gotspit

the.absolute.basics

The Basic Kit

The drum kit, a standard bit of equipment for most bands, normally consists of a kick drum (bass drum), a snare, cymbals, high hat, and a number of other accessories, such as wood block and tambourine.

Kick Drum

The kick drum is the lowest bass drum in a standard drum kit. Normally the big round one that is stood on its side, it is operated by a mallet attached to a foot pedal. The syllables I use to imitate them are: db, lb, tb, and the all-encompassing grunt. However, I practice often on spoken syllables (often using "doo" or "dih").

The kick is a combination of attack and mute. The attack I normally use is a combination of the 'd' sound and the 't' sound. If you put your hand in front of your mouth when you say the word "tea" and compare it to saying "dee," you'll notice that there is a little puff of air in the first. That's the kind of attack that you want, but the placement of the tongue is closer to that of the 'd' sound.

Making that sound is a little easier with the mute. I put my lips together gently and let them muffle the sound a little. (That's where the 'b' comes in.) Your lips don't do much work.

There are other ways of making a kick and modifying this kick. Some VPs like to grunt at the same time as the attack to give the drum a little fuller of a sound. Another way that one can make a kick drum is to use a 'p' sound to pop the mic. You can also put together fast-sounding kick drums by adding either a 'b' or a 'g' to your kick drum vocab: "d-b-d-b" or "d-g-d-g" are good drills.

Toms

The toms are pitched drums. I normally do a kick and just pitch it. Thacher mentions that toms should be pitched a fourth apart.

Snares

Generally the imitative snare is the hardest drum to control and the drum with the highest learning curve. Noises that can be used for mid-level drums, such as a rimshot or a wood block, are easier to pick up and can be used for a number of songs. But the most popular, and by far the messiest, is the 'pf' or the 'pth' drum. This particular drum has an attack and a falloff. The attack is a simple 'p', though it is tight enough to create a sound (somewhat akin to how brass players can make a tone). You should find a tone that is easy for you to make and try to make your drum stay on that same pitch each time. The falloff is what gives the drum its particular style. More synthesized drums tend to have a longer falloff, while different drums have their individual falloff rates.

Cymbals

The cymbals are the highest-pitched. The basic cymbal is the crash cymbal. Many kits have multiple crash cymbals of different sizes and different pitches. The second cymbal is the high-hat. The high-hat is two cymbals placed face-to-face so that they mute each other when resting.

The crash tends to have a pretty hard hit (k or t) and end with a "shhh" sound - this means that most cymbals are kshhhh or chshhh. A cymbal doesn't have a mute, so it tends to have a pretty long falloff. The high-hat, however, tends to be a little more muted and the falloff more controlled. My high-hat tends to be a 'ts', no matter what the length of the falloff.

Other Noises

Wood block and rimshots A rimshot is a hit near or on the side of a snare drum. It's a fast, explosive sound much like the wood block. I tend to use a "kuh" (unvoiced) for a rimshot. The wood block is very similar, at a "koh". It's generally used in the place of a middle-range drum (snare, tom). It's great for slower songs. Both of these, if used often or in fast songs, can get you really dry. Make sure you have water on hand.

Paul Kim from Columbia University's Jubilation! wrote this little article on the how-tos of VP. Thanks for the link, Paul!

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