Vibrating Drums

dlm31

Junior Member
Hi, my name is Dan. I have just registered.

I am having a trouble with my drum kit, basically when I hit the kick drum my snare drums vibrates quite a bit.

I have muffled my bass drum with a small pillow, this has reduced the vibration a bit.

Should I now muffle my bass drum further? Or is there a better solution?

Could this be solved by tuning my snare drum?

Thanks

p.s. My snare drum is 14" and my bass drum is 22". Both Mapex, I don't know what model though.

- Dan
 
If you are talking about the snares rattling or buzzing when you hit the bass drum, that is sympathetic buzz. It will happen and we learn to live with it. If you have two violins in tune and draw on one A string the other A string will vibrate.(I think they have an A) Don't fill up your bass drum trying to stop this it won't work.
 
You can tune all your drums to frequencies where the sympathetic snare buzz will be minimized. However, once you're playing with other people whose instruments cover the ful spectrum of pitches, you can be certain that you're going to have snare buzz, and there won't be anything you can do about it. So you might as well learn to accept it, it's a natural part of the drum sound and in fact the band's sound in general for better or worse...that's how I see it, anyway

....I guess if you're in the studio, you might want to try to tune to minimize the snare buzz.
 
Thanks for your replies, I didn't know that.

Another thing that I just noticed while playing is that the tone from my snare drum carries on for a few seconds after I hit the drum, is this normal?

I know this isn't the correct post, but if I want to tune my drums to give them a 'punchy' sound how do I do this? Do I have both batter and resonant heads tightened the same amount, are they tight or loose?

Thanks
 
Yeah, you'd want your snare to ring, at least somewhat. Some people aren't fans and will use moongel or duct tape to dampen it. I can understand that on the toms to a degree (I like a lot of resonance myself), but I think a snare at least should ring to sound the best. It was weird to me too when I first started drumming, but I've come to love the sound of a snare ringing, especially a good rimshot on a well tuned snare.

For "punchy" sounds out of your bass drum, tune it low, stick a pillow in there, maybe use a plastic or wood beater. If you want your toms "punchy" you might want to go with somewhat low tuned double ply heads on your batters. Personally, I like more melodic sounding toms that resonate.

Here's the thing as I see it; once you're playing with other people, any excess resonance is going to be drowned out by their volume anyway. In fact, if you were to dampen your drums so that they're not too ringy when you're by yourself, they'd be way too dead with an electric band IMHO.
 
When you say "tune it low", how do you mean?

I haven't had any luck tuning my drums at all, I think I made the snare drum sound worse.
 
for an extensive discussion on tuning, go to Drum Gear, then Drums, then you'll see the Sticky's on tuning...

that and experiment constantly, better lucky than good, that's what i always say ;-)
 
Be patient! Learning to tune is one of the hardest things in drumming. The bottom head on your snare should be tighter than the bottom heads on your toms but slightly looser than the top head on your snare. Your snare batter should be the tightest head on your kit. The tension of your snare strands also affects BUZZ. Experiment with snare strand tension. Relax, take your time and experiment. There will always be some buzz. Read the threads on snare, bass, and tom tuning that are on this site. Soon, after you tinker for a while you will be tuning your kit like a pro. The top head on your snare is the head that mostly affects buzz. Placing a piece of moon gel on the batter of your snare is OK. Snare drums had internal adjustable mufflers built into them for many years. The moon gel dampener replaces those old style mufflers.
 
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