Left Side Floor Tom

[2bsticks]

Who uses this setup and why? How do you apply it to your playing. I'm trying to think of how I would incorporate this into my playing as opposed to two floors on my right! It would seem a bit difficult to include this drum in a roll around the kit, but I can see where it might create some new and different colors to your sound.

[thelimpingtoad]

When I first got my second floor tom i put it on the left to "Balance" out my kit... i wanted it symetrical or close to it...
I liked that setup a lot for a little while but it ended up on the right side anyway.
When playing on the left side floor tom I found that my kit was setup much like a set of tenor drums (quints or quads for drum corps/marching band). This worked out pretty good since I had played them in high school.
There's alot you can do with a tom on the left, besides accents and stuff with your left hand on the floor tom, you can also start a right handed fill on the rack tom, left hit on the second rack tom then right on you right side floor tom then left on the left side. It just keeps your open playing more... open...
Also, fills using 2 floor toms and your snare may be a bit easier to pull off since traditionally a second floor tom is the hardest thing to reach.

The thing is that you can really do all the same stuff with right side floor toms. And that's why I ended up moving it back over to the right.

If you already have a second floor tom you can experiment with this by putting your tom on the left and figuring out all sorts of cool stuff you can do with it. I say "Go for it" but then again I'm not a traditionalist...

Edit: Check out the book "The New Breed" by Gary Chester for a whole slew of ideas on open playing. The guy was brilliant and the systems he illustrates in his book are amazing.
http://www.beatitmusic.com/pages/images/tutor%20books/images/new%20breed%201.jpg

[2bsticks]

Thanks for the info!

[Steady Freddy]

I use it to fatten up back beats. If you're riding the hats with your right hand the right hand hits the snare and the left hits the floor tom. Gives a nice effect.

Also using combinations of doubles and singles between the left and right floor toms you can create some cool fills. The snare is in the middle and easy to incorperate onto fills also.

I don't use it for fills around the kit per se.

If you have two floor toms split em off and mess around. It's kinda fun. I'd like to have a Ballard Snare on the left. It could be played with the snares on or off.

[jeffwj]

Weckl studied with Gary Chester, author of New Breed. For awhile Weckl was using a mounted floor tom on his left side. He didn't have one the last few times I saw him.

Here he is with one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPiAWfprCzI

Jeff


Jeff

[Skulmoski]

Yes, backbeats, accents, etc. Check out how conga players use the left side conga (called a "quinto") in a 3 or 4 conga setup.

Best

GJS

[wooderson]

i used a floor tom on my left for a couple of months when i played kit for an indoor percussion ensemble. i liked it to make back beats thicker and for some reason it just felt more comfortable to reach over on the left during a fill then it did the right.

another note is that visually i think it looks more aggresive when your playing like double stops on two floor toms or "tribal" grooves.

[ChipJohns]

I hate the expression thinking out side the box so I'll say, "Makes you think inside of another box."

I think some (not all) of the best drummers do not approach their drums in, what I'll call a linear fashion. You will very rarely here them start at the top and swing all the way around.

One of my favorites for this is Benny Greb. He doesn't play linear at all. He is a very smart drummer. Listen to this stuff he does with The Ron Spielman Trio (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iORR0mUV3IY)

When you here him play you find yourself asking,"was that a fill, an accent, or is he just changing the groove a bit for a measure.. The answer is yes...


Moving parts of your set around is a great way to get you to start thinking about what you are doing and come up with some different and unique stuff.

[nerdywhiteboy]

I just moved my 18" floor tom to the left side. It seems a bit big and boomy to inspire anything useful. Seems as though it would be better suited for smaller drums, side snare, etc. Unless I muffle the heck out of it, but then I would feel bad.

[LeeLovesSabian]

Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater used to have a kit with one.
He actually used it a lot more than you would think.

[ace76543]

I have an 18x16 tom on my left. It's there mainly because i have nowhere else to put it. I'd like to put it to use someday though

[Ian Ballard]

I like using my 13" tom for a left-side guy. It's too big to be a rack tom and it just sits around not doing much, so I put it on the left. Since I use trad almost all the time, it's a natural-feeling release for certain beats and it gives me different motions and capabilities that I don't have otherwise.

Just use it and have fun with it.

[Naigewron]

It can also be as simple as wanting three floor toms. Having three in a row will make the last one difficult to hit, but placing it to the left makes it much more accessible.

[DrumEatDrum]

When I set up my "big" kit (8,10, 12, 14, 16, 18) I end up putting my 14 on the left.
But I rarely use it. I only ever seem to hit it if I make the effort to (hey, I haven't hit that 14 in a while). If often becomes a table to to hold notes.

However, when I was recording an album a while back, I was asked to "hit more stuff" for the beat, so I put a floor tom on the left and used it ala Larry Mullen Jr to do a quick hit after the snare drum. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwddaJ8Uk4g

But for myself, putting a tom on the left tends to make it be forgotten. Which I suppose saves buying it a new head.

[justjim]

my wife kinda sorta has a left-side floor tom

I say kinda sort b/c she has a 1 up, 2 down (14,16)

BUT my kit is just to the left of hers and I have an 18 (and I keep it pretty much flat), so out of the corner of my eye I see this mallet sneak over a lot

she likes her floor toms tuned "pure" and tends play them . I dunno almost - tympani style - if that makes sense, so MY 18 is tuned to compliment HER tuning -- eh, marriage what are you gonna do

[nerdywhiteboy]

my wife kinda sorta has a left-side floor tom..............


Haha, I thought that was the start of a joke!

[PQleyR]

I have a 14x14 on a snare stand on my left hand side at the moment (just because it was somewhere to put it!). The kit is fairly new to me, it's a 7-piece Ludwig kit with 10", 12", 13", 14" and 16" toms (all square except the 16, which is 15" deep). Because it's an 80s kit with only two stands for the toms (which have ratchets, and do up with a spanner, making tom positioning difficult to impossible!), it was really the only way I could fit it in. It's quite interesting because I have a 'rock' setup on one side, like I was used to with my old kit (12, 13, 16), and a 'fusion' setup on the other side (10, 12, 14). The 10" is quite hard to reach because it's on a stand in a silly way on the other side of my left-hand crash, but it's still there. Maybe one day I'll get some new stands or something.

[Ekim]

I like having one on the left for doing crossovers. Then you can move from your snare to the left and/or right. Just more options, though positioning everything with multiple pedals can be a big pain (double bass and hi-hat and probably the Tama Cobra Clutch in the future).

If I had more FTs I would like to put two on each side for even more of a mirror-image setup.

[Moldy]

Any more videos of drummers using a left side floor tom?

[Friend]

I could see using one to comprise some sweet tribal beats, laying 16ths on the hi hat and using your left for offbeat floor tom hits. Or just treating that section of your kit, meaning the floor tom, hats, and snare, as it's on 3 piece with the hats taking the place of the snare as the main focus. Even maybe drop the snares so you've basically the highest and lowest contrast of toms.

An example would be Panda Bear's drumming for Animal Collective, he plays standing up with no bass drum and his beats are all about the hats and the floor tom. Ridiculously catchy, he treats it almost like a baliphone. Check out the song I Think I Can to see what I mean.

[jivadayadasa]

Any more videos of drummers using a left side floor tom?

I have come to like Glen Sobel's playing quite a bit. He's yet another hard-working drummer that is generous with his time. I have received nice responses from him and hope to meet him someday.

I enjoy linear drumming; these patterns are basic but hard to pull off with this kind of fluidity until you've spent some serious time with them. There's a little left side floor tom action here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COfCyp7X350

[Chris Oyens]

I tried it for a while and hardly ever used it, I prefer to have a second smaller high pitched snare drum instead. It gets a LOT more use.