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Why do drum sets have descending toms?

lowvolumedrumming.org

61–70 of 74 posts

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#61

The history here seems a bit cherry-picked and rock-focused. Hard to imagine that a lot of the work in establishing tom dimensions wouldn't have happened during the big band era, especially since for quite a while drummers were often the band leaders and there were even staged drum battles. Louie Bellson in particular had some epic drum sets with double bass drums and odd tom arrangements. https://louiebellson.info/e…

Well in fairness Jazz went small ensembles and kits before Rock metastisized?

I'd say the modern mainstream jazz aesthetic is you bring you symbols and play with whatever drums are at the gig, and toms, at least beyond one floor and one rack, are gauche.

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#62
On a related note, anyone have insight into the purpose of crash and ride cymbals? They seem unnecessary to me (i.e., I think I would like a song just as much without them, if not more), but I've failed to find much to educate myself on the topic in the past.

I hope I don't get downvoted for this. I'd really like to know.

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#63

On a related note, anyone have insight into the purpose of crash and ride cymbals? They seem unnecessary to me (i.e., I think I would like a song just as much without them, if not more), but I've failed to find much to educate myself on the topic in the past. I hope I don't get downvoted for this. I'd really like to know.

I don't really understand the question because they both seem so essential to me. I'd say very often the ride cymbal keeps your basic groove. Especially in latin-jazz, if it's a swing or salsa pattern or whatever, the ride drives that pattern continuously. Which helps the band (and listeners) stay in sync with the groove, and lulls you into hypnosis with the repetition, and sounds super cool imo. Whereas the crash adds hype/power/emphasis to your important moments.

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#64
Rick Beato has some really good videos on drums (and guitars, and ....). Here's a quick 7 min one on bass drums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFjZ1QaKHdk

One thing cool about Rick is he has access to a lot of original multitrack recordings and can solo tracks to isolate them, even on older stuff like John Bonham/Led Zepplin like in the above video to isolate drum tracks.

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#65
post #63

On a related note, anyone have insight into the purpose of crash and ride cymbals? They seem unnecessary to me (i.e., I think I would like a song just as much without them, if not more), but I've failed to find much to educate myself on the topic in the past. I hope I don't get downvoted for this. I'd really like to know.

I don't really understand the question because they both seem so essential to me. I'd say very often the ride cymbal keeps your basic groove. Especially in latin-jazz, if it's a swing or salsa pattern or whatever, the ride drives that pattern continuously. Which helps the band (and listeners) stay in sync with the groove, and lulls you into hypnosis with the repetition, and sounds super cool imo. Whereas the crash ad…

For example the crash is typically used in pop and rock on the first time, and in metal instead of the hi hat for heavy parts. For the ride you can watch some clips from the film Whiplash maybe.

Edit: also I can think of one album (the first one of The Glitch Mob) that doesn’t have any cymbals (not even hi hats) if I remember well.

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#66
post #19
post #6

Earlier 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…

That's not how I understand the musical scale, if I even understood you correctly.

By relative interval I understand the interval within an octave, so C-D is a second regardless of the octave. The frequencies (notwithstanding fine tuning), double each octave. Of course the absolute difference is proportional to the power of two, depending on the octave.

The picture is different when counting the proportion relative a fundamental frequency of your choice. That's how dezibell is generally defined, arbitrarily over some reference point. This has two interesting consequences. When counting keys not modulo 8 but continuously, the ratio D5 over C5 is much lower than D4 over C4. Second, if you want integer multiples of the fundamental's wave length, the first multiple spans an octave, and only the fourth or fifth octave has a full scale--this chromatic scale worked reasonably well tested on AVR with a buzzer, except that F needed adjustment taken from a frequency table.

This means there can be no second in the lowest register unless you invert the programm and scale the higher octaves down linearly. In that case, the interference from the second (ca. 9/8'th of the fundamental's wave length) sounds extremely grating when played as a chord; the attenuation where the maxima of both waves meet forms the actual fundamental and your notes lie 9 to 8 above it, canceling each other out half the time; this is easier illustrated with a sixth that would be 1.5 of the base key. It is not a good illustration of music theory though, more like information theory while the signal chain is computationally intractable.

Jazz musicians, huh

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#67
post #25
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that is after you read the article, correct?

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#68
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that is after you read the article, correct?

Correct, before reading I presumed it would be about tone.

It’s possible the title is a bit of a pun, and refers in part to both tone and shape.

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#69
post #64

Rick Beato has some really good videos on drums (and guitars, and ....). Here's a quick 7 min one on bass drums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFjZ1QaKHdk One thing cool about Rick is he has access to a lot of original multitrack recordings and can solo tracks to isolate them, even on older stuff like John Bonham/Led Zepplin like in the above video to isolate drum tracks.

Yay, another Rick Beato fan. Found him over the pandemic. Great music theory/engineering/producer channel.

Re: Why do drum sets have descending toms?

#70
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not how I understand the musical scale, if I even understood you correctly. By relative interval I understand the interval within an octave, so C-D is a second regardless of the octave. The frequencies (notwithstanding fine tuning), double each octave. Of course the absolute difference is proportional to the power of two, depending on the octave. The picture is different when counting the proportion relative a…

> By relative interval I understand the interval within an octave, so C-D is a second regardless of the octave.

I don’t think GP is denying this. They are simply saying that an interval at a lower frequency is generally more dissonant than the same interval at a higher frequency.

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