What Are Drums – A Drums Online Lesson
Drums are the world’s oldest musical instruments and their basic construction has remained unchanged for thousands of years. They are a member of the percussion group of musical instruments and are, generally, untuned instruments meaning that they have no fixed pitch. However, there are exceptions to this such as Orchestral timpani drums and a few modern drummers have also started experimenting with tuning their kits.
The construction of a drum is simply a hollow shell with some sort of membrane stretched over one of the open ends. This membrane is then struck with either hands or some sort of beater to produce a tone. This description is deceptive, though, as the range of sounds that can be produced from this basic construction is seemingly infinite!
Drum Heads
Traditionally, animal skins were used as the membrane, which were stretched over the hollow shell and held in place.
Then, in 1956, Chick Evans invented the plastic drumhead and revolutionised the drum world. Today, Evans (along with Remo) are one of the world’s largest manufacturers of drum heads, producing a wide variety of thicknesses and styles. Most drumheads produced these days are plastic and the versatility of the material has allowed head manufacturers to produce a huge range of products and create specialised heads for different musical styles.
Selecting the right drum head has become a critical consideration. You need to be aware of what kind of sound you are going for and then selecting the correct head for the job. We’ll be looking at this in more detail over the coming weeks.
Drum Shells
Drum shells are generally constructed from wood or metal. The type of material used in the construction of the drum, together with the overall diameter and depth of the shell, can greatly impact the overall sound. For example, a drum constructed using mahogany has better frequency response within the low end of the frequency spectrum and is often described as sounding deeper or warmer than an equivalent shell constructed in Maple.
As with drum heads, we will be looking in more detail at drum shells over the coming weeks.
Hands, sticks or beaters?
Once you’ve built your drum, all that remains is to hit it! Where you hit your drum and you use to hit it makes as much difference as the head and shell you choose. The variety of sounds that can be achieved on the same drum by simply switching sticks, or switching from sticks to hands, is immense. Also of importance is how you hit the drum. Different ways of hitting the drum produces different sounds. If you hit the drum the leave your hand or the stick touching the drum head, you are going to produce a less resonant tone than if you bounce your hand or stick off the head.
The topic of technique is vast and deep but, worry not, here at drums online we will be bringing you the best advice we can find…