How to Play the Snare Drum

Video Transcript

Hi! My name is Frank, and in this clip we’re going to look at mainly the snare drum and how to play it, but we’ll also incorporate how to play the other drums, because almost all the drums are made up pretty much the same way, but little variations do make them different. If I turn off this little mechanism on the snare drum, called the snare throw off, then it sounds like a tom-tom, or at least similar to one…but if I turn that throw off on, these wires come in contact with the bottom head and that makes that rat-a-tat rattle sound. Now it’s not a tom now, it’s a snare drum; snares will make that a much more pronounced instrument, and there are different ways to play it to get different sounds out of it. And it really is the main instrument in most, not all by any means, but most—especially western music and stuff you hear on the radio today—it’s the main instrument. So what we want to do is pay special attention to it…there’s of course the rim that holds the head onto the drum, we’re going to use that too. Playing in the center of the head creates sounds that are different from playing in other areas of the head, and then using the stick to hit the rim and the drum at the same time is called a rim shot. This drum in particular is made up of a wood hoop, the other hoops these are die-cast, a different sound altogether. I like the wood on a snare drum cause it creates a warmer sound, and depending on what kind of heads you use, it changes the sound too, but the same thing can be done as far as rim shots for the other toms too. So I encourage you to experiment with playing, even with snares off, and try to get different feels and different sounds; and then turning them on creates a pretty great effect. We’ll take a look…

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