Hm the author mentions several times that he builds drums. And I would like to check out his drums, but there isn't a clear place to view them?
That said, the point he makes is a good one, and one seems obvious in retrospect!
Why do drum sets have descending toms?
21–30 of 74 posts
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#22> 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…
> Most of the fault lies with the person running the sound mixing board One of my favourite bands to see live actually take their own sound guy on tour with them. They sound incredible.
I don't know for sure but I think Between the Buried and Me either does this or does their own mix. When I saw them live they sounded amazing, the other three bands sounded like shit.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#23My summer semi-fun project is to experiment with building Tabla [1], the most popular of South Asian percussion instruments. I will make the wooden base, while the membrane will be made and fitted by a professional Tabla maker.
So my principal task is to understand the physics of the depth, radius and other features of the base. This I will do both theoretically and experimentally to see how well I can model and predict. I would appreciate thoughts on the matter.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#24As a (wannabe) prog rock drummer I prefer to damp toms a lot to reduce their decay, so that their tonal characteristics while remaining audible don't get in the way of other instruments. Jazz drummers will probably (and rightfully) disagree.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t descending a suitable word to describe just that? Like descending stairs?
But who's to say they're descending rather than ascending? A person can ascend stairs, or descend. A drummer could play an ascending pattern on their toms, or a descending pattern. But neither the toms or stairs have an inherent upward or downward direction.
I took it to mean the toms were descending towards the ground like stalactites descend towards the ground - they used to be shorter and now they're longer.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#26As a (wannabe) prog rock drummer I prefer to damp toms a lot to reduce their decay, so that their tonal characteristics while remaining audible don't get in the way of other instruments. Jazz drummers will probably (and rightfully) disagree.
Sharp/dry drums with a lot of decay adds a goosebump inducing character to jazz, classical and similar genres.
A long decay from an instrument reaching to second next note, to be picked up by another musical instrument makes me giddy.
It's possible to make the same thing in rock and metal, but genre structure doesn't allow it much.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#27Drum 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)
Tabla - the Indian percussion instrument (the one usually played by the dominant/right hand) is definitely tuned and often fine-tuned between songs. Professional players often carry a few differently tuned ones to concerts and switches as needed.
Source - learned for several years
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#28> 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…
In my experience, it depends on the band and the venue. Indoor venues are a lot harder to get the bass resonance right. I don't think I've ever had bad sound (for whatever style of music was being performed) at an outdoor venue. One band I saw at both an indoor and outdoor venue. At the indoor venue, the sound was a constant woom-woom of bass resonance from the kick drum, with the snare poking through. At the outdoor…
Don't forget the impact a good sound person has. My best experiences have usually been small indoor shows with a passionate local sound guy that knows the venues well.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 di…
Two bass notes a semitone apart won't necessarily sound bad; it depends on the timbre. Try it with sine waves and it will sound like a slow tremolo. Try it with sawtooth waves and it will sound dissonant. Perception of consonance and dissonance is related to the phenomenon of "beats"[0]. If you add two sine waves of similar frequency, you get alternating constructive and destructive interference, sounding like tremol…
Two bass notes a semitone apart won't necessarily
sound bad; it depends on the timbre.
Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?
#30Earlier 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)
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.
That's not unreasonable. Tuning a drum these days is a function of a huge number of inputs. There are at least 16 tension rods on a drum — often 20 — and you not only need to consider the relationships between each of them (and how simply turning each rod the same amount does not work, given various degrees of inconsistency in the tension rod and lug manufacturing process), but also the relationships between each head (more opportunity for "phase issues" there), the tension of the batter head (the one you hit) so it is playable), and also the relationships between different drums. You don't want the snares under your snare drum to buzz uncontrollably whenever you hit your 12" tom.