Get my kicks?

ctdrummer

Member
Ok, I have been out of drumming for a while and now back after many years. But when did bass drums begin to be called kicks? It was somewhere between 1980 and now. :)

I also never heard of a drum set being called a drum kit, but did manage to find some old references to drum "kits" so I must have missed that one.
 
I'm 38 and have never known it to be called anything other than a drum kit. Sure, I've heard drum set....probably used the term myself, but drum kit is by far the more common term in my neck of the woods. Just checked in with my old man. He started playing playing around 1960, always been a "kit" in his world too.

Kick drum? Good question. No idea, but certainly always been known as a kick (as well as a bass drum) in my 25 odd years at it. I'm only guessing as to it's origins, but I'll crawl out on a limb and wonder if the phrase was first coined by a studio or sound engineer in order to avoid any confusion with the bass guitar on his mixer channels. Much easier to identify a fader for the bass drum marked "kick" rather than stuff up the hard efforts of a bass guitarist by reaching for the wrong input marked "bass".
 
Funny, when I was reading your replies (thanks by the way) there was an ad in the upper right corner for "Drum Sets" from Music 123.

Looking through my old Slingerland catalog, they like to call them "Outfits". And yes, I remember someone asking me when I was in high school if I had a trap set. Not knowing what it was, I said "no".

caddywumpus, If you would like to start using the term "Smacky Drums" in your circles, maybe it will catch on and become an accepted term. :)

thanks for the replies!
 
Like soda, drums are probably called different things depending on where you call home. Is the drum "throne" the only term used for one's seat? How about "sticks"? Do you call them "toms" or "tom toms"? Is there a difference?
 
Trap sets? Is this some new-fangled update to Contraption Set the kids use these days?
its_a_trap.jpg
 
From what I understand trap set was a contraction of the word contraption,when drummers started to attach cowbells wood blocks whistles etc to their bass drums.
 
From Wikipedia FWIW:

Drum kits are infants of the Vaudeville era. Pecuniary and theater space considerations demanded that fewer percussionists covered more percussion parts. In military and orchestral music settings, drums and cymbals were traditionally played separately by one or many percussionists. The bass drum, snare drum, cymbals and other percussion instruments were played by hand. Circa 1890, experimentation with foot pedals began. Liberating the hands for the first time, this evolution saw the bass drum played (first standing) with the foot of a percussionist and became the central piece around which every other percussion instruments would later revolve. Ludwig-Musser, William F. Ludwig Senior and his brother Theodor Ludwig founded the Ludwig & Ludwig Co. in 1909 and patented the first workable bass drum pedal system, paving the way for what was to become the modern drum kit

By World War I drum kits were characterized by very large marching bass drums and many percussion items suspended on and around them, and they became a central part of jazz music, specifically (but not limited to) dixieland. Metal consoles were developed to hold Chinese tom-toms, with swing out stands for snare drums and cymbals. On top of the console was a "contraption" (shortened to "trap") tray used to hold whistles, klaxons, and cowbells, thus drum kits were dubbed "trap kits." Hi-hat stands appeared around 1926.

By the 1930s, Ben Duncan and others popularized streamlined trap kits leading to a basic four piece drum set standard: bass, snare, tom-tom, and floor tom. In time legs were fitted to larger floor toms, and "consolettes" were devised to hold smaller tom-toms on the bass drum. In the 1940s, Louie Bellson pioneered use of two bass drums, or the double bass drum kit. Gene Krupa was the first drummer to head his own orchestra and thrust the drums into the spot light with his drum solos, and others would soon follow his lead. Krupa is also known to be the first to record a drum solo on a commercial record.

The trend towards bigger drum kits in Rock music began in the 1960s and gained momentum in the 1970s. By the 1980s, widely popular drummers like Billy Cobham, Carl Palmer, Nicko McBrain, Phil Collins, Stewart Copeland and perhaps most notably Neil Peart were using large numbers of drums and cymbals and had also begun using electronic drums. In the 1990s and 2000s, many drummers in popular music and indie music have reverted back to basic four piece drum set standard
 
I totally love "Smacky Drums" I'm using it!
 
Just some advise from someone with similar experience.... if you decide to start buying cymbals read up on them on this site...I made the mistake after a long lay-off of buying a set of Zildjian ZBT hi hats...I needed hats and knew from the 80's Zildjian makes great cymbals so didn't think twice about them...then when I got them I noticed these weren't the Zildjians I played in the 80's and there are all kinds of series's of cymbals now from the major manufactures...theres so much to learn as a returning player after a long lay-off...but welcome back..I'm loving it more then I ever have!
 
What next? Will the snare be called the "smacky" drum?

While we're at it, since when did the traps set become known as a drum set?

Nomenclature changes over time. Don't know the origins or the reasons why, but they do. P-Foggy Fogg has a good guess...

When they got rid of the traps and only had drums. The photo is Cab Callaways drummer in 1933. Big set, lots of traps. Tympani, chimes, gong, wood blocks , huge bass drum, vibraphone.
 

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For whatever reason I've never liked calling it a 'kick' drum, it's always been and always will be a bass drum to me.
 
So funny that you mention this. Just Saturday night as we were loading out I said something about the bass drum, and the keyboard player said he can tell I come from a jazz/rudimental background because I call it bass drum. I told him I didn't think that was the reason, I thought it was just age - when I started everyone called it a bass drum! It's only been more recently that I've heard people call it a kick drum. I don't know when it started, but I learned to call it a bass drum, and that's what I still call it 90% of the time.

However, it's labeled "KD" on the mixer for Kick Drum!
 
socks=hi hats if I remember right..but I think its all from it being labelled "kick" on mixer (as was said) so not to confuse it with bass guitar..
 
Thanks for the replies everyone! I hope I wasn't being too trivial for the forum, but I am always interested in the origins of words and expressions.

braincramp- thanks for the tip about the cymbals. There are so many more manufacturers now than in the 70's, I guess it's good and bad. I only was exposed to what was in my Slingerland catalogs, and what the 2 music stores in my area stocked.

Now, back to my smacky drum....
 
I always thought "kick drum" was some kind of cockney slang that just kind of stuck with the rock crowd, because so many hailed from England.
 
When they got rid of the traps and only had drums. The photo is Cab Callaways drummer in 1933. Big set, lots of traps. Tympani, chimes, gong, wood blocks , huge bass drum, vibraphone.

More specifically, "trap" kit was short for "contraption". As odds & ends fell out of favor, it was just "drum kit" or "drum set". Now that I think about it, it's weird it didn't come to be known as "drum & cymbal kit (or set)", or just "percussion". That latter probably didn't happen so as to differentiate from hand drums...?
 
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