Drum stick
A drum stick is a type of percussion mallet used particularly for playing snare drum, drum kit and some other percussion instruments, and particularly for playing untuned percussion.
Specialised beaters used on some other percussion instruments, such as the metal beater or wand used with a triangle, and particularly beaters or mallets used with tuned percussion such as xylophone and tympani, are not normally referred to as drum sticks. Drum sticks generally have all of the following characteristics:
- They are normally supplied and used in pairs.
- They are held in the hands, most often one in each hand.
- They may be used to play at least some sort of drum (as well as other instruments).
- They are normally used only for untuned percussion.
For other percussion beaters see percussion mallet.
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[edit] Types
[edit] Simple drum sticks
The most common and prototypical drum stick is turned from a single piece of wood, most commonly of hickory, less commonly of maple, and least commonly but still in significant numbers, of oak[1].
The tip or bead is the part most often used to strike the instrument. Originally and still commonly of the same piece of wood as the rest of the stick, sticks with nylon tips have also been available since 1958, originally conceived by Jonathan Pumphrey and Joe Calato in Niagara Falls, NY. In the 1970s, an acetal tip was introduced, designed by Ken Drinan and Paul Kiersted.
Tips of whatever material are of various shapes, including acorn, barrel, oval and round.
The shoulder of the stick is the part that tapers towards the tip, and is normally slightly convex. It is often used for playing the bell of a cymbal, and for the loudest strokes on a wood block. It can also used to produce a cymbal crash when applied to the bow or rim of a cymbal, and for playing ride patterns on china, swish and pang cymbals.
The shaft is the body of the stick, and is cylindrical for most applications including drum kit and orchestral work. It is used for playing cross stick and rim shots, and applied to the rim of a cymbal for the loudest cymbal crashes.
The butt is the opposite end of the stick to the tip. Some rock musicians use it rather than the tip.
Plain wooden drum sticks are most commonly described using a number to describe the weight and diameter of the stick followed by one or more letters to describe the tip. For example, a 7A is a common jazz stick with a wooden tip, while a 7N is the same weight of stick with a nylon tip, and a 7B is a wooden tip but with a different tip profile, shorter and rounder than a 7A. A 5A is a common wood tipped rock stick, heavier than a 7A but with a similar profile. The numbers are most commonly odd but even numbers are used occasionally, in the range 2 (heaviest) to 9 (lightest).
The exact meanings of both numbers and letters differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, and some sticks are not described using this system at all, just being known as Jazz (typically a 7N or 8N) or Heavy Rock (typically a 4B or 5B) for example. The most general purpose stick is a 5A (wood tip, for snare tone) or 5N (nylon tip, for cymbal tone).
Drum sticks of the traditional form are also made from metal, carbon fibre and other modern materials.
[edit] Soft sticks
Soft-headed percussion mallets, such as cartwheel mallets, are called soft sticks when used in a drum kit.
They are used particularly for single-beat rolls on thin crash cymbals, and on tom-tom drums to produce a boomier sound with little attack similar to a tympani stroke.
The shafts are commonly made from wood, fibreglass or similar materials, the heads from rubber, felt or other textiles, and the heads are sometimes covered with leather or cloth.
[edit] Rutes
Rutes are sticks composed of bundles of wooden canes, normally of birch wood or bamboo, and have been part of orchestral percussion for many years. They were introduced to kit drumming by the 1985 release of the patented Pro-Mark Hot Rod.
Several other models from Pro-Mark (Cool Rods, Lightning Rods, Thunder Rods) and other manufacturers (Vater SplashStick and AcouStick, Vic Firth Rute, and others) quickly followed. The tone produced by most rutes can be adjusted by moving a colar along the shaft of the stick.
[edit] Brushes
Steel brushes have been part of Jazz drumming for many years, used particularly on the snare drum. More recently, nylon brushes have become available that produce a sound intermediate between a steel brush and a rute. Some nylon brushes can be used partly extended for an even more rute-like effect, particularly in very soft passages.
Some beaters such as the Vater AcouStick combine nylon strips with wooden canes, and are part nylon brush and part rute.
[edit] Others
Many specialised sticks are produced, including:
- Sticks with no tips, instead being a plain cylinder of wood with rounded or slightly rounded ends:
- Sticks with two butt ends for kit drummers who prefer to use the butt end of the stick. An example is the Zildjian Absolute Rock, also known as the double bummer.
- Timbale sticks, which are similar to double-butt kit drum sticks, but lighter in weight and smaller in diameter, and have a hemispherical end for playing.
- Bachi sticks used for Japanese Taiko drumming, in many weights and lengths.
- Sticks with no butt, but a drumstick tip at one end and a soft mallet head at the other, for quick changes between the different sounds produced by hard and soft sticks.
- Sticks that combine a drumstick tip at one end with a serated beater on the stick body, for use with some latin jazz rhythms.
- Side drum sticks, simple all-wood sticks with conical bodies tapering towards the head and no shoulder:
- Used by pipe band side drummers.
- Heavier sticks with the same profile used by some military band drummers, for example the band of the Royal Marines.
- The heaviest of all of this pattern used by re-enactors of American Civil War and other historical settings featuring side drums. (The most authentic drums are also larger than modern side drums, to better compete with the gunfire.)
- Sticks for Korean drums:
- The gungchae is used on the bass head of the janggu, and is composed of a bamboo root shaft with a hard rounded head of birch wood or antler. Although it has a large head giving a similar appearance to a soft stick, the head is actually hard.
- The yeolchae is used on the treble head of the janggu, and is composed of a strip of giant bamboo.
- Sticks for playing hand drums, with a pad that imitates a hand, made by Regaltip and others.
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[edit] Techniques
[edit] Grip
There are two main ways of holding drumsticks:
- Traditional grip, in which right and left hands use different grips.
- Matched grip, in which the two hand grips are mirror-image.
Traditional grip was developed to conveniently play a snare drum while marching, and was documented and popularised by Sanford A. Moeller in The Art of Snare Drumming (1925). It was the standard grip for kit drummers in the first half of the twentieth century and remains popular, and the standard grip for most snare drummers.
Matched grips are normal for most other instruments, and became popular for kit drumming towards the middle of the twentieth century, threatening to displace the conventional grip for kit drumming. However the traditional grip has since made a comeback, and both grips are still used and promoted by leading kit drummers and teachers.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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