Ep. 17 Drum Hack: Controlling Floor Tom Sustain
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- Опубликовано: 1 ноя 2024
- Want more sustain from your floor tom without altering its tone? Maybe your floor tom rings for too long but you don't want change the tone. Moon gel is out. Tacs and tape won't save you here. But we've got two drum hacks that can make all the difference in sustain without affecting your tone.
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Do you feel like you need more sustain or less sustain from your floor tom?
Sounds Like A Drum mainly less
I prefer more, as you can take some out, as your video shows, but if your floor tom is dead, it is dead.
I prefer less in order to capture more tone of that tuningfrom the Shell.
Hey, I grew into liking less ring because 6-7 years back i realized that the kit might have sounded huge from where I was sitting at but 2-3 meters from the kit, it lost articulation. Also, less ring is basically preferred by sound engineers. My quick hack is to put the drumstick bag on the floor tom, it muffles the drum big time but beware of choking it - live, it does not matter that much but would be noticeable in the studio.
Fascinating. Does it need to be sand or something similar? Or can it just be something weighted?
this channel is gonna grow BIG
I just flip one of the floortom legs upsidedown when needed. Very useful in a livesituation where you have zero time retune the drum. The result is less sustain 👌
I never would have thought about that. This is what I like about your series, that your approach is to work with the drum instead of against it.
Wow! I would never have guessed that would make such a big difference. I gotta try this! Thank you for the great content you produce :)
Jesus.
I have spent countless hours these last few weeks working on my toms, Completely unable to control my resonance, and all it took was a little weight on the legs.
Incredible. Can't believe how effective that was and how hard a tip it was to find.
Take my like & subscription.
We e got lots more where that came from! Please consider supporting our efforts and you’ll get access to our cymbal series if you join our Patreon (link in the video description). Cheers!
Weighting a leg? That's incredible, never thought that would work.
Seriously, my mind is blown
I remember watching Thomas Lang drop like 3 cotton balls inside the drum. Thought that was a cool way of getting the instant resonance to drop out, since it cuts out without needing gels or tape for the most part on the batter so you get the true feel.
the sand bag ..it worked it really worked..no more hours of tuning and changing heads on that darn vibrating to long 14 inch floor tom, thank you i subscribed, cheers
I just watch, I think, 10 to 12 videos now in two days and you just change my life and way to see a drums. I was thinking I knew a lot of stuff about it but now I start to know something about haha. Thank you so much!!
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We're so glad to hear it! If this really did change your life (and that's a pretty significant impact!) please consider supporting our efforts by joining our Patreon. You'll get access to additional content including our Patreon-exclusive Cymbal Sounds series: sladl.ink/Patreon
So I just bought the pearl suspension feet and I placed felts under that and now my floor tom sounds massive! I had no idea, and have been drumming for 10 years. I'm finally happy with my floor tom. I throw moon gel just to control sustain for a bit, but love the deep tone I'm finally able hear. thanks for the info!
Very cool because I like to use a semi wide open kick drum (minimal muffling, tuned for tone) which a lot of times makes my floor Tom's rumble when I hit the bass drum so this trick will definitely help!!
Yeah man! I'm the same way, I like a girthy kick sound with some resonance and it really will get that floor tom going sometimes. :)
Sounds Like A Drum
You too... I will tell you sometimes in smaller rooms it can definitely be a pain in the ass.... Especially when your line checking your kick drum and you're just doing quarter notes and the floor Tom keeps rumbling after each hit... it's like dude shut up I'm sound checking the bass drum! Lol
So a lot of times what I will do is put my hand on the floor Tom when I'm sound checking the drum kit to keep everything from rumbling.
Oh man yeah, absolutely. I'm shocked at how the kick drum (or bass amp at times) can get the floor tom to feed back on itself and go totally berserk! Definitely gone to extremes at times just because of the nature of the room or issues with the micing. Such a fussy thing!
Been at this a long time, so few tips are new to me. These were though. Love your videos!
Thanks for new tool to adjust my drum sounds, think this one going to help me a lot!
Great job guys!!!
You're quite welcome! Help spread the word to your drummer friends by sharing the channel with them.
You"ve just solved a problem I had today with a pretty heavy floor tom I have leaning a bit towards me. When I hold the drum in my hand and hit it , it resonates like crazy, but as soon as it"s on its legs, it sounds dead. Your ideas are great for this problem, thanks.
Nice trick with the weight! For more resonance, (if you don't have spare cymbal felts) small, cheap kitchen sponges folded in half under each leg works too.
This was kinda mind-blowing. Good work!
Another good video. Extremely helpful stuff we can use . Great ideas . Thx again !!
This channel continues to blow my mind. Thanks so much guys!
Glad to hear it! Spread the word to your drummer and audio engineer friends.
Brilliant video dudes! Seriously loving your content. Stoked to see the channel going so well too!!
Thanks so much for your support, Brody! We really appreciate it.
Just discovered this channel. Great video on floor tom sustain.
this has been the vein of my existence for so long that I just stopped using my floor tom because no matter how much I tuned it it would still resonate like crazy
Hope this helps you out!
WHAT
I am amazed at how extreme the difference makes!
Great work, please keep it up. You're teaching me a lot
I recently bought a great drum kit but I could not get the floor tom to resonate. I tried your idea of placing cymbal felts under the feet and wow what a difference. Now all the drums sound great. Thanks for the great advice and your fantastic videos, very informative.
That's great to hear! If you're looking for a more permanent solution, we've really come to love Booty Shakers: tnrproducts.com/shop/original-booty-shakers-black/
I love sustain.
Also sounds better when recorded especially with room audio.
Wow! That is amazing tips! Thanks for that!
Brilliant,, this is a great channel. keep it coming.
Thanks so much! New videos every week plus additional stuff on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!
This channel is just so helpful thanks for all the tips in these videos!! Another thing that a friend of mine did, was flip one of the floor tom legs over so the straight part of the leg was on the floor and it cut out some sustain as well!
Cheers! Watch out with the inverted floor tom leg- that may rattle and/or start to creep a bit. -Ben
Sounds Like A Drum 🤔good call that could be a problem. I’ll mention it to him
Great ideas and tips thank you.. I am experimenting right now.. Love this channel :)
Thanks for watching, Bill!
After noticing the difference between no weight and sandbag against the leg, I wonder if my stickbag hanging on the floortom (not much weight, but touching the shell over approx. 25% percent) does anything to the resonance. Gotta check that.
Love your videos, I learn so much through them 👍
this gave me the exact sound ive been trying to create , thank you
Absolutely brilliant!
Lovely bit of trickery! I would like to see more voodoo controlling sympathetic tones of all drums!
Leave the resonant head on the air tom and take it out at 2 on the floor. Love it hahahaha. Excellent and simple channel. Straight to the point !!
Cool stuff!
My floor tom suffers from over-tone, which has a pitch change towards the end. The sand bag is something I'm going to have to try.
Got me thinking thou 🤔 how about tapping the legs? That should add some form of resistance against the sustained, which will work like a sand bag, but doesn't need to be setup everytime you set the kit up at a gig!
Nice video!
I think hooking stick bag on floor tom can also control sustain
Indeed! Any extra mass that anchors the drum will shorten sustain.
Great vid, subscribed! What should I do if I'm already using moon gel and the floor tom is still ringing (it's a 16" Ludwig Classic Maple). It doesn't happen at home, where we keep the kit in a relatively small and isolated room. But it's been messing up our live mix at venues.
Thank you, great advice.
Thank you for this ressource!
Thanks for watching! Help us spread the word by sharing your favorite videos with your drummer friends.
Wow, never even heard of sandbags before. Can you get them from a music store and which brand makes ready ones? Also wonder what’s typical weight-wise?
THANK YOU SO MUCH! My floor tom sustain was driving me fucking nuts!
I have a rim mount for my floor tom. BOOOOMY
Great video! ( have you ever thought of displaying the sound waves to help illustrate issues like sustain ? I say this as it’s not always easy to detect the subtle ringing tones after the beat when watching) thx again for the excellent quality content 👍🏼🥁👍🏼
Thanks! That's something I've considered but we want you to focus on the sound. We may do frequency spectrum analysis in the future when applicable but this is all about the sound, not what it looks like. Cheers! -Ben
Cody is a drum scientist 🥁👨🔬👍
Hahaha thanks man :) putting my private nerding to good use finally!
I like what Tama did with the air filled, tom leg air pockets. Actually, I think Tama has become the industry leaders with all their hardware.
Those are really something- almost too much sustain for some of the recording scenarios we've been in with them. I made use of the cotton ball hack specifically to cut down on the sustain from a set of those. Still, super cool tech! -Ben
Great videos guy's!!! Thank you :)
this is awesome!!!!
And some dampening stuff too. Just trying to give some ideas, these are just some stuff I need to know
Another great one. I gotta 60's 16in. luddy in a Nola shotgun. Hardwood floor, 15 ft. tall ceilings and when playing alone I love the drone of that drum but I can see a new use for my sandbags. I bet a weight for a microphone stand would work too. Time to experiment.
Nice! Yep, any weight will do, though the sandbags definitely offer a nice degree of adjustability. Of course, any other weights should be wrapped in a towel or placed in a drum case to prevent metal-on-metal (unless you're getting really experimental... 🤓)
So cool.
Truth! I have a 1966 Ludwig Club Date 14" floor Tom that sounds very choked with the original legs, which are the old straight-leg, clip and spring devices without wing nuts. But hang it on a suspension mount and it comes alive. Doesn't even sound like the same drum. I'm going to use cymbal felts as mentioned and see if there is any difference in the sound.
Oh yeah man those are notorious, for sure. Let us know how it goes!
i have the same drum, and I can't get it to stop ringing. Interesting.
Let's swap! All kidding aside, I think my tom legs bind the shell, somehow. Really has a drastic difference in sound when it is mounted on a suspension mount. I am interested to see if cymbal felts or another isolation method helps the sound while it is on the legs.
Follow up on choking from Club Date floor Tom legs: I experimented today on a concrete floor (so no resonance added by the floor, and nothing to interfere with a hard floor contact) by placing a 14" 1966 Club Date floor tom on the floor as-is, which gave a very choked sound, as expected. I then put a piece of .5 inch thick, light open cell foam, doubled over to be one inch thick, under each leg. The difference was astounding. Great improvement in resonance, the drum sounded like it was on a RIMS mount. That amount of foam was nearly, but not entirely, compressed, so the drum was riding on the foam but not wiggling. So three bits of foam are now in my snare case when I use the Club Dates.
Would adding a vent hole to the actual drum help decrease resonance? I thought maybe because air and sound would be let out of the drum quicker the sound would decay faster?
lightbulb! got my leg weights by the kit, warm up with those, take em off and put em on the floor tom legs to cut down that ring!
Bretton M Oh man, perfect!
just came from your other video off your suggestion. I'm going to try the felts on my floor tom legs. I can't get them to ring out.
Man Ive been putting felts under the legs for a few years due to dealing with backline kits a majority of dates I do. Its started with tuning a floor tom and it kept choking and when i picked it up and hit, it sang. Put it on the floor and it choked. So I took the emad muffle and tore them in to 2x2 squares and put those under the fl tom feet and it worked. From there on I'd use felts OR taking napkins and folding them into squares, gaffing them as solid little floaters and use those and works all the time. Folded towels, too. Thank you for sharing this.Would you say the floor tom leg turn works in shortening sustains?
Way cool! What are you referring to with the "floor tom leg turn"?
Sounds Like A Drum I’ve been told if you turn one leg inward, it shortens the sustain. I’ve had no luck with that so I don’t know. Was just curious if you’d heard of it.
Benny Greb Said in a clinic that he uses cotton balls inside the floor Tom, so I tried it out and really really like it, since you can control the amount of sustain with the amount of cottonballs
That's a great approach too, though it take s a bit more work to remove them if you want to revert back to a previous sound (particularly in a studio environment). We like this method as it's completely external.
Sounds Like A Drum check out one of the Meinl Cymbal Videos with him the Floor Tom sounds out of this world 😍
Yep! We know the videos you're talking about. Of course, those are also close mic'd, EQ'd, and compressed for a very produced tone. You can get away with significantly more muffling when there's compression applied that will help to accentuate the roundness of the tone.
Sounds Like A Drum yeah I figured aswell that they massively eq‘d, I’m very amazed how much of gear knowledge and technical knowledge you guys have! Definitely going to try out your technique 👍🏻
You guys make the best videos :) Any ideas for a 14" hanging floor tom that rings too much? It's a thin maple shell and I love the sound of it but it just goes on forever no matter how I tune it or what heads I use... Bearing edges have also been professionally cut to a roundover 45. Perhaps adding some legs would help instead of mounting it on the "floating" Pearl optimount?
I have a hanging 16" with the Pearl Optimount and the sandbag/mass trick still works. You may need to apply mass directly onto the tom arm/bracket but it'll still do the trick. Be careful to make sure that the hardware can support that amount of weight though. You may want to experiment with different amounts of mass in addition to placement.
Thomas- This is another good approach, though it can be a real hassle to dial in, as you need to remove the head and completely retune the drum and that's assuming you get it "right" the first time. You don't always have that kind of time to kill in a studio session.
Awesome! Thanks for the responses guys. I'll probably try both methods 🙂
I use backline kits most of the time, and I find that where the drum sits on the mount can also have a large and immediate effect on the sustain. For example, Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute toms are the most common backline I run into. Simply sliding the drum further onto, or off of the hexagonal mount can make a big difference, with no addition of any external dampening. This is not as true with suspension systems like the Pearl Optimount etc.
I really like this channel, great job! What kind of sand bag is it? Made yourself? Best regards from Sweden.
Thanks! That's just a standard sand bag that you might find at a venue or studio for holding down lighting gear, mic stands, etc.
One of my favorite drummers was Jim Gordon and he has this incredible floor tom sound that he gets on fills where the pitch of the tom bends. Particularly on Johnny Rivers song "Rocking Pneumonia And The Boggie Woggie Flu". Do you know how this is achieved? This was recorded before Pro Tools was available so the bend of the toms on his fills were real time recording. I just thought I'd see if you know what I am referring to. It's such a cool sound.
This has quickly become one of my top 3 favorite drum channels. This has been a really big problem for me. I love where my floor Tom is tunes, sounds perfect! But it hums for DAYS!!! And the kick sets it off too. I’m gonna try this. I also wonder what the effect of having something hanging against the shell would be, like my stick bag? Should have a similar effect in keeping the shell from vibrating as much right?
Yup! Hanging stick bag is a great solution too 👍🏻 -Cody
One of the best ways to control/shorten the floor tom sustain is to simply put 1 square of toilet paper (2 max) inside the drum. The TP will lay on the reso head and apply the perfect amount of dampening to the note without really changing the tonal characteristics of the drum very much. Just my $.02
Costs less then $.02 too.
Great tip!!
great tip. but does is work with anything else than sandbags?
The idea is to apply mass to anchor the drum. Sandbags and/or stage weights can be found at almost any venue and every studio. In a pinch, putting some weight in a snare case can have a similar effect.
Thanks a lot
Do bass drum next. And possibly get to some cymbal stuff?
Bass drum tuning will be coming up soon. Cymbals will be a large topic to take on later this year and into 2019.
Awesome!!!
good one... thanks!
Wow 😮 Thanks 👌👍
4:35 your animations just got drunk 🤣🤣🤣
"Rock stops" used by cellists and bass players could easily keep floor tom legs elevated.
For commercial products we swear by the Booty Shakers from TnR Products.
Love this channel.
My floor tom is the one drum that I just can't get the sound right. I can't wait to try these later.
Let us know how this works for you. Still, you'll have to get it tuned to provide the tone you're looking for but this will help control the sustain. Cheers!
Nice vid man 👍 also first comment :)
What about mounted floor toms?
That's definitely worth addressing in a future video. Thanks for the feedback! -Ben
Great hack
I had the bass amp feed back problem and I couldn't figure it out.
It can be a tough one if the amp is right near/pointed at you. Some of this can't be helped much by tuning and will require adjusting the angle of the amp and/or just coping with it.
😰 Wow!! I never came to thought about weight on the legs. In the first example, I noticed that it created lots of disonances within the shell which clashed toghether and canceled the resonance quickly. I think a stick bag around the floor tom might also do the trick, right?
I think it's how tunning works too, right? Do we seek for disonances between heads for more 'thud' and less resonance and vice versa? Please, correct me if I'm wrong.
Hey there! Yes in the first (extreme) example you can definitely hear some dissonance. I don’t think that’s really what we want to go after if we’re after more thud necessarily but it can accentuate that part of the sound. I’d never put THAT much weight on there in a real situation, the later more subtle use of the sandbag is more my speed. If you have a good sized stick bag that’d have a noticeable effect too!
Can’t sustain be controlled by top/ bottom head interval? Larger interval= less sustain?
also curious about this
To a certain degree, yes. Though this will also alter the tone of the drum. Adding mass or suspending the legs will allow you to control sustain independently of tonal modifications.
So Are you saying, find a likeable relation, say minor 3rd, between top and bottom heads, and adjust sustain with head choice? Maybe go to a coated G2 on the bottom? Please elaborate.
diedraak1 I threw a coated g2 on the bottom head of my 14 inch club date and I only got overtones out of the drum. no actual drum noise.
Dillon- That's likely because you had too much mass you'd need to move in order to get the resonant head vibrating. As a result, you were only really hearing the impact and a bit of resonance from the batter head and/or overtone from the resonant head.
I've heard of people throwing balls of paper down the floor tom if they want tone but don't want it to ring
You can reverse a leg or three to ground the drum more and kill sustain
Yes though, depending on the floor, that may create rattle and/or drum creep.
Really..? was that simple? haha I'm gonna hang my drumsticks on it! Done! :)
Db and F is a major third not a minor third right?
Yep, definitely is :) Long shoot and too much coffee on the brain right there LOL
Db and F is not a minor third...
*Major 3rd (too much coffee on set 😬)
Who knew!!!
someone should market tom bags $$$$
What if my floor tom have no legs? 😆.. it's on a clamp 😥
Are you seeking more or less sustain?
@@SoundsLikeADrum More! , the head i have is a remo ambassador coated and it's really hard to tune and the sound it's dead! (the head is old, that's maybe why)
Obviously you are unable to tune or purchase the correct heads for your Ply, Diameter and depth of each drum per Reso and Batter heads.
Oh? How so? We're able to purchase any drumhead we'd like. This hack allows for literally the most immediate AND significant change in sustain while maintaining the same quality of tone. Consider the practical applications (we've encountered both of these): When you get to sound check and the floor tom sounds great but sustains for too long or you're getting sounds for a session and the engineer remarks that the floor tom is just going wild beyond the close mics, this does the trick.
Sandbags?..crazy!...all you need to do is put a suppression pad on the floor directly underneath the drum...problem solved...sandbags hanging on a floor tom kills the sound...you can hear it immediately here...🤔
Actually the sandbag did exactly what we wanted it to do- shorten the sustain without dramatically influencing the timbre. A suppression pad affects the tone of the drum too much to do what we were looking for here. Cheers!
@@SoundsLikeADrum ok great...I'm going to try this out 🥁
Actually we, live engineers, always put gates on close drum mics. Sorry, but that's the practical truth 🤷🏻♂️