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Cocktail drums are a type of portable drum kit which combines bass drum and snare drum sounds in a single drum.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2008) |
Cocktail drums are a type of portable drum kit which combines bass drum and snare drum sounds in a single drum.
Cocktail drums were first put into production in the 1940s with the Carlton combo kit, consisting of a vertical 20 inch bass drum, a snare drum, cymbal and other assorted percussion.
In some episodes of I Love Lucy (1951–57), Ricky Ricardo's band featured a man playing one (according to cocktail drummer Billy Conway). [1]
Eventually the companies Slingerland, Ludwig-Musser and Gretsch began producing cocktail drums that are more similar to what is used today. The typical drum consisted of a floor tom that was 14 inches in diameter and 24 to 26 inches tall, with both top and bottom drumheads. The bottom head was struck via a foot-pedal-operated beater and tuned to achieve a bass drum sound. The top head was struck with sticks. The top head is also fitted with a snare underneath to achieve a snare drum sound. The drum's height would normally require the musician to play it standing upright with one foot operating the pedal and one foot bearing the weight of the musician's body (as opposed to a trap set that is played sitting down). This made the drum quite easy to move from place to place, as opposed to moving a snare drum, stand for the snare drum, stool and bass drum for a trap set. However the tradeoff for this ease of transportation is the practice and balance required to play the instrument that is unnecessary when playing a trap set.
Use of cocktail sets in modern music remains relatively rare but does remain a viable alternative for drummers looking to maximize portability and/or minimize stage space normally taken by the drum set. It is also useful as an alternative to a traditional drum set for providing a "retro" or "off-beat" appearance to a group.
Some more modern cocktail drums are fitted with a baffle. The baffle is of a non-resonant material to prevent the bottom head's vibration from interacting with and "buzzing" the snare, which creates a sound much closer to that of two separate drums. Others use a small snare drum that is clamped or mounted in some fashion to the cocktail drum. This leaves the top head free to be used as a tom with the snares removed. The clamp provides the musician with a secure place for the snare drum without the added inconvenience of using a snare drum stand. Using two separate drums in this manner makes both drums easier to tune and provides much more consistent sound.
Holders for cymbals, tom drums, cowbells and other various percussion instruments can be mounted to the cocktail drum depending on the musicians' needs. This makes the instrument very personal and few cocktail drums today are alike.
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a percussion mallet, to produce sound. There is usually a resonant head on the underside of the drum. Other techniques have been used to cause drums to make sound, such as the thumb roll. Drums are the world's oldest and most ubiquitous musical instruments, and the basic design has remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years.
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals, and sometimes other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The drummer typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks, and uses their feet to operate hi-hat and bass drum pedals.
A hi-hat is a combination of two cymbals and a pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Hi-hats consist of a matching pair of small to medium-sized cymbals mounted on a stand, with the two cymbals facing each other. The bottom cymbal is fixed and the top is mounted on a rod which moves the top cymbal toward the bottom one when the pedal is depressed.
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments. In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of idiophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone.
The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter much greater than the drum's depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. The heads may be made of calfskin or plastic and there is normally a means of adjusting the tension either by threaded taps or by strings. Bass drums are built in a variety of sizes, but size does not dictate the volume produced by the drum. The pitch and the sound can vary much with different sizes, but the size is also chosen based on convenience and aesthetics. Bass drums are percussion instruments and vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished.
A floor tom or low tom is a double-headed tom-tom drum which usually stands on the floor on three legs. However, they can also be attached to a cymbal stand with a drum clamp, or supported by a rim mount. It is a cylindrical drum without snare wires, and tend to produce a booming, resonant sound which can vary in pitch.
A rhythm section is a group of musicians within a music ensemble or band that provides the underlying rhythm, harmony and pulse of the accompaniment, providing a rhythmic and harmonic reference and "beat" for the rest of the band. The rhythm section is often contrasted with the roles of other musicians in the band, such as the lead guitarist or lead vocals whose primary job is to carry the melody.
Marching percussion instruments are percussion instruments specially designed to be played while moving. This is achieved by attaching the drum(s) to a special harness worn by the drummer, although not all marching bands use such harnesses and instead use traditional baldrics to sling their drums.
Rogers Drums is an American multinational drum manufacturer. It was founded in 1849 and originally based in Covington, Ohio. During the twentieth century, their drums enjoyed popularity with musicians spanning from the Dixieland jazz era in the 1920s to classic rock in the 1960s and 1970s, but was particularly associated with big band and swing drummers of the 1940s and 1950s.
Pearl Musical Instrument Company, simply known as Pearl, is a multinational corporation based in Japan with a wide range of products, predominantly percussion instruments.
Electronic drums are a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sounds and a set of pads, usually constructed in a shape to resemble drums and cymbals, which are equipped with electronic sensors to send an electronic signal to the sound module which outputs a sound. Like acoustic drums, the pads are struck by drum sticks and they are played in a similar manner to an acoustic drum kit, albeit with some differences in the drumming experience.
Carter Anthony Beauford is an American drummer, percussionist, and founding member of Dave Matthews Band. He is known for his ability to adapt to a variety of genres, and both his ambidextrous and his open-handed drumming styles. He plays the drums and sings backing vocals in the band. Beauford was ranked number 10 by a Rolling Stone magazine reader's poll in 2010 for greatest drummers of all-time.
Daniel John Erlandsson is a Swedish musician, best known as the drummer in the melodic death metal band Arch Enemy and Brujeria.
Pacific Drums and Percussion is a musical instrument brand established by the Drum Workshop Inc., in 1999, with the purpose of providing its percussion instruments at more affordable prices.
Damon Che is a rock drummer and guitarist. He has contributed to indie rock and progressive rock through his work with math rock pioneers Don Caballero since 1991. His style is heavily influenced by metal, hard rock, punk, jazz, and fusion.
Thomas Lang is an Austrian drummer. He is the founding member of the Los Angeles–based progressive/avant garde metal band stOrk and is known for his international session work on a wide variety of genres such as rock, pop, jazz, and heavy metal with artists such as Robert Fripp, and Sugababes, among many others.
Simmons is an electronic drum brand, which originally was a pioneering British manufacturer of electronic drums. Founded in 1978 by Dave Simmons, it supplied electronic kits from 1980 to 1998. The drums' distinctive, electronic sound can be found on countless albums from the 1980s. The company closed in 1999 and the Simmons name is currently owned by Guitar Center.
Drum hardware is the set of parts of a drum or drum kit that are used to tension, position, and otherwise support the instruments themselves.
A tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snares, named from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala language. It was added to the drum kit in the early part of the 20th century. Most toms range in size between 6 and 20 inches in diameter, though floor toms can go as large as 24 inches (61 cm).
Walberg and Auge is a United States drum kit and hardware manufacturer established in 1903 in Worcester, Massachusetts by Barney Walberg. Walberg and Auge is considered by some to be, "the biggest unknown name in the history of twentieth-century American percussion." The brand is credited with several innovations in musical instruments and associated hardware including the development of the modern hi-hat stand and shell-mounted tom-tom holder. The magazine Modern Drummer detailed the origin story of the modern hi-hat configuration: "After months of experimenting, Walberg's company extended the inner rod and outer tube of his low hat stand to about waist high so he could play the cymbals with his hand as well as his feet." The pivotal innovation was sold by every major drum company under the rubric "Perfection Hats."