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My son recently took back his 22” kick drum. Thanks to ebay I was able to find this 16" floor tom that had been converted to a kick drum. It is really dinky but seems fine for studio recording and sampling.

Has anyone else gone down the “Small is Beautiful” path for drums?

Latest Song: Skyfall (vocal version) Collab
Artist Page Send Message Aug 19, 2012 | 10:17 am
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When I was a kid, I made a small drum kit using various sized tin cans covered with Sellotape. I used the lids that I'd took off as the cymbals and a wire coathanger to fix it all together. I think I used a pair of chopsticks for drumsticks and it gave me many hours of pleasure.

Does that count?
Latest Song: Airburst
Artist Page Send Message Aug 23, 2012 | 7:23 am
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My kick drum size has also reduced over the years. Starting with a 22 with one head; I filled it with pillows and muted it with a piece of corrugated cardboard to mute it. I found that a 20 X 12 inch drum with one muting pillow and both heads made a much deeper sound since a closed vessel resonates at a lower frequency. I now have an 18 X 16 inch bass drum which contains a bit more air than the 20. I also run it with no muting and so the heads are free to produce some higher frequencies. I tune both heads to the resonant frequency of the container on all my drums for maximum response. A big mistake, in my opinion, is to use a vented front head; this is done to insert a BD mike into the drum via a boom stand: this radically reduces the resonant frequency of the drum in an acoustic setting. Many Jazz players will tighten up their BD heads for more bounce on the pedal to yield a sound more like another floor tom. The low frequencies are still there but much shorter in duration and coloured by the many more higher sounds.
One more thing (last one, I promise) the mechanical efficiency of pedal you are using is dependent on the connection to the bottom lip of the bass drum (or lifter in your case so the beater hits the centre) since it only has a couple of wire struts to maintain the position of the foot plate. Try using a pedal with a solid bass plate so the stanchions are rigidly and integrally connected. The difference in response is dramatic owing to the lack of lost motion as the foot comes down on the pedal deflecting the stanchions before the crank has a chance to move the beater...
Good luck with the percussion explorations with your son. When my son was 5 years old I gave him a jingle stick and showed him a basic hand pattern: R - R - both - R and the rest, as they say, is history! What a wonderful thing for a father to share his musical interest with his son...
Latest Song: Now's The Time (Charlie Parker)
Artist Page Send Message Aug 24, 2012 | 1:03 pm
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