Floor Tom Technique

In todays drum lesson we are learning an awesome fill played between your kick and floor tom.

Floor tom technique.

Cut the boxy frequencies until you hear your toms getting thicker. If you use two mics place one above each drum about 1 to 3 inches above. After getting the main overhead sounding good take a mic cable hold one end to the center of the snare and bring it up to the grille of the main overhead then loop the excess cable back to the kick beater. The higher rack toms do not rely on as much thump but the floor toms and more resonant rack toms will.

I d pick up a couple packs as they re inexpensive and it never hurts to have extras lying around. Add the lows add more lows to get a thicker tom sound. The only difference is that the hi hat pattern is played on the floor tom instead. This exercise is a great way of showing you how to come up with tom tom drum beats by just moving ride patterns from the hi hat ride to the toms.

This can also be problematic if the toms take up too much room and make it difficult to fit them into the track among the other instruments. If they are big the record results in a big sound. Exercise 2 is basically the previous drum beat with extra 16th notes on the ah of counts 2 and 4. Once the compound is dry make another sweep with your electric sander to shave down slight differences in the height of the subfloor and even out rough patches.

You can clean them with soap and water and essentially make them brand new btw. If you use one mic place it between the two drums about 4 to 6 inches away from the heads figure 3 shows this placement option. Place the mic 2 or 3 inches over the head and above the. The tom toms sound best when using a dynamic mic.

Sand the entire floor. For the mounted toms the ones above the kick drum you can use one or two mics. Toms often help determine the sound of a record. Moon gels are 7 99 for a 6 pack.

Thump is an important quality for all of the drums and the toms are no different. Sand from one end of the room to the other pushing the sander along in a straight line and reversing your direction each time you reach the opposite wall. Moon gels you can add more moon gels per drum for a damper sound i use 3 or 4 on my floor toms. An extended version of this technique that i use often is to position the 2nd overhead equidistant to the snare and kick.

Shure beta 52a shure pg 52 shure pg 56 sh. Toms suffering from a lack of low end thump can be augmented in the 100 250hz range. G1 clear no muff mics. Big floor toms have a fuller sound around 80 100 hz but smaller toms might need to be boosted even higher around 100 200 hz.

Floor tom mic shootout drum. You can use the beater to hold the 2nd cable end for convenience. This is the low end rumble and resonance of the drum.