Do Quiet Drums Exist?

[slidey]

PS....evans hydraulics are about the deadest thing you'll find, like banging on wet cardboard.

dead yah.................cardboard nah

been using them for years

particularly good on single headed drums & quiet when double headed

 

[Anonamis_drumme]

Actually - it doesn't make it louder.
The loudest drum in the kit is almost universally the snare drum, and that is because of the depth of the drum combined with the pitch and the snap of the snares.

....That doesn't explain why marching snares are DEEPER than regular kits ones... is it becuase DEEPER is LOUDER?

 

[PhilGood]

....That doesn't explain why marching snares are DEEPER than regular kits ones... is it becuase DEEPER is LOUDER?

I think that's mostly based on tradition. Marching snares and war drums go back to the 15th & 16th century and the deeper shells were traditional. In the mid 1950's, marching bands used to tune their marching snares fairly low, even into the 60's. It wasn't until the advent of drum & bugle corps and scottish pipe corps that they started cranking the heads. That was for projection and the need for faster rebound in the more intricate playing. The deeper shell just happens to provide a nice throughty sound as well.

 

[brandrum]

I think that's mostly based on tradition. Marching snares and war drums go back to the 15th & 16th century and the deeper shells were traditional. In the mid 1950's, marching bands used to tune their marching snares fairly low, even into the 60's. It wasn't until the advent of drum & bugle corps and scottish pipe corps that they started cranking the heads. That was for projection and the need for faster rebound in the more intricate playing. The deeper shell jusy happens to provide a nice throughty sound as well.

I agree....not to mention kevlar heads, huge sticks..etc.

 

[Tim Brown]

Hrm, I have read contradicting information, specifically the Drum Tunin gBible site. Maybe I am confuing pitch with fundamental tone? I would imagine the two would be hand in hand. Care to elaborate?

What I am saying is - because of the length of the shell, the powershell "holds in" a lot of the frequencies so that only the low-mid sounds escape. Unfortunately, after a certain point in shell length - the tuning range becomes skewed causing the loss of definition -which the shell length is directly to blame for; it is especially noticable once you get to an 18" diameter tom. I never met an 18" tom I ever liked - and I had several high end kits. One was a Yamaha Recording Custom, and another was a set of Ludwigs. So when I built my kit, I went with John Goode's 14"x18" floor tom size just to see how it sounded - this drum has so much more punch and power than a 16"x18" that it isn't funny - I put it side by side with the Yamaha and a Ludwig I had (notice I say HAD - I sold the Yamaha kit, and finally sold the Ludwigs. They couldn't stand a chance against the set I built.) I can literally just tighten the lugscrews barehanded - without a drumkey - and the head is all wrinkled and floppy, and the drum sounds good! You want to talk about freaking me out - I couldn't even get a $1,000 Yamaha Recording Custom to sound this good no matter how much time I put into tuning it....and I'm a tuning freak.



Look online to see if you can find the Modern Drummer article about DW F.A.S.T. drums - John Goode goes into the theory behind it, and the reviewer of the kit was completely floored (pun intended) by the sound of these drums - especially the 18" floor tom.

I always liked the tuning range of 18" drums, but was never satisfied with the drums themselves. They always sounded muddy, and never had any real Punch or Power. Sure, they had resonance - hell my 16" Rototom has resonance - but what good is resonance if it doesn't have a definite, defined pitch? To me it's useless without that pitch, because it's not going to cut through at all. I want the defined pitch. That doesn't mean I am tuning to "exact musical notes", but th pitch of the shell. (every shell has a defined pitch. If you hold the drumshell up and tap it with a mallet - whatever that pitch is, minus half a step, is the shells pitch (The hardware makes the shell go sharp.)


Tim