Drum Tension

How To Take Care Of Your Drum Heads

Taking care to drum set is essential to the professional drummer. One of the most important things take a look at is your drum heads. If you are new to drumming here are some tips with regard to your drum heads, when and how to change them.

One of the most important things to do regularly is change the drum heads. In time, the skin will eventually weaken where you strike it the most, causing the tension to change. A weaker skin is more likely to dent, or even puncture with harder hits. In addition, a weaker skin will have little rebound for your stick. One of the best guidelines and knowing when you should change your drum heads is just by feel. When the sound changes or the rebound changes to good indication of the new to change the heads.

Snare drum heads usually need to be changed twice as often as tom heads. The reason for this is common sense. You spend more time on your snare drum head than any other surface except maybe your high hat cymbals or you ride cymbals. Just like your other drum heads you'll know it's time to change the snare head when I feel changes or the sound changes. You may want to carry a spare head in your kit at all times because the head tends to crack at the worst possible time.

Once the drum heads have been removed check the bearing edges for cracks in the shell or bearing edge deformities. It does no harm to take a candle and gently rub a bit of wax around the bearing edges to help smooth movement of the skin over the edge. Always ensure that all lumps of wax are removed before fitting the head.

Before you begin to play, rub a little bit of clear water into the back of the skin. This lets the skin stretch a little. If you are playing in a warm place the skin will tighten up again as you play, so you will probably need to do this more than once. If the skin has become a bit too damp and is very slack, it can be tightened by vigorous rubbing with the palm of your hand.

Know that the skins or the heads will shift and change in the first few weeks of ownership, so you will probably need to readjust attention and tuning while you're at heads adjust and stretch.

Lastly, when choosing drum heads there were a few things to consider. There's much debate as to whether clear drum heads or quoted drum heads are better. Neither are coated better. It just depends on what sound you're looking for. Clear heads will give you a brighter harder attack while coated head typically use you all warmer denser sound. Rock and hip-hop typically uses clear heads while jazz and big band opts for the coated heads.

About the Author

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Drum Tension

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