio code. Toms are pretty tonal, as far as drums go, yet, as far as I could tell from my research there's no standard tuning for them. That would make sense if pop musicians all tuned their toms according to the music they were playing, but to the extent that they do, the tunings I read about were mostly flakey (ie: ungrounded in music theory)
Maybe the sounds are too short to disturb the user’s perception of tonality? Sure some people have the absolute ear (ability to tell a note from the sound), but those are rare and rarely enjoy music with drums.
A tom has a surprisingly long decay, so I think it's more a matter of the pitch not being entirely constant (neither between hits nor over the span of a single hit).
That being so, it would make sense to avoid hitting a tom with a low frequency note in unison with, say, a bass guitar playing the same note. That could result in two bassy notes sounding off a semitone apart... yuck.
Whatever sense my theory makes, I didn't read much about it being a consideration. I read about tunings, for example, that just pitched each drum up by exactly 3 or 4 or 5 semitones... seemed weird to me.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#7> Just as guitarists have cut back on amp power and now focus on tone
As much as I would like to think that this is true, all the concerts I went to prior to Covid had WAAAAAY too much freakin' bass. These were bands with vocal and guitar gods and the bass was cranked up to like 9000 such that you could barely make out the vocals and guitars if the bass was playing.
The best audio at a concert I had was the one where the house amplification system died, and band had to play with their on-stage amplification and nothing else. The sound from the band was amazing--the vocals were clear, the guitar parts were articulated, and the bass and drums were reasonable.
Funny how the bass levels are something reasonable when the bass player has to stand in front of the bass amplifier.
To be fair, I'm being a touch uncharitable. Most of the fault lies with the person running the sound mixing board. It seems most sound mixers are so used to dance, pop and rap that they can't conceive of the idea that something other than bass and drums exists in music. It also doesn't help that modern solid-state amplifiers can drive amazingly low frequencies and really high amplitudes that the old tube amplifiers with transformers simply couldn't deal with.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#8The title doesn’t match the article. It’s not about why toms descend in tone (typically - unless you are Jimmy Chamberlain and a handful of others). It’s about why toms have variable lengths.
Isn’t descending a suitable word to describe just that? Like descending stairs?
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#9Drum sets are pretty weird in general. I play the drums but I don't know much about their history or development and I've always felt the kit feels like an arbitrary arrangement of circles for me to hit. There's nothing "unifying" about it for want of a better term.
That's my impression, too. I once did some research on toms for some audio code. Toms are pretty tonal, as far as drums go, yet, as far as I could tell from my research there's no standard tuning for them. That would make sense if pop musicians all tuned their toms according to the music they were playing, but to the extent that they do, the tunings I read about were mostly flakey (ie: ungrounded in music theory)
That explains a particular drummer I know...
I know a drummer that is very particular about tuning his drums, and he gets mad when people change it, thing is, he also plays other instruments, so I guess he DOES choose what notes he wants from his drum.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#10> Just as guitarists have cut back on amp power and now focus on tone As much as I would like to think that this is true, all the concerts I went to prior to Covid had WAAAAAY too much freakin' bass. These were bands with vocal and guitar gods and the bass was cranked up to like 9000 such that you could barely make out the vocals and guitars if the bass was playing. The best audio at a concert I had was the one where…
Well it’s also about who goes to concerts. Unless you have the audience etiquette of a symphony orchestra, you’re going to be able to hear the actual music much better on the recording. So people who want the bass and the dancing and the sweaty libido go to the concerts and the people who are most interested in the actual waveform listen at home (except for unamplified acoustic music).