Can a reso head kill the sustain?

"You're only the drummer" sounds like an invitation to say "Oh, sorry guys, I won't be there. I'm only the drummer, you won't need me" :p

Seriously though, if that's the attitude they have towards you then I would suggest putting your foot down and giving yourself a bigger presence within the band, or get out and find someone else.

Eh. A gig is a gig...

I guess my standards are pretty low.
 
Honestly, resos are the only difference between a "high" and "low" pitch, imo. For me, batters
only have a certain realistic tuning before you get into old school bebop tuning which greatly affects the response of the drum.
 
"You're only the drummer" sounds like an invitation to say "Oh, sorry guys, I won't be there. I'm only the drummer, you won't need me" :p

Seriously though, if that's the attitude they have towards you then I would suggest putting your foot down and giving yourself a bigger presence within the band, or get out and find someone else.

Sorry, I was just being funny. They really do appreciate me being in the band. its kind of awkward at times because they make it a point to introduce me after a tough drumming song. No one else in the band gets that kind of attention.
 
Haha, that's good! There just seems to be too much of that sort of attitude around at times so I had assumed you were serious :).

It's a different story when you're just taking the piss :) happens constantly in the fire brigade haha
 
Well, they're called "resonant" heads. So kill their ability to resonate, and you kill the sustain.

I'm sure I don't need to explain that when you strike the batter head, it vibrates from physical force. This causes sound waves under the head that travel down to the bottom, resonant, head, and agitate that so it vibrates at a frequency. That in turn creates soundwaves that travel back up to the top head. So you tune both heads the same tension, and they are matched in terms of the frequency they will vibrate at. Tune the reso head up a nip, and you will notice it sustains less, and you get a shorter tom sound. Tune it down a nip, and you get more boom (or "wow").

Now put your hand on that bottom head, and hit the top one. What happens? Yep - very little. That's why we call them resonant heads ;)
 
Well, that's technically not the best example to give.

Putting your hand on the bottom head, as opposed to not having one their to start with, has the same effect as choking the drum by reducing its ability to resonate overall.

Furthermore, there is such a thing called destructive interference which is easily caused by having two heads that are not in tune with themselves. I actually use this concept to assist with tuning, in fact, as I shall explain:

If you hit the drum and the sound fades in and out in volume, you are encountering destructive interference. What is happening is that the air pressure created by the vibrations of the heads is cancelling out the noise by being both equal and opposite. The reason it wavers is because the heads are not in tune with each other, and therefore you are getting a crossover point where because each of the heads is vibrating at a different rate, the air pressure is constantly varying.

As such, the key to discerning how to tune the drums using this concept is in listening to the speed of the waver. If it is very rapid, the heads are more out of tune, and if the waver is very slow then they are close to being in tune. Have you ever seen a guitarist tune using harmonics? It works exactly the same way.

Theoretically it should be possible to use destructive interference to remove all sustain from a drum and have only the initial attack, but if this is what you want then maybe just go buy a cardboard box and hit that instead :p
 
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