The Disappearance of the 13-Inch Tom – and what we can learn from it.

How a superstition solved the wrong problem — and what the drum world quietly admitted without ever saying it out loud.

At some point in the last twenty years, the 13-inch tom quietly left the standard drum kit. No announcement was made. No industry body convened to discuss it. No clinician stood at a PASIC podium and declared the configuration obsolete. It simply stopped appearing. Drummers stopped requesting it. Manufacturers stopped leading with it. And when pressed for an explanation, the answer that emerged — from players, dealers, and builders alike — was essentially this: thirteen is an odd number. It looks wrong. The kit feels more balanced without it.

That explanation is worth sitting with for a moment. Because it is not an acoustic argument, or an ergonomic one, or even a purely aesthetic one in any rigorous sense. It is closer to superstition — a vague discomfort with asymmetry dressed up as preference. And yet it landed. The 13-inch tom, a size that appeared on professional kits for decades, that was played on countless recordings, that bore no particular acoustic deficiency simply by virtue of its diameter, has been effectively retired by a feeling.

The irony is that the feeling was pointing at something real. The problem is that nobody followed it to the right conclusion.

The Syndrome That Was Named But Never Diagnosed

Middle tom syndrome is a term that has circulated in drummer communities for long enough that most serious players will recognize it, even if they cannot define it precisely. It describes a specific tuning difficulty: the middle tom of a standard three-tom configuration — most commonly the 13-inch — resists sitting coherently between its neighbors. It can be tuned up or down, tightened or loosened, and it still tends to sound like it belongs to a slightly different instrument. The voicing is off in a way that is difficult to articulate but easy to hear.

The syndrome was observed accurately. The name stuck. And then, almost universally, the investigation stopped there. Middle tom syndrome was treated as a fact of life rather than a symptom of a cause — a quirk of the instrument, like a particular guitar string that never quite intonates, something you work around rather than something you solve.

What was not examined, or at least not examined with any seriousness in mainstream drum culture, was why this particular tom, at this particular size, in this particular position in the kit, behaved this way. The answer requires a short detour into how drum sizing actually works.

Two Parameters, Two Functions

A drum has two primary physical dimensions: diameter and depth. In almost every other percussion instrument, these parameters are treated as governing distinct and separable acoustic properties. Diameter primarily determines pitch range and fundamental frequency. Depth primarily determines tonal character: the relationship between attack and sustain, the speed of the decay, the dryness or openness of the voice.

These are not interchangeable variables. Changing the diameter of a drum and changing its depth are not two ways of doing the same thing. They are two different interventions with two different sonic consequences. A deeper drum of the same diameter is not simply louder or more resonant — it is a fundamentally different voice. It decays differently, speaks differently, sits differently in a mix. And if that is not enough, it also plays differently: usually it takes more energy to make it sing.

Diameter sets the pitch. Depth sets the character. They are not the same lever.

Standard drum kit tom configurations, as they crystallised through the 1960s and became conventional by the 1970s, coupled these two parameters together. As diameter decreased across a tom run — from floor tom to mid tom to rack tom — depth decreased proportionally. The 16-inch floor tom was deep. The 13-inch mid tom was shallower. The 12-inch rack tom shallower still. The visual logic was coherent: the drums tapered in both dimensions simultaneously, and the kit looked balanced and intentional.

The acoustic logic was considerably more complicated. Because depth and diameter were changing together, the tonal character of each tom was shifting alongside its pitch. And here the physics run counter to intuition. Larger drums do not simply produce more sound — they must set a greater mass of air in motion, and that air in turn damps the shell more aggressively. The result is that larger toms, despite their authority and volume, produce a sound in which the attack transient dominates and the sustained fundamental tone is comparatively muddled. Smaller drums, moving less air, sustain more cleanly and speak with a clearer fundamental. This is not simply a matter of higher pitch — it is a matter of fundamentally different behavior. A well-tuned 13-inch tom in a standard configuration does not sound like a higher version of the 16-inch floor tom. It sounds like a different species of drum.

This is the actual source of middle tom syndrome. The 13-inch tom, at standard depth, sits in a particularly acute version of this inconsistency — shallow enough relative to its neighbors that its tonal character diverges noticeably from the larger toms around it, yet large enough in diameter that the self-damping effect of the air mass begins to muddy its fundamental. It falls into a gap that is not really a gap in the scale of pitches, but a gap in tonal consistency.

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But it is worth noting what it represents: an acoustically capable drum being deliberately degraded to compensate for the limitations of its neighbor.

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Tuning can address this to a degree — a drum has two heads, and the relationship between batter and resonant head tension is a genuine variable that affects sustain and resonance meaningfully. But the effort required is asymmetric. The smaller tom arrives at a coherent, tonal voice with relative ease, because the physics are working in its favour. The larger tom requires considerably more work to approach the same coherence, and the physics impose a ceiling on how far that work can take you. A common practical workaround runs in the opposite direction entirely: rather than pulling the larger tom toward the tonal character of the smaller one, the smaller tom is dampened down — moongel, gaffer tape, you name it — to reduce its natural sustain and meet the larger tom somewhere in the middle. It works, after a fashion. But it is worth noting what it represents: an acoustically capable drum being deliberately degraded to compensate for the limitations of its neighbor. That this has become routine practice, unremarked upon, is itself a measure of how thoroughly the underlying problem has been normalized.

The Wrong Cure for the Right Symptom

So the drum world did, in its way, respond to middle tom syndrome. It removed the middle tom. The 13-inch gradually disappeared from standard configurations, replaced by setups built around the 12-inch rack tom and the 16-inch floor tom, sometimes with a 14-inch floor added for range. The tuning problem was resolved in the most direct way available: by eliminating the drum that caused it.

But the explanation attached to this change was not acoustic. It was numerical. Thirteen is odd. The kit looks better without it. This is the part of the story that deserves to be called what it is: a community arriving, by instinct and accumulated frustration, at a correct practical conclusion, and then constructing an entirely incorrect rationale for it.

The diagnosis existed. The symptom was real and named. The cure was applied. And yet the underlying cause — the coupling of depth and diameter across a tom run — was never publicly acknowledged, never corrected in the fundamental architecture of how drum kits are designed and sold.

This matters because the cure, as implemented, is incomplete. Removing the 13-inch tom does not solve the depth/diameter coupling problem. It simply sidesteps the most conspicuous instance of it. The inconsistency in tonal character across a standard tom configuration remains. It is less obvious without the 13-inch sitting in the middle of it, but it has not been addressed. The next generation of players will tune their 12-inch and 16-inch toms, find the voicing inconsistency less dramatic, and conclude that the problem has been solved. It has not. It has been managed.

The Acoustic Solution That Was Always Available

The alternative has existed throughout this entire period, and it has been consistently rejected. If the problem is the coupling of depth and diameter — if tonal character changes across the tom run because depth changes alongside diameter — then the solution is to decouple them. To choose a single depth for the tom family and vary only the diameter. To treat depth as a deliberate design decision made once, for a specific tonal character, and then held constant while diameter alone defines the pitch range.

This is how most other percussion instruments are built. It is acoustically rational. It produces a tom family in which each drum is genuinely a higher or lower version of the same voice, rather than a series of instruments with progressively different personalities dressed up as a coherent set. A matched tom run at consistent depth would tune more easily across the range, sit more coherently in a mix, and behave more predictably under the hands of a player.

Drummers, by and large, have rejected this approach. The objection is almost always visual: a tom run at consistent depth does not taper the way that feels natural. The larger toms look too shallow, or the smaller toms look too deep, depending on which depth is chosen. The visual grammar of the drum kit — established over sixty years of conventional design — makes the acoustically correct configuration look wrong.

This is not an irrational response. Visual consistency matters to players, particularly in live contexts where the kit is also a visual statement. But it is worth being precise about what is being traded. The drum world has, for six decades, accepted a fundamental tonal inconsistency across its most basic configuration in exchange for a visual convention. And it has done so largely without acknowledging that a trade was being made at all.

Why This Moment Is Different

There is a reason to believe that this conversation is now more possible than it has been at any previous point. It has to do with where the drum sits in the contemporary sonic landscape.

For most of the period during which these conventions calcified, the drum kit operated in an environment that concealed its acoustic limitations. In a live rock or pop context, drums were buried under electric guitars producing sustained walls of sound and bass guitars filling the low midrange. The drum was rhythmic punctuation in a dense texture. Its tonal inconsistencies were masked by everything happening around it, and what leaked through was managed — compressed, EQ’d, gated, layered — by the sound engineer at the desk.

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With guitars [or any other acoustic instrument], the suggestion that dead spots could be managed with compression in the mix would be received as either a joke or an insult. It would be nuts.

With drums, this has been the daily reality

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The studio context was even more permissive. Multi-track recording allows each drum to be treated as a separate problem. A tom that does not sit well acoustically can be replaced, layered, or processed until it does. The acoustic properties of the instrument became largely irrelevant to the recorded result. And so the feedback loop that might have driven acoustic improvement was broken. Drummers heard well-produced recordings, attributed the sound to the drums, and continued buying kits whose fundamental design had never been seriously interrogated.

No other acoustic instrument outsources its design flaws to post-production. No one tells a guitar maker to add compression.

Consider the equivalent in any other instrument category. A guitar maker whose instruments had consistent dead spots — notes that choked and died while the surrounding notes sustained — would face an immediate and serious commercial problem. Players would identify the fault, the reviews would reflect it, and the maker would have to address it or exit the market. The suggestion that the dead spots could be managed with compression in the mix would be received as either a joke or an insult. It would be nuts.

With drums, this has been the daily reality. Acoustic problems that are inherent to the design of the instrument are addressed at the desk, in the room treatment, in the choice of microphone placement. The instrument itself is not asked to be acoustically coherent. It is asked to be visually familiar and rhythmically functional, and everything else is someone else’s problem.

This is changing. The contemporary live context — particularly in smaller venues, in acoustic and semi-acoustic settings, in the growing culture of recorded live performance and direct-to-room recording — places the drum in a very different position. The guitars are often quieter, or absent entirely. The bass sits lower in the mix. Loud monitor speakers were replaced by inear-systems, giving each musician now a convenient customizable perfect sound. And the drum, increasingly, is the loudest instrument on the stage. Its sound matters in a way that it has not mattered for fifty years. The engineer can still help, but even if the engineer overpower the acoustic sound for the audience, as long as he can run the system loud enough, in smaller venues this becomes less and less desired.

Drummers are beginning to hear this. The conversations about drum sound — about fundamental pitch, about sustain and decay, about how a kit speaks unamplified — are becoming more sophisticated. The era of the drum as a rhythmic utility instrument that exists to be processed is quietly ending. And with it, the conditions that allowed acoustically questionable design conventions to persist unchallenged are beginning to dissolve.

What the 13-Inch Tom Was Trying to Tell Us

The disappearance of the 13-inch tom is not, in the end, a story about a drum size. It is a story about how communities process information that they do not yet have the framework to articulate. The players who stopped buying 13-inch toms were not wrong. Their instinct that something was acoustically uncomfortable about that drum in that position in that configuration was entirely correct. They arrived at the right place. They just explained it wrong.

Thirteen is not an odd number in any sense that should concern a drum builder. It is a diameter that, at standard depth, produces a voice that sits uneasily in a conventional tom run — not because of the diameter, but because of what the convention demands accompany it. The fix was never to remove the size. The fix was to question why depth had been allowed to become a passenger of diameter for sixty years without anyone demanding a reason.

That question is now worth asking. The tools to answer it exist. The acoustic principles are not in dispute. The listening culture that would allow serious drummers to hear and value the difference is, gradually, developing. What remains is the willingness to look at a convention that has been invisible precisely because it has been universal, and ask whether it was ever really the right way to build a drum.

The 13-inch tom is gone. The problem it was pointing at is still there. Naming it correctly is where the real work begins.

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

Five Rules for Breaking Into a Market That Doesn’t Want You

What every new drum manufacturer needs to understand before spending a dollar on marketing.

The drum market is not waiting for you. That is the first and most important thing a new manufacturer needs to internalize before writing a single line of copy, signing an endorsement deal, or booking a trade show booth. Drummers are not consumers in the conventional sense. They are custodians of a relationship, with the brand they learned on, the kit their hero played, the sound that defined the records they grew up with. Entering that space requires more than a good product. It requires a strategy built on a precise understanding of who drummers are and how they make decisions.

What follows are five rules distilled from decades of watching drum brands succeed and fail. They are not theories. They are patterns.

Rule 1  Earn Your Legitimacy Before You Sell Anything

A new drum brand enters the room last. DW, Pearl, Ludwig, Gretsch, Tama – these names carry biographical weight for the players who grew up with them. The drummer who learned on a Pearl Export at fifteen, who saved up for a DW Collector’s at thirty, is not looking for a replacement relationship. He already has one.

This means the first job of a new manufacturer is not selling drums. It is earning the right to be taken seriously. That credibility is built through a very specific set of channels: respected artist endorsements – not celebrities, but the session players, the drum clinicians, the educators whose opinion carries institutional weight within drummer culture. It is built through editorial presence in publications like Modern Drummer, not through advertising pages but through gear reviews, artist features, and technical coverage. It is built through physical presence at events like PASIC, where the community convenes and where being absent is itself a signal.

The brands that have broken through in recent decades; names like Mapex ascending into the higher price tiers, or boutique makers like Craviotto earning serious collector attention, did so by accumulating credibility methodically before making broad commercial claims. Credibility in this market is not purchased. It is demonstrated, repeatedly, in front of people who know the difference.

Rule 2  Innovate Inside the Tradition

This is the central paradox of drum marketing, and misreading it is how promising brands disappear. Drummers want a reason to switch — but they will not switch to something that looks experimental, unproven, or designed to impress anyone other than another drummer.

The winning formula is narrow but powerful: solve a real, known problem that drummers already argue about, and deliver the solution inside a visual and aesthetic language that feels entirely familiar. This means the innovation lives in the engineering: bearing edge profiles, shell ply composition and wood selection, lug hardware weight and resonance dampening, tom mounting systems that preserve drum vibration. These are the things that fill forum threads on Drummerworld and Gearslutz at two in the morning. A genuine, demonstrable improvement in any of these areas is exciting precisely because it does not threaten the drummer’s existing identity.

What a new brand cannot afford to do is lead with aesthetics. Unusual finishes, unconventional lug shapes, dramatically modern hardware geometry — these things narrow the audience immediately. They appeal to the collector, the experimentalist, the player for whom a drum kit is also a design object. That audience exists, but it is small, and it is served by brands with established reputations who can afford the risk. A new manufacturer does not have that luxury. The visual design must follow the acoustic promise, not substitute for it.

The question to ask before any product decision: does this make the drum sound better, or does it only make it look different? No matter what the answer is, reconsider. 

Rule 3  Respect the Weight of the One-Kit Decision

Drum kits are not guitars. A guitarist can collect fifteen instruments and store them in a spare bedroom. A drummer who buys a second kit needs a house, a dedicated rehearsal space, or a storage unit. The physical reality of the instrument shapes the psychology of the purchase in ways that have no parallel in other instrument categories.

Most drummers, across their lifetime, will own two or three complete kits. Some will own one. This is not a category defined by repeat purchases driven by curiosity or trend. It is defined by considered, sometimes agonizing decisions made after months of research, forum reading, dealer visits, and — for the serious buyer — extended playing sessions on the actual instrument.

The marketing implications of this are significant. Every signal of compromise, trendiness, or short-term thinking is disqualifying. The drummer evaluating a new brand is asking, implicitly, whether this kit will still be the right choice in ten years. Whether the company will still exist to support it. Whether the resale value will hold. Whether the sonic versatility is broad enough to serve across different musical contexts as their playing evolves.

The marketing language that works in this context is the language of permanence: craftsmanship, material quality, acoustic longevity, the idea that this is a serious instrument built to serve a serious player across decades of music. The language that fails is anything that positions the drum as a novelty, a fashion statement, or a response to a trend.

Rule 4  Let Drummers Discover You — Don’t Push

Drummer culture has a finely tuned instinct for inauthenticity. It developed over decades of being sold cheap hardware at inflated prices, of watching endorsement deals that were transparently transactional, of reading magazine coverage that was indistinguishable from advertising. The community’s skepticism of overt marketing is not cynicism – it is accumulated experience.

The most powerful marketing channel in this world is a drummer telling another drummer, in a rehearsal room or a backline conversation or a forum post, that a kit is genuinely good. That transaction cannot be manufactured. It can only be earned, and the way to earn it is to invest in the content and the communities where drummers actually spend their attention.

This means detailed, honest video content. Not produced commercials, but proper recording sessions, miked correctly, with respected players who are allowed to give genuine reactions. It means being present and responsive in the communities where drummers talk. It means accepting that the review cycle for a serious instrument is long, that forum threads accumulate over months and years, and that the goal is not a spike of awareness but a steady accumulation of trust.

Brands like Sonor have demonstrated across their long history that this kind of trust, once built, is nearly impossible to dislodge. A new manufacturer cannot compete with that heritage directly. But it can compete with the quality of the relationship it builds with the players who find it first — the early adopters whose enthusiasm, if the drum deserves it, will do the selling that no advertising budget can replicate.

Rule 5  Know the Myths — and Know Which Ones to Challenge

Every mature product category accumulates myths. Beliefs that originated in genuine observation, calcified into convention, and eventually became indistinguishable from fact in the minds of the people who hold them. The drum industry has more than its share. And a new manufacturer faces a specific strategic dilemma: the myths sell, but building against them is often acoustically correct. Knowing how to hold both of those truths simultaneously is one of the most important skills in this business.

Consider the relationship between drum diameter and drum depth. In virtually every other percussion instrument, pitch range is adjusted by changing a single parameter – typically the diameter of the head. Depth is changed only when a fundamentally different tonal character is desired. These are two distinct acoustic levers, and they govern two distinct sonic properties. Diameter shapes the tonal range and fundamental pitch of the drum. Depth shapes its character: the sustain, the dryness, the attack-to-decay ratio. Changing depth does not simply give you a higher or lower version of the same sound. It gives you a different drum. All Percussion instrument builders have embraced this truth for centuries.

Drum builders forgot about it in a breath. Standard drum kit tom configurations have coupled these two parameters since the 1960s, meaning that as diameter decreases across a tom run, depth typically decreases proportionally as well. The result is that each smaller tom is not merely higher in pitch – it is also shallower, and therefore more open and sustained in character. This creates an inherent tonal inconsistency across a matched set that no amount of tuning fully resolves. The drum industry even has a name for the most visible symptom of this problem: middle tom syndrome, the well-documented difficulty of tuning the mid-range tom, typically the 13-inch, to sit coherently between its neighbors.

The Middle Dom Syndrom and how it was “solved”:

The industry’s response to middle tom syndrome is instructive. Rather than interrogating the underlying cause — the depth/diameter coupling — the market simply eliminated the tom. The 13-inch tom has largely disappeared from modern drum configurations, quietly dropped from standard setups over the past two decades. The official reason, to the extent that any reason is articulated, is aesthetic: drummers have come to feel that 13 is an awkward number, that the visual geometry of a kit without it is cleaner. The acoustic reason, that this particular combination of diameter and depth placed it in an especially uncomfortable zone of the tonal inconsistency problem, is almost never discussed. The symptom was solved. The diagnosis was never made.

This is drummer culture in concentrated form: a real problem, a practical workaround, and a mythology that fills the explanatory gap where the science should be.

For a new manufacturer, this creates a specific opportunity. The honest outsider position — acknowledging openly what the market has long sensed but never named — builds a rare kind of credibility with serious players. Not credibility through authority, but credibility through transparency. You are not telling drummers they are wrong. You are telling them that the tension they have always felt between what they were told and what their ears told them is real, and that your approach to drum design takes it seriously.

This does not mean waging a public campaign against conventional sizing. It means building drums whose proportions reflect acoustic intentionality — where depth is chosen because it produces the right character for that voice in the set, not because the diagram has always looked that way — and then being willing to explain why, clearly and without condescension, to the players who want to understand. Those players exist in every market segment. They tend to be the most influential voices in their communities. And they remember, for a long time, the brand that treated them as intelligent adults.

But I have to be honest here: most drummers will understand your reasoning, hear the difference, – and demand the toms to be built traditionally anyway. Story of my life. Never underestimate drum traditions. Being cleverer than your customers can put you in a very awkward space. They might acknowledge your advanced knowledge, but at the same time hold it against you for crushing their favorite drum myths.

A Final Note

None of these rules are complicated. What makes them difficult is that they all require patience in a business environment that rewards urgency. The drum market does not move quickly, and it does not forgive brands that try to force the pace. The manufacturers who have built lasting positions in this industry understood that they were not selling a product to a consumer, they were asking to be admitted into a relationship that the drummer had been building since the first time they sat behind a kit.

Earn that admission honestly, and the market will open. Try to shortcut it, and it will close permanently. Being right does not sell drums. There is so much more to it than you can fathom.

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

He wrote:

“Playing live we always have different sound guys. Many with limited skills. So I’m looking into having my own mixer so I can mix and taylor my own sound and just send a left and right to the main console. Have many of you tried this kind of set up ? Any thoughts on a mixer? Thanks”

Now this is a good question, and it sparked some suggestions all focussing on the technical side of mic’ing. But I think this is the wrong attempt. Instead of mixing your own sound, try something revolting: have a great acoustic sound that no sound engineer can mess up*. Drummers treat their drum set as semi acoustic instrument, and the most essential part of the signal chain is the sound engineer.

*) ok, some will say “challange accepted”. But there also is the saying “shit-in, shit-out”; let us pretend that sound engineers are not all incapable of doing sound for the sake of our sanity here, ok? 🙂

A real acoustic instrument has no signal chain. It is simple – the instrument is the original sound source. Now when mic’ing, the job is a different one: to simply capture what is there, as true as possible. Now if drums were built to sound best acoustically, our article would close now with some suggestions on getting a decend drum set and you’d be fine.

But:

Most drum kits on our stages usually are not acoustic. Don‘t get me wrong, each individual instrument might be, but not the whole set: especially the snare and cymbals usually are way too loud, so they need to be mic’d to be adjusted in volume (meaning, kick and toms louder than snare and cymbals). Then we rely heavily on proximity effect, this means the mic’s are so close, they alter the sound. And we want the extra compression and bass boost it gives to the instrument.

To give you more hints on the fact that drums are generally not treated like an acoustic instrument, look at the choice for microphones for drums: they usually are dynamic, placed close (or even inside) the instrument. This both is a huge no-go for any instrument, as it is a flawed technic which alters the sound of the instrument dramatically. Thus built in mic’s and piezos at guitars usually are only used on stage, due to volume issues (ironically usually caused by loud stage drums) which prevents a regular mic’ing with a good condenser. This and because the guitarist might be moving around.

Also we want a good signal seperation with our drums (and less room sound), thus we use close mic’s. This is done primarely to be able to tweak the sound as much as possible without interfering with the other instruments mic’d. But also, because we want that extra punch and compression proximity effect gives us. Placing the mic’s further away would demand different microphones (dynamic mic’s are used to blend out other instruments that are further away in progressive way).

Now mixing a drum set that is not really meant to be played acoustic (and while many disagree with me and call me stupid, it still is common sense to mike drums no matter how small the venue, to get a good, well balanced sound…) is one of the hardest task for a sound engineer when miking a rock band.

But when your drums are matched and tuned in a way that they lack nothing when played just acoustic, mic’ing is simple. A single microphone can already capture the whole set (let it be a stereo mike, maybe a stereo ribbon mike, for nice recordings too), and close mikes can be seen as optional add-ons for more control.

How do we get there? Can any drum set become a real acoustic instrument?

1. Learn to listen.

First, learn to hear your instrument differently. Have someone else play it, while you listen to it from different positions in the room. Recognize how much our ears compress volume when we are close to the set, while the imbalance stretches and snare and cymbals suddenly seem unbearably loud compared to the rest of the set.

2. Tune for the room, not the mic – warm tuning

Learn to tune for the room, not the mike. Get a warm, full sound by tuning the bottom heads higher. Most drummers here try to get the sound with both heads tuned low, but this will not sound powerful acoustically. Already a few feet away the low end will get lost, and all that is left without miking is the brutal attack, the sound of your stick on plastic. Not sexy. (More details on this here)

3. Pick the right Instruments for the gig.

Next, learn that larger diameter of your drums actually makes the sound thinner, as it increases the attack. For a full and rich sound, depending on your playing style, chose smaller drums with more or less shallow sizes (deeper when you tend to play too loud, shallow when you can play less loud too). In general, the larger the drums you play, the more you will depend on being mic’d. But when you play a drum set that is well balanced and sound good, making them louder becomes optional, not to improve but amplify the sound.

Large stages yearn for large and loud drums, but a drum set is not just stage prob, it is an instrument. And if you want to sound good, you might have to reconsider what instrument you end up using, and how to play it.

Try smaller snare drums and avoid steel or brass shells. Just a smaller, less loud snare will already give you a way better stage sound. The less volume your drums have, the lower the stage sound, and the better the venue sound.

Same for cymbals, but here larger cymbals give you what smaller drums offer: lower sound, warmth, well controlled volume.

When you set up your drums, keep in mind that usually the snare is way too loud in context, while the toms have too much attack the larger they get. Part of learning to listen is to recognize the volume differences and set up the drum set accordingly. Generally spoken, cymbals are always too loud in setup, so you cannot go wrong with making your cymbals sounding as musical and dark as possible. Getting those and the snare down in volume already will have decreased the need to mic’ the set – because when the snare is too loud, all you can do is make everything else louder.

4. Avoid muffling

Only muffle as little as possible to control overtones. Muffling takes away sound and enhances attack, so using muffling to reduce volume is a bad idea. A good sound engineer knows how to bring back the tone, but it will never sound as good as when you actually know how to tune well. Surprise your sound engineer.

5. Use the right heads.

Many drummers have double ply heads on their toms. While this might be okay for your sound, please consider that thicker heads have a smaller tuning range and tune less low. Yes, they might sound deeper, but in fact that is just the extra muffling they have, which gives them less overtones. So if you want to go lower in tune, single ply heads are your tool. Overtones can also be absorbed with muffling.

6. Play less loud

Using single ply heads on a well tuned, sensible drum set will make you sound better when playing less loud. Drummers usually believe the myth that playing loud and hard improves the drum sound, but that has rather been an adjustment to bigger drums, which also take more whacking to sound good. I’d say the smaller your drum set, the less loud you have to play them to sound good, and they will sound better in general. But also, being less loud on stage improves your stage sound a lot – and this improves the sound of the venue too!

With a drum set that sound just awesome – and it will when you learn how to handle it as acoustic instrument, and not just as „loud work out tool“ – a sound engineer cannot do (much) wrong. Learn to appreciate good sounding drums.

Afterthoughts…

Why is this not common sense? Why are drums built semi acoustic?

Be warned… this is nothing taught by many pro‘s. Why should they? They do have their sound tech. Drummers who master the technic of good acoustic drum sound are usually those who won‘t get mic’d, not those who play the largest venues. Which also explains why this issue is so controversial… the most clicked tuning tutorials are not those which explain how to tune drums to acoustically sound well, but to sound ok on the mic or in recordings. They treat the drum set as just a part of the signal chain, not as a real acoustic instrument. Thus most tutorials about drum sound are tutorials about how to mic, not how to tune.

The reason why drums became semi acoustic can be found here. Long story short, first (guitar and bass) amps got insanely loud, then drums followed. Then came affordable mixing consoles with plenty channels and cheaper mic’s, and we kinda got stuck with the drums which now were simply mere replica of the loud drums we had in the late 60s to battle stage volume.

The past 20 years now have seen stages getting less and less loud. The Who, a band that was ground breaking for many drummers due to Keith Moon’s energeting playing, is now using e-drums to keep the volume down on stage (Nope, we are not kidding!). While volume used to be the most integral part of being a rock band, this is shifting, especially during the past years of pandemic. We have seen numerous streamed concerts played in small locations, and many drummers have found out the advantages of having a drum set that is being optimized for a room, not a stage. Still, many drummers are stuck in the 60s and 70s, but we have to realize that we try to solve problems we do not have anymore. So what is left is the visual appearance, and when drummers pick large and loud drums today, it is usually not because they want them to sound the way they do, but because they want to reference the drummers from that time and honor them.

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

But some sizes aren’t as perfect as others. This is called the “middle tom syndrome“, as the middle tom is typically the problem. Why? Because sonically it was not designed to be a middle tom. It was designed to be louder.

Confused? Let me explain…

Did drums always have varying shell lengths? No.

By the early 1960s, a typical drum set included one high tom and one low tom. If there were two high toms they were often the same size (Keith Moon played three, all 12″ x 8″) or of different diameters but the same depth (10″ x 8″ and 12″ x 8″). But if congas, bongos timbales and tympani have differing diameters but identical depth, why is it that the smaller drums in a drum set are shallower and larger sizes deeper? Does a deeper shell produce a deeper sound? No. Depth is achieved with tuning, or when the head of a larger diameter drum is tensioned as tightly as a smaller one. Tune 10″ and 12″ toms to the same tension and the larger diameter of the 12″ will ensure it sounds lower than the 10″. So, why longer drums?

Length? Blame it on volume

When the Beatles hit the scene in 1962, rock ‘n’ roll became more rock than roll. In fact, it was called Beat Music (thus BEATLES). Ringo, whose kits up until 1964 were 20″ 12″ and 14″, switched up to 22″, 13″ and 16″ (a 12″ was added in 1967) to be heard above the screaming fans. By late 1966, with the Who, Cream, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience cranking up multiple 100-watt Marshall stacks, drummers were being overpowered.

But the arrival of Carmine Appice in 1967 with Vanilla Fudge saw the ‘bigger is better’ mantra applied to drums. His four-piece red sparkle kit with a 26″ bass and over-sized toms also confirmed bigger as louder.

When he later debuted a maple set with 2 x 26″ bass drums, drummers including John Bonham wanted the same. So, manufacturers designed louder drums. How? Larger diameters, thicker shells, deeper sizes. Instead of an 18″ or 20″ x 14″ bass with 12″ x 8″ and 14″ x 14″ toms, the standard setup became 22″, 13″ x 9″ and 16″ x 16″, with many rockers moving up to 24″ or 26″ bass drums (still 14″ deep), 14″ or 15″ high toms and 18″ floor toms.

Then, inspired by session ace Hal Blaine’s Monster studio kit, Appice played a multi-tom Octa-Plus setup which included eight high toms running 6″ to 18″, with each increase in diameter – including ‘odd’ sizes 13″ and 15″ – seeing an increase in the shell length. This is where the ascending tom concept – high notes down to low from drums whose increasing shell lengths ascended further down – really revealed itself.

Choking on too much air

Now, a deeper drum is not just louder; the sound is different. Because air filling the inside – about 1.3g per litre of shell size – causes resistance against the air movement created when the drumhead is played, a deeper shell (which contains even more air) is less resonant, making its response drier and more percussive than a shallower one. This is a tone ‘choke’ factor means that with 12″ x 8, 12″ x 10″ and 12″ x 12″ toms the most resonant and toneful would be the 12″ x 8″; its shorter shell offers the least air resistance. Thus, in a 12″ x 8″, 13″ x 9″ and 16″ x 16″ setup it is harder to get that middle tom to sound as warm, tonal and resonant as the smaller one. This is middle tom syndrome.

Still, multi-tom setups with shells descending an extra inch or more with each successively larger head size seemed legitimate. Like those tubes descending downward on a vibraphone, surely there was some musical reason for the additional length of those toms? But no, we were mistaken: the idea that additional length lowered the tone is a myth. Even I am guilty, because 12″ toms I produce are about an inch deeper than the 10″, simply because longer toms somehow look “right”. With the arrival of deeper bass drums, some 20″ or longer, drummers also believed they too sounded deeper, despite the opposite being true. Sigh….

Floor toms are different

Now, what about floor toms? They are quite much longer than high toms, typically with a length matching their diameter (14″ x 14″, 16″ x 16″) and we expect them to perform differently, not like a low-pitched high tom. But how different? Unlike a high tom suspended from one point (external bracket, bayonet mount, or isolation rim), a floor tom stands on legs that transfer resonance vibrations into the floor, thus reducing sustain and creating a drier response (which also happens when a high tom is placed in a snare stand). Drummers using large mounted high toms in place of floor toms often say the sound is too boomy and lacks definition. That is because without legs to reduce their vibrations, these drums resonate more fully with low-end tone, causing stroke definition to get ‘mushy’. So, the longer length of floor toms is not to lower the pitch, but to increase the volume and dry down the resonance so notes retain definition.

Building two floor toms so they sonically fit into a setup would mean making them the same depth (e.g., 16″ x 16″ and 18″ x 16″).

The future is acoustic

The idea is to create drums that sound great on their own and are compatible with each other. Some drum makers now offer various diameters that are either close to or match each other in depth. This is good. I build 8” and 10” toms to the same depth, as making the 8” any shorter would make it significantly less loud compared to the rest of the kit.

It is possible that deeper drums were originally popular because players associated large sizes and loudness with masculinity and rock ‘n’ roll. But let’s face it: drums no longer need to be loud. Not only have stage volumes come down (20- and 30-watt guitar amps have replaced those mighty Marshalls), there are microphones. Lower stage volumes mean better sounds for the soundman to work with out front, and for the audience to hear. Mic’ing the drums might become a thing of the past.

The reality

The effect of Covid on the live gig scene means that post-pandemic, things could be different for months, maybe years. Bands should prepare for smaller venues and maybe no instrument mic’ing. That means taking control of the stage sound , especially if that is all the audience will hear out front. Just as guitarists have cut back on amp power and now focus on tone, drummers might want to play drums that suit the gig. No longer is it about being loud; it’s about dynamics, tone quality, and a balanced response from drum to drum.

As usual, while big brands focus on what sells most, boutique builders are the ones getting drums back to the reality of what sounds best. As an independent maker who cuts down a lot of longer 1980s and 90s “power” shells so they have more tone and sustain, I’ve seen many players surprised that while their newly shortened drums might be a little less loud, they sound better. So I assure you; shorter shells are nothing to be afraid of. Longer toms may have looked cool in those 1980s MTV videos, though looking back it could be said that were merely stage props.

It is now 40 years since those MTV 80s: drums no longer need to be long and loud. There is no need for descending shells. It is time for drums to once again not only sound great acoustically on their own, but sound balanced in terms of volume, tone and sustain within a set, even when not mic’d. And that starts with shorter shells and avoiding the “middle tom syndrome”.

Be smart: Choose with your ears, not your eyes.

EDIT: One reader pointed out that it should be “ascending”, not descending. Or even “variable depth”. Makes sense. Blame it on me being no native english speaker. I changed this in the article, but as the link has already been shared a lot, you can still find “descending” as link path.

Also it hs been asked where I am working as drum builder. I thought that was obvious, but as the article is also shared outside this blog, I will share my company here as well: adoro-drums.com is a german drum manufacturer focussing on drums for acoustic purpose. And I write articles like this because most drummers do not realize that most drums are _not_ built for acoustic purpose, but loudness. And yeah I get it, large and loud drums draw drummers magically. Doing the right thing though needs a lot of explaining…

Recently we designed the silent sticks which make drums less loud. In advertisement we say 80%, but it is actually 800% or up to 8 times less loud than regular sticks. For such sticks, having a smaller, more sensible drum set is a huge plus for a great sound. In combination with our worship series, the volume difference is up to 18dB! So if anybody asks if drums can be played less loud and still sound great, the answer is yes… this is our main field of expertize!

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

Playing drums at room volume? On a normal drum set? Silent Sticks from Adoro make this possible. And thanks to innovative design features they provide an authentic feel and defined sound.

With Adoro Silent Sticks you can play drums much quieter than you ever thought possible – and without having to compromise the way you play! Adoro Silent Sticks are specifically designed to preserve the feel and sound of conventional sticks as much as possible, but at a significantly reduced volume.

Robust but lightweight high-strength materials include a hollow polycarbonate shaft that reduces the amount of energy transferred to the heads, while the tip of two twisted nylon inserts (Dual-Twist Reflex Tips®) simulate the rebound feeling of “real” sticks.

This concept works so well that Silent Sticks let you play without compromising on technique or feel, even on normal acoustic drums. Silent Sticks are not only suitable for a quiet practice at home, but also for all acoustic concert situations, as fellow musicians and singers need not play or sing louder when their drummer uses Silent Sticks.

Compared to rods or brooms, Adoro Silent Sticks sound more defined in terms of attack on the drums. This definition is also clearly noticeable on cymbals. Plus, Silent Sticks enable a transparent drum sound that makes even fine ghost notes dynamically audible.

Facts

* individually handmade in Hamburg, Germany

* much lighter than conventional wooden sticks

* due to light weight, extremely low volume is possible

* feel and rebound like “real” sticks

* clearly defined sound on drums and cymbals

* stable and playable without signs of wear

Published by www.sticks.de
Silent Sticks can be purchased at www.silent-sticks.com

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

Warm tuning means you tune your resonant head about a third higher than the batter head, resuting in overtones an octave below the fundamental tone. This makes your drums sound huuuge. Thus, warm tuning.

Many drummers want their drums to sound phat and warm. Their solution is to pick large drums, and tune them as low as possible. Cannot go wrong, right? After all, the majority of drummers tune that way, and get taught by online drum tuning tutorials which have millions of views to do so.

Please. Don’t.

I will show you a more excellent way, and it starts with the propper tuning for a really phat and warm sound.

There are only three possible ways to tune a tom:

1. resonant tuning: tune batter and resonance head the same
(why this is a bad idea I will explain later below)
2. flat tuning: batter head is tuned higher than resonance head.
(This results in a sound too high and too thin for our desired sound, so forget about that too)
3. warm tuning: Resonance head tuned higher than batter head.

Most drummers actually tend to use the resonant tuning, it is by far the most popular way of tuning. But it has disadvantages:

• Tuning both heads on the same frequency makes the tom sing longer, often uncontrolable. In order to shorten the sustain, one head would either have to be tuned higher or lower (warm/flat tuning), or we have to use tools:
• Muffling the drum with moongel or other stuff gives us control over the length of sustain with a resonant tuned drum, but it also enhances the attack, which we don’t want to hear, and it muffles the actual tone we want to hear. In result, the drum sounds dull and lifeless.
• Dull sounding drums seem to work great for live situations, and in fact, when amplified, due to proximity effect those drums can impress. BUT – when played back at regular volume, the drums still sound dull and lifeless, which explains why live recordings sound so much differend from studio recordings even when the band plyed really well.
• the biggest disadvantage is though that the drums don’t really sound as warm and low as they could possibly sound, because when tuning resonant, and really low, the heads never really move in perfect synchronisation. So what often happens is that the low end, the bass, is canceled out due to phase shiftings. You won’t recognize on your close mike, but from a few feet away the drums sound thin and noisy, not phat and warm, as you’d expect. This results in big issues with bleedings. This is so common, it is common sense today to have the drums in a different room when possible at recording studios, and use screens and full enclosuresn on stage to keep the bleedings from other mikes.

So let’s see what warm tuning can do…

Warm tuning gets it’s name from the effect you have when you tune the bottom head signifficantly higher than the batter head, about a 3rd above. The closer you get to the Third, the more low end you get into the sound, thus the name, warm tuning.

What is actually happening here? As said before, most drummers try to get a low drum sound by tuning all heads as low as possible, but this results in a rather dull and flat sound. Usually now the batter heads get muffled to get rid of overtones, to sound lower. When tuning warm, we use physics: we all know power chords on guitars, I suppose. Thats a fundamental tone and the fifth, and the harmonics to this happen to be exactly an octave below the fundamental tone. As a drum has two membranes combined with a tube, we get the same effect at a different tension, thus the 3rd. Why it is not the fifth is a highly complicated issue which Nils Schröder (another GUest author here) can explain way more eloquently than I. So bear with me and trust me here…

Imagine we have a floor tom tuned to 100hz, and the resonance head to 130hz (the 3th). You will now also hear the overtones in harmony at 50hz, which will give your drum a lot of low end. This will let especially smaller dums sound huge and pretty awesome.

But what happens when you mike the drums and amplify or record them?

When close miking the drum, it will pick up the 100hz and give you a nice boost of that frequency and everything above. This is what most drum engineers want live. But the drum produces a warm overtone of 50hz which we can only pick up with mikes when a bit further away from the drum. That way you get the 50hz picked up too, and your drums sound well balanced. This is the reason why in studios sound engineers today mainly use the room mike, and only add little of the close mikes.

Too few drummers know the physics of drums, and try to get low end by tuning large drums low. Actually this works best with smaller drums though. Perfect sizes are 8-14” for toms. You can also use warm tuning for the Bass drum, but when not miking, tuning it to the room node (a room frequency that makes the room resonate) might be more effective if not loud enough. But that is something we can focus on in a different tutorial.

The larger the diameter of a drum, the more attack you get from it, and we have trouble hearing differences between them, big toms tuned low, kinda all sound the same.

So how should I mike the drums now?

When the drum kit sounds good acoustically, miking becomes easy: forget all you learned about miking drums, and imagine you mike an acoustic instrument which you want to capture as it sounds, not modify the sound. A single condenser mike on second tom position pointed to snare and bass might already be enough to capture the whole instrument well balanced. Overhead mikes usually have too much cymbals in the mix.

When miking acoustic instruments other than drums, you have to at least be a foot away from the instrument with the mike, if you are closer, you risk altering the sound. With drums this is usually what we want, but only when dealing with semi acoustic drums (stage drums). We use proximity effect to add low end to the sound. But now we have added an octave below to our tom sound, and to capture this, we have to actually treat it like an actual acoustic instrument!

The only instruments you mike close, or even internal, are semi acoustic. The sound we get from those close mikings is a lot different from the acoustic sound of the instrument. Trust me, any decent instrument builder that has put a lot of effort into making a great sounding acoustic instrument will frown uppon any internal mike. It turns any acoustic instrument into a semi acoustic one.

Now with this in mind, we have either miked drums all wrong, or drums generally were treated as semi acoustic instrument anyway. This might be okay when the stage sound level is high, say, at an ac/dc gig. But we have come a long way since the 70th, we got smaller guitar amps, amp simulators, in ear monitors, and often the drums are the only instrument you can still hear on an else silent stage. The way we used to tune, “for the mike”; was disrespecting the actual room sound, you treat the instrument as semi acoustic and not mike it to simply make it louder or pick it up for recording. Now, when we want low volume on stage, we do not have to mute the drums all together, we simply have to admit that the drums are being played in a room which we have to take into the calculation. Tuning the drums in a way that they sound full and rich in a room, making mikes optional, means actually trwating your drums like an acoustic instrument.

Next step would be to get cymbals that match. Less loud means larger, darker in sound. And while we are at it, I mentioned that smaller drums work better for warm tuning. In general, the acoustic instrument has a pretty tight tolerance when it comes to dimensions. Certain sizes work best for the desired sound, and some sizes make it nearly impossible to give you a great sound acoustically. We were so used to work around that fact and worship large drums, we need to realize that when we play acoustic, small drums rule. And I can explain why:

While when tuning larger drums lower, we might get them maybe a third lower than a smaller drum, but using warm tuning on small drums gives you a way more defined tone plus an octave below. Now when moving away from optimal acoustic drum sizes to bigger sizes (with toms starting at 16″, which happens to be the most popular FT size for decades), we get less definition, and might end up with the octave harmonics being too low in volume or in an inaudible frequency.

Warm tuning, especially in combination with small acoustic drums, will put a smile on the faces of your band members and your audience. And once your sound engineer learns how to handle it, he will love it too for the simplicity.

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

Problem: The drums are just too loud! The acoustic sound of the drums is overpowering the front of house mix! Bleeding into the vocal mics! Driving other band members’ monitor levels up! Drawing complaints from congregation membeårs … and the senior pastor! That’s way too many exclamation points for a single paragraph, I know. But I wanted to make clear that I get it. Out-of-control drum levels – especially from cymbals and snare – are a HUGE and common problem in church audio. But, in my opinion, the most common solutions – the things that (just about) everyone is doing to “solve” the problem – are NOT the best solutions.

Conventional, widely-accepted “solutions” include spending big money on plexiglass drum walls, sound absorption panels, sound proofed (hopefully ventilated) enclosures or (worst of all) electronic drums. In many cases – with these more common attempts applied – the problem of the drums being too loud is only reduced and not solved. And the source of the problem has only received a “Band-Aid” treatment. The REAL problem (the drummer’s playing too loud!) has not actually been addressed at all.

There are those who claim that the “fish tank” drum enclosure or the electronic kit has completely solved the problem. But at what cost? Maybe the audio engineer is happy, but we may have simply exchanged one set of problems for others. The mix might be more in control, but are the musicians and congregation really engaged? Catching the vibe? Singing? Are they fully experiencing the level of horizontal and vertical connection that is our MAIN objective?

For the most part, the people in the congregation don’t understand what’s going on with keyboards, guitars and mixing consoles. But everyone has at least some connection with two elements of what we’re presenting: the human voice and the drums. It is my firm belief that church congregations – regular people – are MOST warmly invited to sing worshipfully to God by way of the fundamental, primal musicality of singing and – “hit stuff make noises” – the drums.

If connection is our goal – and the drums are one of our most valuable assets to bring it about – more serious consideration ought to be given before we build physical barriers around, or resort to synthetic version of the drums. Barriers are built to isolate. But we’re all about using music to achieve connection, right?

So, before you take the well-worn path of “Every other church is doing it, so it must be what’s right for us”, PLEASE try, or at least consider these steps to a better solution:

1.) Drummers MUST have dynamic control
The problem is NOT that we don’t have drum shields. The problem is that the drums are too loud. The drums are too loud because the drummer is hitting them with too much force! Many drummers have never been taught – or never learned – dynamic control. Yet, using dynamics well is a prerequisite for musicality. The fastest way to ensure a drummer never learns dynamic control is to put them on an electronic kit, or in an enclosure. Drummers must “play the room”! When they strike a drum or cymbal, they must recognize they are activating every air molecule and utilizing every surface in the room that they are in. They must see the whole room as their instrument and play the drums accordingly and with appropriate volume.

2.) Clearly Communicated Expectations
The musical director (MD) MUST be ready to make the essential requirement of dynamic control known to the drummer. Well informed by the audio engineer, they must exercise their authority to direct in this way. If the drums are too loud, maybe hot rods are needed. Brushes? A djembe? Be ready to help your drummer learn to “play the room” at appropriate volume levels. Altering the hardware until they learn, can sometimes be the only way forward. After all, the drummer playing the drums “their way” is NOT our highest priority. Crafting a sound in the room that helps people sing prayers to God and reminders of God’s truth to each other is the objective.

3.) Resist Hit Single Replication
Recognize that in our local church setting we are NOT trying to copy every detail of a song that was recorded live by Hillsong in front of 20,000 people or in a pro Nashville recording studio, using every trick available to produce a slammin’, arena-pop anthem for the masses. The massive sound of pounding drums and cymbals being beaten within an inch of their life might work great in those setting. But not for us! The intensity of the drum playing needs to be right for our room, our songs, our people and our version of the song. That invariably means LESS!

4.) Position of the Drum Kit
Where is the drum kit in relation to other microphones? It’s always a good idea to keep any vocal microphones as far away from the drum kit as possible. Ideally, I like to have the drum kit far off to one side or other of the platform and angled slightly towards the center with the leading vocalist in the center. If there is a line of singers on the platform, have them positioned on the opposite side from the drums. This will greatly reduce drum “spill” in unwanted places.

5.) Inappropriate Drum/Cymbal Choice
Most drum kits made since Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham hit the scene in the 70’s have been made to be hit hard and loud. But drums don’t have to be like that. There are alternatives! What type of drums and cymbals are you using? The reason why some drummers find it so difficult to play more quietly is because the drums they’re playing are made to “sing” only when they are hit hard. Cheaper kits especially, choke when played more gently. Hitting them hard can disguise the uninspiring, poor quality of their sound. Higher quality, smaller diameter, thinner shelled drums, matched with “darker” more mellow cymbals should be used in church settings. I’m a fan of Adoro’s “worship series” drums for great sound at lower playing intensity.

6.) Cymbal Shields
When the acoustic sound of drums is too loud, it’s actually the higher frequencies that become offensive first. Principally that’s the cymbals and the top “crack” of the snare. Instead of shielding or enclosing the whole kit, consider shielding just the cymbals. Without isolating the drummer, the most troublesome frequencies of the kit can be reduced with far smaller pieces of plexiglass in just the right positions. Check out this YouTube video by Harald Rubens (Steven Curtis Chapman’s audio engineer) explaining and demoing the benefits. And even more convincing is this A/B comparison video from Smokin’ Ace.

Having drums behind walls, inside a “fish tank” or from electronic pads with “fake”, synthetic sounds always sucks away the “vibe” and makes it more difficult for true connection to occur. Let’s hold onto, or bring back, the joy of sharing the same vibrating air with acoustic drums – but at the right volume level!

My tongue is only partially in my cheek, as I quote a Bible verse to finish this article:

The Lord is my strength and my shield;
in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.
Psalm 28:7 (ESV)

See! The Bible tells us that God is our shield. Surely it follows that we don’t need another shield made of plexiglass!

For more info on this topic, click these video links:
Solving Drum Volume Issues: Without a “Fish Tank”
Solving Drum Volume Issues: Dynamic Control

Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

here a how-not-to: while some suggestions are good – as for stick and cymbal choices – you hear in this video how bad drum sound gets when you try to reduce volume by screens and full enclosures. But watch yourself:

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.