HELP ME RE-DESIGN THE IDEA OF A DRUMSET

M

maverickquiros

New Member
My name is Maverick and I've been playing the drums since I was twelve years old! I'm a current senior at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) studying product design.


I'm currently in the early stages of my senior capstone project, and I'm very excited about it! I've chosen to completely redesign the idea of a drum set; what it means, what it is, and how it works. I believe that drums are in desperate need of a redesign, especially compared to other musical instruments. In order to fully asses the situation, I'm doing lots of research on the area in order to fully understand it. My goal is to improve the product, and the experience as much as possible, in relation to the users (drummers like you and me).


In order to do this, I've created a few surveys to gather data from drummers! Attached is the first survey, which takes under five minutes to complete.


Please complete this survey to help me redesign drums and make them better for all of us, thank you so much!

Survey here
 
I don't want to discourage you, but there's not going to be much you can offer in the way of a redesign because for what it is, the drum kit reached the peak of its design a long time ago. All we're doing now is refining the design. There are a lot of things that are this way -

Hammers - we can do all sorts of things with space age materials and metal alloys, but at the end of the day, a hammer is a hammer

Silverware and eating utinsels - a fork is a fork, and a spoon is a spoon - there's not much else we can do to redesign it them to be better than they are.

Similarly, drums, with the advent of the mylar drum head and multi-point tuning, are pretty much at the peak of design. Once the drum kit became established as containing the basics of a bass drum, toms, kick pedal, hi-hat pedal, and cymbals, everything beyond that has been refinement of the existing design, and there isn't much that can be done to change it.

We've improved hardware, we've improved heads, we've improved and advanced cymbals, and we've improved the drums themselves, but a redesign? I'm not sure what you have in mind, but I don't see a redesign happening.
 
I have to agree with trickg on this.
I'm a Product Engineer for a large "office environment" manufacturer. Also, my son is a senior at Kendall College of Art & Design, so I understand your enthusiasm.

Drums, Bicycles, Pianos, Toilets, Ovens, Razors, etc.. were perfected a long time ago. All those industries do now is "improve" the products and try to make us go along and buy new.

I was going to suggest turning your efforts to the hand dryers in public restrooms, but that damn Dyson AirBlade is perfect already.
 
Good luck! I’m never one to think we’re at the peak of anything design wise so good luck!
Carbon fiber hardware might be nice and light and also isolate tone better than metal does. I’d be down with some carbon fiber stands. :)
 
I could be wrong, but I think it's more about going through the motions, and learning how to "do the steps" than an actual "redesign" of a drum set (or anything for that matter).

But I'm also suspect of someones 1st post including a link to any survey.. so theres that.
I'd be curious to see how the thing turns out though.. just not curious enough to fill out a survey.
My drums work fine with the current design, its the player that needs work.

T.
 
Invent the Jetson's drum set that pops out of a briefcase at the push of a button and then folds itself up into the briefcase at the push of another button. They can be two separate buttons or one button that toggles between IN and OUT. I would also suggest that all of the components telescope so that each drum can be customized for FAST, Traditional or Power sizes, depending on what the gig calls for. Invent that and you can retire to your own private island when you graduate!
 
Design an electrical/magnetic 360 degree head tuning system.

Design them so a 2 head drum when struck makes next to no sound.

Design an innovative awesome sounding portable set that can be moved entirely...hardware and everything...in one easy trip.

The 2nd one would make you a mint if you could pull it off
 
Don't do these:

trixon-speedfire_lzy3wn.jpg


north-horn-drums_pq8iot.jpg


reverb.com

5 Drum Innovations that Never Caught On

From too ahead of their time to too out to lunch, the drum industry has innovated some truly wonderful flops.
reverb.com reverb.com
 
I'd like to see advancements in electronic drums to the point where they can truly capture the nuance and dynamics of the player. I seriously dislike what's currently available in electronic drums because of this. The best set I played was a set of really high end Yamaha electronic drums. They were insanely expensive, and even they didn't get the job done.
 
maverickquiros said:
..I'm very excited about it!..

..I believe that drums are in desperate need of a redesign..
Click to expand...


I think everyone deserves to be enthousiastic in life, but personally i am completely allergic to people/designers/trendwatchers/manufacturers/etc who try to fool the world each day telling that something is really needed..

Actually, i tried the past half hour to think about any product that is developed the past 20 years that was really needed to be developed and i can barely think of even 1..

Thats not included medical/health innovations ofcourse..

I wish you all the best with your study, but really, the drums are in desperate need of nothing..

The only need the drums have, is that we should be more busy with learning how to play them..:)
 
Hollow logs from maybe 1000 years ago, are basically what we have now with heads on them. Drums continue to evolve to some degree but are still cylinders, now with heads on them and tunable, and in about every size one can imagine. I will take the survey and see what's there
 
KamaK said:
The last time an engineer made an honest attempt at this, we ended up with Roto-toms.
Click to expand...

And Spoxe after that!

Not to add to the chorus of parade-rainers but this thread is evidence enough that there have been a lot of drumming solutions looking for a problem over the years...
 
Yeah this is what the Wright brother's got when they tried to make a better bicycle LOL. I think it's an admirable project-one of my daughters attended SCAD in Atlanta. You really have a "thorny" problem in a number of ways-like when you say "redesign". Cause that can be taken in engineering terms, acoustic terms, ergonomic terms, and aesthetic terms. You need to focus on one simple problem or goal-it gets way complicated way faster in ways you haven't thought about is my experience-keep it simple stupid is a great suggestion one of my mentors told me in designing experiments. I looked over your questionaire-where you going with this-it appears like you think going electric rather than acoustic? TBH I hate questionnaires-good lord I got in lots of "disagreements" over the use in biological contexts with student projects in biology departments (I'm a real pain in the ass stickler scientist I know most would be surprised to know). How you craft them is key and it has to correlate with something you can measure. You got a "committee" and some guidance on this project or you running solo? Tell us more about what you mean by "redesign" -or perhaps you need a better word choice-maybe we can help. Like if you were planning a tympanic (meaning you tune each element independently to an exact pitch) and want to organize in different ergonomic ways-or aesthetically make drums look better in appearance (oh man you hit a jack pot of opinions on drum aesthetics). it's ambiguous now-we need more input.
 
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Mustion said:
And Spoxe after that!

Not to add to the chorus of parade-rainers but this thread is evidence enough that there have been a lot of drumming solutions looking for a problem over the years...
Click to expand...
How did I miss this thread-I've got half a dozen or so really bad ideas to add LOL. Time to bring back that thread!!! Arturo strikes again.
 
Wow ... you guys are no fun.

In 1889, Charles H. Duell was the Commissioner of US patent office. He is widely quoted as having stated that the patent office would soon shrink in size, and eventually close, because… "Everything that can be invented has been invented”. Guess he missed the mark just a wee bit.

Hey Maverick, you also gotta remember what Henry Ford said ... “If I had listened to my customers I would have invented a better horse” ;)

Drums only need redesign to solve problems customers will pay for. So what are those? Cost, weight, setup time required, space required to store/ship them? ? ? ?
 
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I filled-out the survey, but like almost every survey I've seen, it doesn't ask enough of the right questions, and is limited and incomplete on the choices available. I can't imagine what kind of useful information the author will get from it.

Bermuda
 
wildbill said:
Don't do these:

trixon-speedfire_lzy3wn.jpg
Click to expand...

The Trixons are actually quite a brilliant design. That base drum is actually a double bass drum for those that don’t know. You can slightly see a line crossing the head through the letter “O”. That line is from a board that divides the drum in half and the two different sides give two different pitches. Not shown is the bracket on the base drum behind the tom mount. A snare hookup goes there so there is no snare stand touching the floor. Then you add a pair of conventional bass drum pedals. Coolest looking set ever!
 
dboomer said:
The Trixons are actually quite a brilliant design. That base drum is actually a double bass drum for those that don’t know. You can slightly see a line crossing the head through the letter “O”. That line is from a board that divides the drum in half and the two different sides give two different pitches. Not shown is the bracket on the base drum behind the tom mount. A snare hookup goes there so there is no snare stand touching the floor. Then you add a pair of conventional bass drum pedals. Coolest looking set ever!
Click to expand...
Of course what else would the Melting man play but a melting drum kit-it looks like something Salvador Dali would create actually. I like it!
 

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