Evans Blacked out drumline, the intervallic relationship.

[southaven center]

The drumline that I've been playing on has been pretty tradional in the last 6 years. Same heads, same sticks, same drums, same carriers, ( you get the picture). I'm not saying the equipment is old, but when an old one breaks, it is replaced with the same thing. So here is how the line has been set up.

4-5 snares.

3-5 tenors.

5 basses ALWAYS.

Snare hardware- Yamaha "14 SFZ White snare with grey rims.

Evans white MX1 top snare head

Evans Mx yellow Kevlar bottom heads.

Tom Hannum Vic Firth sticks.

Tenor hardware- Yamaha MQ 6200 Powerlite series

Evans frosted Heads 1-4 Remo ambassador Spocks.

Scojo swizzle and traditional cartwheel tenor mallets.

Bass hardware- Yamaha MB-8200 Series

Evans Mx1 white heads

Vic Firth hard felt bass mallets.

So what I'm getting at, is the sound relationship between sticks, drums, and most importantly heads has always been the same. After judging WGI and coming back in early summer, our percussion tech told us " THe best thing he heard all season was the Evans hybrids. He ordered us 5 white Evans hybrids and 5 hybrid bottom. We couldn't figure out how to tune the test drum, so he called an old friend who works in the Evans testing department and asked for a tuning guide. The guide was specific that the top head was tuned to an A, and the bottom a D. THEY SOUNDED LIKE CRAP. No snare response, ringing, and didn't feel good. He called back up and learned that the Grey and white heads were laminated differently. He orders 5 Grey hybrids. They sounded amazing! They felt like a real feel pad but sound just bad a--! The problem was, they just didn't fit in with the rest of the drumline; the sound had changed. He orders the tenors that Evans black heads and the basses the mx1 blacks and they arrived this morning. My question is, will the complete head change for the drumline fit like the old heads, or will it turn out as a crap shoot? Has ANYONE had experience with these heads?

[drumno5]

...he called an old friend who works in the Evans testing department and asked for a tuning guide. The guide was specific that the top head was tuned to an A, and the bottom a D.

No disrespect to the guys at Evans, or any of you great drum tuners out there - but I'm still not completely buying into the idea that a snare drum head can be tuned to a "note" with a specific frequency. Drums (snare drums especially, but even tenors and basses, to a certain extent) are instruments of indefinite pitch. I'm betting if you took three experienced drum guys and sent them each to a separate room with instructions to tune a snare drum to top head A/bottom head D, you'd wind up with three different sounding drums. It's not that kind of an exact science.

Not trying to incite a riot or anything, just my $.02 worth.

peace,

Fred O.

[MGCpimpOtimp]

Tell that to the snare tech at Bluecoats, I was at a clinic, top drum is a C#, bottom is a D, the guts are an F#, and the sticks they get all weigh exactly 88 grams. I enjoy their snare drum sound.

*edit for late night dumbness*

Edited September 9, 2008 by MGCpimpOtimp

[K-Swiss]

i want to know how phantom's drums are tuned. I love their snare sound

[drumno5]

Tell that to the snare tech at Bluecoats, I was at a clinic, top drum is a C#, bottom is a D, the guts are an F#, and the sticks they get all weigh exactly 88 ounces. I enjoy their snare drum sound.

Yeah, I'll tell him the next time I see him down at the mini mart. I'm sure their drums sound fine, but I still don't think you can tune a snare drum head that precisely, let alone 10 snare drums on a football field. The guts at F#? Yikes!

Fred O.

Are you sure the sticks weigh 88 ounces - what are they made of, uranium? Just as point of reference, a five pound bag of flour weighs 80 ounces!

Fred O.

[DAvery]

No disrespect to the guys at Evans, or any of you great drum tuners out there - but I'm still not completely buying into the idea that a snare drum head can be tuned to a "note" with a specific frequency. Drums (snare drums especially, but even tenors and basses, to a certain extent) are instruments of indefinite pitch. I'm betting if you took three experienced drum guys and sent them each to a separate room with instructions to tune a snare drum to top head A/bottom head D, you'd wind up with three different sounding drums. It's not that kind of an exact science.

Not trying to incite a riot or anything, just my $.02 worth.

peace,

Fred O.

All sounds have a pitch.

[drumno5]

All sounds have a pitch.

Water spraying out of a garden hose? Thunder? Static when the cable goes out?

Sigh, here we go...

"Indefinite pitch percussion instruments emit a musical noise which cannot be identfied as possessing a definite pitch or frequency. these include triangles, drums, tambourines, cymbals, gongs and castnets."

from Music, Physics and Engineering By Harry Ferdinand Olson

Orchestration by Cecil Forsyth lists the side drum (snare drum) bass drum, tenor drum and tambourine as "Membrane Percussion instruments of indefinite pitch."

and that catch-all authoritative resource Wikipedia (OK, it may be suspect from time to time, but this entry is pretty valid, I think) says:

"In music and hearing, a sound or note of 'definite pitch' is one of which it is possible or relatively easy to discern the pitch or frequency of the fundamental. Sounds with definite pitch have harmonic frequency spectra or close to harmonic spectra.

A sound or note of 'indefinite pitch' is one of which it is impossible or relatively difficult to discern the pitch or frequency of the fundamental. Sounds with indefinite pitch do not have harmonic spectra or have altered harmonic spectra.

Note that it is still possible for two sounds of indefinite pitch to clearly be higher or lower than one another, for instance, a snare drum invariably sounds higher in pitch than a bass drum because its sound contains higher frequencies. In other words, it is possible and often easy to roughly discern the relative pitches of two sounds of indefinite pitch, but any given sound of indefinite pitch does not neatly correspond to a given definite pitch." (the italics are mine).

I could go on, but none of us should have to endure that boredom. Bottom line: I still don't think you can nail down the pitch of a snare drum (much less the individual snare strands, as someone suggested earlier) to a specific note. But if someone wants to tune their snare drum(s) to what they perceive as a C#, Bb or whatever, then go for it. If they can get the drums to sound good, who am I to argue?

peace!

Fred O.

[drumno5]

they get all weigh exactly 88 grams.

*edit for ...*

Thanks, that 's better - could you imagine a unison snare gok at 2 1/2 lbs per stick (lol)?

all in good fun ,

Fred O.

[Slow Adam]

I would argue that triangles do have a fundamental pitch as well as a handful of overtones.

FWIW everything in the world has whats called a natural frequency, perhaps this is whats being termed pitch.

[drumno5]

I would argue that triangles do have a fundamental pitch as well as a handful of overtones.

FWIW everything in the world has whats called a natural frequency, perhaps this is whats being termed pitch.

Yeah, I can see your point. But you have to put your ear pretty close to a triangle to really get a good listen to that fundamental, y'know what I mean? Get a little further away and the overtones start to obscure the fundamental, to the extent that the "pitch" of the instrument is not readily identifiable. It's just not "focused" in the same way that a "note" from a trumpet or a flute or a [insert name of favorite instrument-of-definite-pitch] is.

Fred O.