Drum treatment

Muffling / Drum treatment

Yes, so we've all stuck tape, beermats and whatever over our drums **because we didn't know how to tune them**.

Now that you can tune your drums, let's see how we can modify the quality of the sound and break old and very very nasty habits!

Muffling Rack Toms

It is not generally advisable to muffle toms, but if needed it can be done in several ways.

Most amateur drummers apply their muffling when they are listening to their drums without other instruments playing. How often do we really acoustically hear drums on their own outside of practice? Drum solos, an intro or maybe or a break for a few bars, maybe. But even then do we hear each drum on its own? Not really. The majority of the time those sustained tones and resonances that you're trying to remove with bits of beermats are the real sound of your kit, the sound defined by the type of material and construction, defined by your tuning, head selection and resonance-enhancing measures such as using resonant heads.

Those 'overtones' are part of the sound palette of a drumset. It is a large part of that which gives a drum kit the bite, warmth and flavour, a significant part of your favourite drummers' sounds. Don't make the mistake of strangling your drums.

A close-mic'ed environment, particularly in the recording studio may call for increased degrees of control. The resonance from unmuffled toms may be viewed as a difficulty with some styles of music and you may be obliged to use one of the treatments outlined below.

* use 'moongel^(TM)' (or Blu-tack) to reduce the sustain without taking all the song out of the drum,
* use an 'O' ring,
* change to a double-ply or Powerstroke 3^(TM) batter head; or
* as a last resort, use 'gaffer' tape, cut into a 3" strip and folded so you have two 1" 'wings' to stick to the head and a 1/2" high ridge to grip it to remove it afterwards

Drummers also place odd items like cotton wool balls or styrofoam packing inside the drum, they lie against the resonant head and absorb vibrations and the movement of the head when they bounce.

Kick Drum

The kick drum is the drum that almost all drummers muffle. With the advent of Powerstroke 3^(TM) (PS3) or equivalent heads onto the market, you no longer need to stick an assortment of pillows/clothing/blankets into the drum. The PS3 has an integral 'O' ring that removes a lot of the sustain yet leaves the note, which is an adequate kick drum sound on its own.

Consider also what happens when you strike the head with the beater, most commonly a heel-up player will leave the beater in contact with the head (generally termed 'burying the beater'), this is a very effective muffler and is controlled automatically by the player. With an un-muffled kick drum you can also play it like a tom letting the beater rebound giving tone and sustain. Leaving the kick drum unmuffled gives you many new timbres of sound to experiment with, but it's not common.

Snare

No muffling is the recommendation on the snare.

If you have a 'ringy' snare you will usually discover that you can kill it at one point on the head. Tap the head somewhat sharply and away from the center as you lightly place your finger at a tuning point, repeat around the log points until you find out which one or combination stops the ring. Placing a blob of moongel there should remove the ring or take the sting out of it. If you have more than one ring point, your tuning is off.

To treat a drum to bring out a more dry sound, a famous tool to use is a wallet. A less subtle way is to apply an 'O' ring, which will practically kill all resonance in the drum.