Alternative Drum Sounds

[al86ex]

I'm at university and i'm doing a project which involves me creating and recording some original, unique, experimental drum sounds. I've written my own brief for the assignment and it requires me to place various items one, in and around a standard kit to alter the original sound of the kit. I have produced some good results so far but need as many sounds as i can get and have come to a bit of a dead end.

If anyone has any suggestions to help me further i would greatly appreciate it. Anything that you've perhaps tried in a studio yourself? or just something that you think i should try. Nothing is too ridiculous!

They must be on a cymbal or snare for example, not something that you would play separately.

Thanks very much

[xizoesira]

Try hitting different drums with different everyday objects.

A rack of battles you can hit together to make some noise?

Maybe get a xylophone in there.

If you have any extra pedals, hook them up to some weird things. I had an extra snare on a pedal next to my hats once.

[jeffwj]

Pitch bend on the drums by pressing into the head with one stick while playing with the other. The more pressure you push down with, the higher the pitch.

[FunkyDrummin]

To change the sound of a cymbal, you could create a fake sizzle effect by draping a strand of metal beads onto the cymbal, starting at the tilter.

Also, if you put something reflective (tonally) directly above a cymbal, the sound waves will begin to cross prematurely, creating a very interesting sound. Hope this helps!

[maddrummr]

PLAY YOUR HARDWARE!!!
hehe i do it sometimes.

[Joe Kearney]

Pitch bend on the drums by pressing into the head with one stick while playing with the other. The more pressure you push down with, the higher the pitch.

doesn't billy ward do this?

[somedrummer]

I've always wondered what it would be like to put different materials inside of drums. For example, sand. I wonder what varying amounts would sound like. You could do the same with other small objects, like marbles, or... maybe try putting a cymbal inside a drum, just resting against the reso head.

Just some ideas.

[Bad Drummer]

Hitting the drums with shakers will do it.

[Extremity Redefined]

Well there's this pitch bend/fade effect that I love doing after seeing Jojo Mayer using it in some of his solos. It's somewhat similar to the pitch bend mentioned before, but you don't apply too much pressure to the head since that kills the resonance. What you do is you can have one stick resting on the side of a drum (toms preferably) with slight pressure and hit the drum in the center with another stick and move the first stick towards the center. You'll get a higher pitch as you go towards the center and lower as you go outwards if you want to start from the center and go out. Another effect I found out by accident is playing on drums and cymbals with those plastic tubes that are used for casing brushes. They give you a hollow tuby sound when you play them with the hitting end open without caps but kinda too low in volume though. Just some suggestions.

[beatsMcGee]

put a splash or small china on the snare. Saw it in some vid on here (DW) and it sounded pretty neat. like some one said play on the hoops or rims (hardware) of the drums. thats all i can think of at the moment but ill keep trying!

[samthebeat]

steel dustbin lid on the snare, i saw some live d and b drummer do this once, sounded fat. A mouse mat on a snare sounds kinda cool to, you get wierd sorta dampend sound, but quite different from heavily dampend snare.

[syaoran05]

make the toms sound like cardboard boxes. pretty easy to do. just get a 13 year old with a bad haircut who posts videos of him playing to blink 182 on youtube to tune your drums.