[HN Gopher] Why do drum sets have descending toms?
___________________________________________________________________
Why do drum sets have descending toms?
Author : antibland
Score : 178 points
Date : 2021-04-25 04:30 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lowvolumedrumming.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lowvolumedrumming.org)
| Applejinx wrote:
| Back when I was a kid, I made a four-tom drumkit out of a normal
| kit by sawing all the toms in half and making them shallow
| single-headed drums :)
|
| I would love to have a 'pancake' kit with all the drums double-
| headed but shallow. Maybe someday I'll try to get that made. The
| article suggests you could simply do that: everything gets the
| same very shallow drum depth, like a kit composed of snares
| without snare wires.
| [deleted]
| daviddaviddavid wrote:
| 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/early-drumsets
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| 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.
| rectang wrote:
| The thrill of a percussionist striving against physical limits is
| real, but the absolute sound pressure level produced depends on
| the limits of the total instrument. Consider a conga player
| slamming as hard as they can, versus a rock drummer flamming with
| both sticks on a snare drum.
|
| I'm not sure that it's possible to design something that sounds
| like a traditional rock drum kit that doesn't cause hearing
| damage when a drummer is mashing. It requires a different
| percussion instrument.
| cronix wrote:
| 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.
| chubot wrote:
| 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!
| darkwater wrote:
| The name of the company is in a box at the end of the post.
| It's called Adoro Drums https://www.adoro-drums.com/en
| loonster wrote:
| I think this is his USA shop/distributor. https://silent-
| sticks.com
| pottertheotter wrote:
| 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.
| nfoz wrote:
| 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.
| tarsinge wrote:
| 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.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| My 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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabla
| monkeyfacebag wrote:
| Drum 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.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| I was a pro drummer for years. There is a general balance of
| factors:
|
| - history, drum set evolved kind of organically bringing
| marching band percussion, orchestral percussion and other drums
| into the theater / concert halls / dance halls
|
| As a consequence things like temple blocks were often placed
| above the bass drum which, before toms were really a thing.
| They were loosely pitched in similar way.
|
| As the drums evolved they became a thing unto themselves and
| not just a collection of percussion instruments.
|
| 3 or more toms was rare historically. The "floor Tom" and "high
| tom" allowed a drummer to make a high and a low sound with
| their hands, which has numerous musical applications
|
| Then as kits got more toms key factors become:
|
| - reach (you cannot fit a low tom above a bass drum)
|
| - style: rock generally suited looser and lower tension
| tunings, bigger drums, jazz tended to be more tightly tuned
| toms, and smaller sized drums, more open resonance, pop and
| funk generally wanted more dampened staccato sounds.
|
| - feel. Drummers balance tuning of their drums with how it
| feels to play. You will not pick a tuning that feels bad, or
| sounds bad to you.
|
| - mountings: you can either mount toms directly on bass drum,
| with legs on the floor or off cymbal stands (and the latter
| option was bolstered by modern hardware), but so to balance
| space, mount points and reach there isn't really many other
| places for them to go.
|
| I'm being brief here, and the musical motivation was sort of
| natural and evolutionary and not prescribed by music theory.
|
| Finally, if you play tuned percussion like timpani, you go to
| great lengths to retune them quickly between different passages
| and pieces. You _cannot_ re-tune toms to an exact pitch while
| playing it with 4 limbs, and so it would be repeatedly out of
| tune with the music, and that would be worse than the
| approximate high mid low you get today!
|
| Hope that makes some sense.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Roto-toms were cool for a while.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Still are!
|
| (says owner of seven)
| horsestaple wrote:
| You should watch this: https://youtu.be/BH-jVncTJbg Great
| explanation of how the modern set evolved from military marches
| up to the Beatles.
| uniqueid wrote:
| 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)
| sfifs wrote:
| 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
| speeder wrote:
| 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.
| piva00 wrote:
| That happens in electronic music as well. There are some
| artists who are very specific about tuning their drums,
| from bass drum/kick (which in my opinion should be tuned to
| fit with your bass at least), toms and hats.
|
| As another commenter mentioned, it's also about timbre and
| not only tuning for a song. I've noticed I got particular
| about tuning at least my kick and bass layer to the scale
| of the lead of a track (if there is a noticeable key), in
| techno is easy to break almost any rule but to me,
| personally, is much easier to start a new idea with the
| kick and bass in tune.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| 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.
| drittich wrote:
| Tuning is not just about pitch, it's about timbre, too. On
| top of that, the feel under the stick changes at different
| tensions. Most drums have a handful of pitches where they
| resonate the best (or to the player's taste). It's a lot of
| effort for many drummers to get the balance they like, and
| this is often harder on less-expensive kits.
| 8note wrote:
| I certainly do, but I try to play them in a melodic manner.
|
| I haven't played in ages, so I'm not sure where I settle
| at, but I imagine there's a few notes that come up in music
| frequently enough to leave the toms in those tunings.
|
| They also have to match the cymbals
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| All drums - including the snare, but excluding the snare
| rattle - are modal. They're the 2D/3D implementation of a
| wave equation.
|
| So instead of having a neat more-or-less integer-based
| harmonic series like a 1D resonant object (i.e. a string)
| they have multiple complex resonant modes which are triggered
| simultaneously, and which decay at different rates.
|
| So they're semi-pitched. There's usually a fundamental, but
| the other frequencies can be almost as loud. So if you tune
| the fundamental you can still get dissonance with the other
| modes.
|
| All of this makes the idea of tuning a bit and miss.
| [deleted]
| laurent92 wrote:
| 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.
| uniqueid wrote:
| 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.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| > I think it's more a matter of the pitch not being
| entirely constant
|
| In modern popular music at least, it's not desirable for
| the pitch to be constant. You typically want to tune the
| resonant head (the one at the bottom) a little higher in
| pitch than the batter head so that there's a slight
| descending pitch shift.
| mrob wrote:
| 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 tremolo. As you
| increase the difference in frequency, the beat becomes
| faster, until it's no longer heard as tremolo, and
| becomes a single dissonant tone. Increase it further
| still and the dissonance vanishes as it's heard as two
| separate tones.
|
| Importantly, beats depend on absolute difference in
| frequency, not relative difference. Musical intervals are
| relative differences, e.g. a semitone higher in equal
| temperament is 2^(1/12) times higher frequency, not some
| fixed number of cycles per second. The higher in the
| musical scale, the bigger the absolute difference per
| semitone. This means low frequency sine waves a semitone
| apart will sound consonant, medium frequency will sound
| dissonant, and at high enough frequencies the dissonance
| diminishes.
|
| However, this effect applies to all the
| harmonics/partials of the notes, not just the
| fundamentals. A smooth bass note will have mostly
| fundamental, so the pairs of harmonics with frequency
| differences that cause dissonance will be quiet and
| unnoticeable. A bright or distorted bass note will have
| much louder harmonics, so the dissonance will be obvious.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)
| posterboy wrote:
| 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
| uniqueid wrote:
| Two bass notes a semitone apart won't necessarily
| sound bad; it depends on the timbre.
|
| Another factor is that the ear wants to makes repetition,
| in and of itself, work. That likely allows drums to sound
| good despite their fundamental tones often being 'wrong'.
| To pick an example at random: the triangle bells in this
| pop song sound pleasing, despite their key being 'wrong',
| simply because they repeat https://youtu.be/ZWmrfgj0MZI
| danck wrote:
| Absolutly amazed to see this article on Hacker News.
|
| This guy (the author) is the real deal. I once had the pleasure
| to visit his workshop and he had me test a bass drum he recently
| made. An amazing piece indeed. Just a gentle tap from the beater
| and it produced a rich and powerful but quiet sound!
|
| I often hear famous and extraordinary drummers on Youtube state
| that playing quiet is a skill every drummer can acquire. Yes, but
| no: It really does depend on the instrument as well if that
| sounds good! And most drums just aren't made for it.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm glad that the "loudness war" in general seems to be over,
| and people focus more on quality, mixing and mastering rather
| than making things sound as loud as possible, especially when
| it comes to electronic music. Similarly as what you said, you
| know when a mix is very well made when it sounds good when
| you're playing it on low volume, not when it sounds good on
| high volume.
| augustk wrote:
| To my mind it's the other way around. A "loud" recording with
| little dynamics sounds OK at lower volume; the listening
| fatigue sets in when the volume is increased. A dynamic
| recording, on the other hand, often sounds great when you
| turn up the volume and can really hear the difference between
| soft and loud sounds.
| stdbrouw wrote:
| Nitpick: the "loudness war" is about mastering / compressing
| a recording so that it sounds louder at any given volume, it
| doesn't really have anything to do with optimizing things so
| they sound better at high volumes or a preference for loud
| sounding instruments.
| 8note wrote:
| It's hard to make things louder when your loudest section
| tops out.
|
| Compression is an optimization for making the song sound
| better at louder volume
| absorber wrote:
| I don't know. I'd argue that if the production process is
| influenced by the loudness war, then it too becomes part of
| the loudness war.
|
| For example, a technique of masking distortion (or
| clipping, rather) is adding something with rich harmonic
| content (a trumpet for example) to parts that are expected
| to be hitting the wall and otherwise distorting / clipping.
|
| Would trumpets be there otherwise? I don't know, but I'm
| sure producers are aware of the limitations of digital
| audio and as such adapt the music to it.
| rectang wrote:
| I worked as a mastering engineer for a couple years back
| in the aughts, and I can confirm that to really max
| things out requires production techniques.
|
| For example, analog tape naturally saturates high
| frequency sounds before low frequency sounds, which
| brings down the peak level of a close mic'd drum. Peak
| limiting a recording which already has analog-saturated
| drums produces fewer audible artifacts.
|
| In the abstract, at mastering-time you can achieve any
| absolute level without hard-clipping by smushing down the
| peaks with peak limiting and multi-band compression, then
| dialing things back up with makeup gain. But when
| compared against the original recording in a level
| matched test, at some point the processed result becomes
| unacceptably degraded.
| rectang wrote:
| The difference is the delivery medium. It has always been in
| the interest of producers for individual recordings to seem
| louder relative to other recordings in the same genre, and
| that is still true today. However, a level matched experience
| is better for the consumer, so apps like Spotify apply
| perceptual loudness metrics and turn down maxed recordings.
|
| That kind of level matching didn't happen with consumer CD
| players or vinyl turntables. Producers have to use different
| techniques to stand out in an automatically level-matched
| environment.
| squarefoot wrote:
| As 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.
| bayindirh wrote:
| 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.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| As you have hinted at different styles benefit from different
| approaches (sounds). There is no right or wrong.
| lc9er wrote:
| The 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.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| Isn't descending a suitable word to describe just that? Like
| descending stairs?
| darkerside wrote:
| It's acceptable, but I agree it's confusing. Variable length
| would be more suitable because it's less ambiguous.
| bjt wrote:
| 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.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I guess the way they mean it is not about playing. It's
| about how, as your eye moves from one tom to the next, you
| see the bottom of the tom's shell getting lower.
| Cogito wrote:
| 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.
| posterboy wrote:
| that is after you read the article, correct?
| Cogito wrote:
| 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.
| ArtTimeInvestor wrote:
| I tried to find the answer in the text but wasn't able to. It
| seems to be stuffed to the extreme with related information and
| anecdotes. Making the central point almost impossible to grasp.
| If it is in there at all. As I said, I could not find it.
|
| Was text written like this before the days of SEO?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Yes. What is this article about???
|
| The pitch of the sound of each drum?
|
| The softness or hardness of the drum when hit with a certain
| force?
|
| The height of the surface of each drum above the floor?
|
| What point/s is/are the article making about these
| characteristics?
| dhosek wrote:
| The headline is a bit ambiguous, but by descending he means
| having greater depth as the pitch lowers.
| thedeepdive wrote:
| This was a fascinating article. I haven't drummed in years, but
| it suddenly made me want to again. Thanks for sharing. Loved
| this!
| bsder wrote:
| > 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.
| vanviegen wrote:
| I think the bass and drums in live performances are
| intentionally exaggerated to make people feel more 'part of the
| music', by having their bodies vibrate to it.
| korethr wrote:
| 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 venue,
| I was able to hear all the instruments well balanced with one
| another.
| vbsteven wrote:
| 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.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Interestingly, that used to be the rule rather than the
| exception... at the time when rock bands grew in importance to
| dominate the music scene and built an industry to sell their
| products to listeners.
|
| Back when people went completely nuts for rock music, the PAs
| were generally so inadequate that they were just for vocals,
| and monitoring wasn't really a thing. Most gigs of the era ran
| off each instrument generating its own stage volume, hence the
| Marshall stacks and such.
|
| The Grateful Dead famously scaled this concept up to insane
| heights with the Wall Of Sound system, where each instrument
| and voice had its own speaker stacks even at stadium levels. It
| really worked exceptionally well, but was cumbersome and didn't
| last that long.
|
| This can be done in electronic genres, as well: it just isn't,
| for the most part. I daresay there have been sound
| installations that did it.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I always wear ear protection when
| going to live concerts. With the right kind of earplugs you can
| have very clear sound and in a way hear the vocals and guitars
| better than without. It also comes with the added benefit of no
| ringing ears in the morning.
|
| I started doing it after the doctor at my annual medical check
| mentioned I had frequency loss at 24 years old that he would
| associate with a 40 year old. Should probably have worn ear
| protection earlier... But wearing them consistently helped a
| lot because the measurements were mostly "normal" now 10 years
| later.
| dsego wrote:
| I do this too and it makes the concerts less boomy and I can
| actually hear the vocals. The only issue is that it distorts
| the perception of my own voice so I have remember to speak
| louder to others or when ordering drinks. I also put in ear
| plugs when using loud tools or appliances, eg when mowing or
| cutting with a chainsaw.
| spoonjim wrote:
| 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).
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| That's not a band. That's a bunch of people playing at the same
| time.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > 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.
| Geezus_42 wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2021-04-25 23:02 UTC)