Does it matter REALLY what wood(s) your drums are made of? Part Five in series on drum physics!

does the type of wood that your drums are made of matter and what are the differences between all the tone Woods anyway well we're going to unpack all of that coming up next [Music] hey my name is Joel this video is a long time incoming because it's a pretty complicated subject but one that I've been asked a bunch over the last few months to cover basically ever since I started talking about drum physics and why trumps sound the way they sound now if you've watched the previous videos in this series I first discussed Mass the effect of mass of the drum shell on the sound of the drum and then I went from there to bearing edges talking about primarily the two main types rounded or sharp bearing edges and then some discussion of the variations of those and then I talked about plastic wrap versus lacquer or sprayed on painted finishes and the impact of that on the sound of the drum and then lastly I talked about drum head selection and the characteristics of the different types of heads and all of that and I've had a lot of people ask about well what about the wood that's used to make the drum does it matter at all and what are the differences between those tone woods and it's a big topic the short answer is yes it matter others depending on your application though it may not so much but it is definitely worth discussion and there's a lot of discussion about that that I don't ever see happening people always just talk about the sound of the wood and they don't really talk about why the sound is the way it is and I think that's something that people hopefully will find interesting and hopefully informative and if you're in the market for a drum kit maybe it'll help you decide on what kinds of drums to buy so when you think of tone Woods for a drum what comes to mind I'm guessing probably Maple uh or mahogany or maybe the Vintage American shells that were like Maple Poplar uh or mahogany Poplar and if you're a fan of sonar drums maybe you're thinking of beach because sonar used a beach for a long time or maybe you're a fan of Japanese drums like Yamaha Tama Pearl in which case maybe Birch comes to mind when you think about tone wood that was a very common tone wood in the high-end Japanese drums or maybe you're thinking of more the stencil era kits of Japan from the 60s and 70s that were made of Luan the dreaded Luan also known as Philippine mahogany though it's really not part of the mahogany family that's actually a little bit more of a marketing thing than reality more recently Boutique Brands and really high-end lines for manufacturers like DW and Tama are getting into more esoteric or exotic Woods things like babinga or cherry or walnut that aren't as familiar to those of us who have been on drums all our lives but they're valid choices and they have great properties for making really fine instruments so what are the differences between all these Woods well first of all the woods look different they have different colors some are dark some are light some are brown some are red there are various colors that are just part of the wood itself and then they also some of them have really strong grains and some of them maybe have non-existent grains and they take stain really well to accentuate those grains and they just look exotic you have flame Maple you have Bird's Eye Maple and you've got various other exotic Woods you've got ebony Bubinga it's kind of cool looking Rosewood obviously there are lots of different types of woods that are used more for Aesthetics than Sonics so maybe they'll make the shell say out of maple but then they'll put a single veneer on the outside of some exotic wood that has a really beautiful grain and they'll either stay in it or clear coat it or do some other sort of gloss satin whatever finish for the Aesthetics of the drum that's more for appearance not so much for the Sonic performance and it's worth mentioning but of course when people ask the question what's the difference between the different Woods for making drums usually they're talking about sound so what is a tone wood anyway tone wood is a wood that's meant to vibrate and create or contribute to a tone perhaps the most obvious examples of tone Woods are in the manufacture of quality acoustic guitars I can think of three right off the top of my head that are very very popular for acoustic guitars and that would be mahogany and Maple and Rosewood mahogany as any guitarist knows is a very kind of Punchy mid-range characteristic not very extended on the lows or the highs very detailed in the mids great for making folk guitars or maybe just kind of strumming along guitars Maple is a much brighter sounding wood it has a much brighter characteristic brighter harmonics it's a little bit more penetrating a little bit more aggressive it pairs well with larger jumbo type designs where they get the body and the and the Mass from the size of the guitar but they get the clarity from the use of maple for the back and sides and then obviously Rosewood back and sides generally produce a really rich low frequency response kind of scooped in the mid-range which is great for clearing room for a vocal so for singer-songwriter types Rosewood is an excellent wood and it also has a really articulate high frequency response so it's a very opulent sound extended lows clear highs and like I say kind of a tapered or scooped mid-range that really allows for the presence of the voice to sit on top so those are very distinctive sounds and if you're a guitarist or have ever spent time listening to various types of acoustic guitars you know that the wood that they're made with has a huge impact on the sound so what about drums does the type of wood used in a drum shell impact the sound of that drum to the same degree that wood in a guitar impacts the sound of the guitar well not really and why is that well unlike guitars drums are plywood instruments they're literally made of plywood plywood is not a flattering turn and it probably brings to mind uh your home improvement store and and the lumber section right and you've got plywood of uh you know Pine and Cedar and Redwood and all that kind of stuff and you can go build an addition to your house with it that's not what I'm talking about but literally drums are plywood say take a maple drum for example they take veneers of maple two or maybe three sheets of veneer with glue in between and then put them in a press and glue it together to make a plywood sheath that's maybe two or three Plies thick then they'll take those two or three ply sheets and then put them in a circular cylindrical mold and then form that into an actual finished shell so they may make a six-ply shell out of two three-ply sheets or three two ply sheets or make an eight ply shell for instance out of two three ply sheets and a two ply sheet or something like that so they ultimately come up with a certain number of Plies but it's still plywood it's high quality plywood hopefully but it's still plywood when you take lots of pieces of wood and glue them together none of those pieces no matter how thin they are really get a chance to truly vibrate so it may not impact the sound of the drums quite in the same way it impacts the sound of a guitar but it definitely has an impact and how does it impact the drum sound well firstly it affects the volume or the projection of the drum it determines the Timbre of the drum the characteristic of the sound it also impacts the drum's ability to sustain and it also impacts the playability of the drum that playability I literally mean kind of how the drum feels obviously this is not something that's important to someone listening to the drums but as a drummer as someone who's playing the drum the characteristics of the wood definitely impacts the feel Woods differ in hardness some are hard and some are soft some are dense and some are not so dense and then all Woods have a measurable elastic property and now what do I mean by elastic well it's has to do with the physics of deformation if you apply a force to something it may give under that force and deform a little bit but once that force is removed if it returns to its original shape it is said to be elastic wood can be more or less elastic depending upon the species wood in general is not a material that is considered an elastic material but it does have measurable properties of elasticity there's a point at which you can apply a force to Wood and it will give or deform I believe is actually the technical verb under that force and then when released will return to its natural shape and of course obviously there's a point at which you apply so much force that it's no longer elastic it takes on a plastic characteristic and by plastic I don't mean that it's made of plastic but rather it's an adjective it's describing the behavior of the wood an elastic response would be that when the force is removed it goes back to shape but if it deforms under force and then when you remove the force it stays deformed that's called plasticity so all of those things combine density and hardness and elasticity to create a visceral experience for the player so some drums feel amazing to play other drums not so much and generally higher quality drums will respond better to the player's touch and that's not something to be taken lightly because I can tell you as a drummer I play better when I'm comfortable with the instrument than when I'm just sort of having to force myself to play perhaps the most common species of wood used for professional drums in the Western World anyway is maple so specifically sugar maple also called hard maple its scientific name is Acer saccharum and it is the tree that is native to the northeastern part of North America this is the tree whose Leaf is featured on the Canadian flag and yes sugar maple is the tree that is used to produce maple syrup but not only does it sap wood produce maple syrup but its sapwood is also what we use to make really fine quality drums it is a hardwood which is kind of a misleading name because not all Hardwoods are hard a hardwood is actually just a wood that comes from a flowering tree a tree that reproduces through flowering or producing fruit whereas soft Woods come from trees that produce seeds so when you think like a pine cone seeds that's a soft wood Pine is a soft wood and the maple is a hardwood as is Oak but Poplar which is a hardwood is actually much softer than say yellow pine or red cedar which are soft woods but they're much harder than pop so hardwood softwood why they call it that I don't exactly know but it really has to do with how the trees reproduce more so than the wood hardness itself but while we are using words like hard and soft let's talk about the hardness of wood the hardness of wood is measured on What's called the Janka scale created about probably a little over 100 Years Ago by a fella named Gabriel Jenka and he decided that a little steel ball bearing that was 7 16 of an inch however much force was required to bury that thing into a piece of wood halfway that amount of force would be its Janka rating or its hardness rating and in North America that number is measured in what's called pounds force and so for sugar maple the Janka rating is 14.50 or 1450 pounds Force to sink that steel ball bearing halfway into a block of sugar maple Poplar on the other hand has a Janka rating of 540 or roughly one-third ish the hardness of maple so it is much much softer and why is hardness important for building a quality drum well a hardwood is going to provide a hard bearing Edge which is going to be a very solid surface upon which to tension and tune your drums and harder Woods are also generally denser Woods when it comes to hardness and density those two are fairly related that is to say that Woods that have a really high hardness rating tend to be more dense Woods for example sugar maple which has a janca rating of 1450 actually has a dried weight of 44 pounds per cubic foot so you know you think of a cubic foot of dried hard maple sugar maple weighs 44 pounds and compare that to Poplar with its Jenga rating of 540 roughly one-third the hardness of Maple and a cubic foot of dried Poplar weighs in at about 29 pounds so it is much less dense in general when it comes to the woods that we use in building drums for the most part the harder Woods are more dense now why is density important well if you go back to my first video in this series I talk about mass and the effect of Mass on the sound of a drum and drums that have more mass produce a stronger fundamental note if you have not seen that video I will link to it below if you find this interesting I think you'll find that interesting too but if you have seen that then you know that drums with more mass produce a stronger fundamental note which means it has a more solid low end literally but because those woods tend to be more dense that means they're more tightly grained as well which means it's a harder smoother more consistent surface and that actually does a good job of reflecting higher frequencies a little bit more so than porous wood porous Woods on the other hand which also tend to be a little less dense have the tendency to diffuse and absorb frequencies specifically high frequencies which don't have that much energy to begin with that results in a mellower sound but because those woods also tend to be less dense that also means less fundamental so you have less low end and you have less high end it's a more mid-range sounding drum typically isn't considered to be as nice sounding and as a result less of this less of that it's actually a quieter drum now I know nobody considers anyone pounding away on a drum even an inexpensive drum to be particularly quiet but literally there is less sound happening harder denser Woods will produce a stronger fundamental and typically produce more harmonic as well so you tend to get kind of everything in the full spectrum it's a louder overall sound it projects further and it's just a more complete sound that really allows you to use head choice and tuning to really shape that sound into what you want it to be so with this much in mind so far I like to break things down and make things as simple as possible so just like I did in the bearing Edge video where I basically broke all the various edges down into two camps round edges and sharp edges and if you haven't seen that video I'll link to that one below too because I think you'll find it interesting but just as there's sort of two schools of thought there there's basically sort of two major camps when it comes to drum tone woods and one by far is preferable for a quality instrument and the other is preferable primarily to make things a bit more affordable and that is to have hard dense wood making really good quality instruments and softer more porous wood which tends to be more affordable it tends to be faster growing most of those species and so it's it's it's plentiful and it's less expensive and so it's a cost-effective way of making an entry-level instrument between those two there is a tolerably wide range of options Joe you're killing me get to it does it matter yes and no and stick with me real quick doesn't matter yes when you're sitting in the room listening to the drums it absolutely affects the sound of the drums all of these characteristics different tone Woods will produce different sounds when you're in the room I say that because there are situations where it doesn't seem to impact the sound in a really measurable way specifically when you start putting microphones on the drums now why is that well because microphones impart their own characteristics all microphones have a distortion spec all microphones have a frequency response they have an Impulse response which is how they handle transients hello drums transients for days right and the microphones also have proximity effect usually because you're using directional microphones and most all directional designs impart on artificial low frequency enhancement as you get close to the drum and when you mic drums with multiple microphones you're putting a mic on each drum sometimes more than one really close which means you're getting that artificial proximity effect so that's a lot of color that has nothing to do with the tone wood so the mics are going to have their own characteristics dynamically and frequency wise and then you plug those microphones oftentimes if you're fortunate to have a nice collection of vintage microphone preamps which have a really rich sound then you're talking probably Transformers oftentimes very colorful Transformers that are going to further round off the transients which is much less accurate creating artificial bulk and Distortion things that we like maybe going into vacuum tube circuits and creating harmonic Distortion with the tubes or maybe really adolescent slow sluggish transistor technology like a Class A Neve or something like that and we love these flaws and these odd characteristics that these circuits impart on our audio but they are taking you further and further and further away from the sound of the drum in the room when you're in the room with the drums it's very very clear the impact that all these character sticks of tone wood have on the sound of the drum but by the time you go through a full signal path and then add Equalization and compression or downward expansion and noise gating throw nice little bit of digital Reverb on there or whatever and then compress the whole thing uh mixed in with electric guitars and all these other elements of the mix by the time you're done you've really kind of mangled the drums into submission and made them what you want them to be and so in that situation the differing characteristics that are valid between different tone Woods really becomes somewhat minimized so if you have a really rich tone that's very articulate um you can minimize that by dialing that down with EQ and um you know taking some of that articulation off by the use of distortion plugins or colorful preamps like I mentioned earlier and by the time you've done all that I mean you can kind of make bright drums dark and dark drums bright not to mention the drum head choice and the tuning really has a dramatic impact so if you have a very bright Lively drum and you put a two-ply head with a moon gel on top and tune it down below its mid-range so it's mostly attack and not a lot of tone you're not going to get any harmonic out of that thing it's not going to be bright it's going to just be attack and low frequency and so whether that's Maple or Birch or Poplar or mahogany or or Bubinga by the time you do that and then mic it and put it through your signal path and do all your processing and everything does it really matter that one's Maple or one's Bubinga not as much so in a way the people who say oh it doesn't matter they're kind of right in a modern miking situation whether it's miking for live amplification in an arena or in a you know a room or whether you're miking it to capture it for a recording by the time you're done you've kind of lost some of the nuance and the Nuance is really audibly what is produced by the varying tone Woods it's usually not night and day now the one sort of violation to that idea of um the drum sound not really making its way through the processing would be the absolute extremes when you take a very hardwood like babinga which has a Jenka rating of you know depending upon which species it's above 2 000 anyway much harder than maple and then like Poplar or Basswood Basswood has a Jenka rating of 410 I think so if you have these extremes and you mic them the same way you tune them the same way same head selection tuning same signal path same processing same everything those differences are going to be substantive enough that you are going to be able to notice the difference but as to whether or not you even like that that's still all ultimately comes down to your preferences and whether it fits the track that you're working on so does it matter yes it absolutely matters it matters to the player and it certainly matters if you're in an acoustic environment without the benefit or detriment depending upon your point of view of a sound system so if you're not miking the drums and you're tuning them say you're set up in a restaurant or some quaint venue or something where you're really just letting the drums be their own amplification then the way that you tune them and the types of drums that you have the differences in the tone ones are really going to impact that and to some extent when you use a minimal miking technique where you only have a mic or two that's kind of capturing the overall picture of the drum set you're probably going to use a little bit less processing and you don't have the proximity effect and the low frequency buildup of of close miking and stuff and so there's a little bit more room for the character and the Nuance of the tone Woods to come through in that situation particularly if if you're using single ply heads tuned up more or less to the mid-range or so in which case you can really hear the natural tone of the drum if you tune everything way way down flat and all you're getting is attack then the tone wood doesn't matter as much so I'm sorry to say that I know that's going to disappoint a lot of people uh I know it's going to probably make a lot of other people really happy I don't really have an opinion one way or the other as to which I wish were true I love drums I love bright drum sounds I like dark drum sounds I like lots of attack I like lots of tone I like lots of sustain I like very staccato things I like all kinds of stuff I just like drums really I have my preferences certainly but these are just observations that I've had over the years and so I'm sharing them with you hoping that it makes sense and that it's useful for you when you're deciding on what drums to buy or what drums if you're fortunate enough to have a selection to play on a certain gig for a certain purpose and so I just hope that that's helpful to everyone so to demonstrate some of what I'm talking about it's kind of hard to demonstrate largely for the reasons that I have said when you have microphones in the signal path and all that stuff involved it kind of blurs some of the Nuance but I have actually tried to do something somewhat scientific here and I've got two snare drums they're both eight Lug five inch wooden snare drums one of them is Poplar which is very very soft and very porous and the other is maple sugar maple and it is much harder and much less porous much more dense they are both five inch eight Lug drums like I say and I went one extra step by taking them by John zug's place at Dallas drum and having him cut the same bearing Edge into each drum so that the edges are the same these dimensions are the same the fact that they're both eight Lug drums are the same they have the same heads and the same snare wires on them so I'm trying to make all the variables as similar as possible primarily it's the tone wood that differs they actually are both plastic wrapped shells as well so it's almost impossible to make things truly scientific but I did want to make it somewhat useful if possible take a listen to this comparison I did some different tunings so you can see how they compare at each and just uh see what you notice about it check it out [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] so now I mentioned elasticity a little bit ago and that was kind of a New Concept to me but that also is the reason why I took so long getting this video out I really wanted to do some research and be able to speak empirically and knowledgeably about all of this and I got to be honest and say that um I don't have a full understanding of it I have much more of an awareness and I think a basic sort of entry-level understanding of it now um but the reason I got to thinking about elasticity is because I got on the website of a company called Nordic drum shells Nordic as a company run by a fellow Named Dave West who makes drum shelves they make drum shells from standard and fairly exotic veneers as well for lots of Boutique manufacturers and if you're into building drums definitely go check out the Nordic drum shell so they make a really good product and Dave is a really friendly and knowledgeable guy and I reached out to him because while looking at their website I noticed on their veneer page where they're talking about all the veneers that are available um they post not only the Jenka hardness which I thought was interesting because no one else seems to do that but they also had this sustain sort of measurement too it's not really a formal measurement but it was just long sustained medium sustain or short sustain and it was interesting because the sustained value given short medium or long really tended to validate my experience with those different types of wood and it really piqued my interest because I always kind of considered that harder Woods created greater sustain and that's not really necessarily true because I have two Rosewood snare drums they're both Tama one from the early 80s and one from the late 90s and as far as I know the shell is pretty much the same between the two I don't know what particular species of Rosewood was used I believe there's a hundred or more actual variants of Rosewood but pretty much all Rosewood is much harder than maple Maple like I say it's around 1450 or 1500 say just around it and in rosewoods commonly above 2000 so it's a much harder wood and yet those snare drums are very abrupt and they're very short now I tune the top head to kind of ring a little bit if possible and I kind of have the snares a little bit loose and kind of rattly I talked about that in my tuning video last week talking about tuning snare drums that's kind of my preferred way of tuning but the Rosewood drum is a much more abrupt and staccato tone than say a maple or a birch shell is and yet it's harder than those other woods and so just to say it's hard therefore it has more sustain it's not accurate and so when I saw that you know on the Rosewood veneer Dave had listed the sustain characteristic was short I was really intrigued because I'm like yes it is and why and so I called and had a good conversation with them I don't know that either of us necessarily got to the bottom of it but it's what kind of led me off in the concept of elasticity and one thing that I will say about elasticity is that there are lots of materials that are elastic that we don't think of like I say we're not talking elastic waistbands here we're talking about a materials ability to resume an original shape after Force has been applied and released and one of the most elastic materials that drums are made of is wait for it Steel steel is elastic that kind of blew my mind I don't think of Steel as elastic right I think of rubber bands as elastic right no Steel it does a really good job you apply force it will give a little bit I'm deliberately avoiding the word yield because yield is actually the word that's used in the discussion of physics that means that it's gone from elastic to plastic properties it actually takes on and keeps the deformation that's what happens if it yields to the force so steel doesn't yield very easily uh it will give a little bit and it will deform but once that force is removed it goes back to its original shape it's a very elastic material and if you ever hold a steel shell and thump it it rings like a bell right and steal snare drums tend to have a lot of sustain and they tend to just be have a strong fundamental note because Steel's a heavy material anyway and I have really fallen in love with steel snare drums in recent years but it's interesting to think of that as elastic and so I I wish I could tell you exactly how elasticity plays into the impact of tone wood on drums sound and drum performance uh I don't know for sure but there's definitely something Beyond hardness and density that really kind of has to do with how the drum sustains and and how the drum shelf vibrates and all of that kind of stuff so um I hope that that's useful um I there's a good chance that I may come back to this in a few months with hopefully a little more knowledge and or I just want to edit this video make it make a little more sense maybe amend it I'm not so sure like I say I wanted this to be a really concise wrap-up and discussion of drum tone Woods I don't know if I succeeded or not but I sure gave it a good old College try I really appreciate you sitting through this long and potentially boring video and if you did congratulations to you you are truly a drum geek and someone who like myself really wants to sink their teeth in and understand these things and uh I know it's nerdy but I just love that and I love that you all have stayed with me this far I really appreciate it if you like this kind of content it's not always this geeky and nerdy um but I do like to talk about drum sounds and recording drums and tuning drums and drum history and all that kind of stuff and I've got more content coming up next week uh the video next week I think is going to be pretty fun it's kind of a departure uh but in a little quirky but I think it'll be fun so I hope that you come back and check that out but please do subscribe if you like this kind of content and share it with other people and click that notification Bell of course so that the next time I upload you will be notified and I appreciate you being here as always I look forward to seeing you again thanks so much take care

Channel: DrumDotPizza

Views: 27,133

Keywords: drum, tone, wood, tonewood, maple, beech, birch, ash, cherry, gum, lauan, mahogany, mahogony, poplar, basswood, rosewood, cheap, nice, expensive, difference, matter

Id: s-cwTdtGB0E

Length: 35min 51sec (2151 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2023