The Basics of Acoustic & Electronic Drum Vocabulary for Beatboxers

Beatboxing involves the use of your mouth and airway to mimic the many sounds of the western drum kit and/or electronic drums. I quickly realized that many new beatboxers are not aware of the basic vocabulary of drums and drumming. This web article is meant to be a quick primer to introduce the most basic concepts of drums to the newbie beatboxer.

A drum as defined by dictionary.com is “A percussion instrument consisting of a hollow cylinder or hemisphere with a membrane stretched tightly over one or both ends, played by beating with the hands or sticks.” With regards to western music today, drum sounds are produced either acoustically or electronically.

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Part 1: ACOUSTIC DRUMS

An acoustic drum’s sound is transmitted to the ear as it propagates through the air; simply put, it is a drum that can be heard without any amplification.

No two drums sound alike. This is an important concept for Beatboxing since we are in the business of mimicking drum sounds. There are numerous characteristics which contribute to the sound of a drum:

• Materials: types of frames (e.g. wood, plastic, metal), membranes (plastic, rawhide, metal), age of the materials.
• Components/construction: size of the body, number of heads, handmade vs manufactured.
• Environment: room size, degree of insulation, humidity
• Amplification: what kind of microphone & PA system is used to amplify it

A drum kit (a.k.a. drum set, trap set, drums) is any collection of these drums plus cymbals and percussion. In this context, percussion refers to any other instruments used in the drum kit (see PERCUSSION section for a more rigorous definition).

In a drum kit, there are three basic types of drums with standard attributes: Bass (or kick), Snare and tom.

THE BASS or KICK DRUM:

This is a large drum which makes a booming thud. When you "turn up the bass" on your stereo, the bass drum is one of the sounds that you are making more prominent. It is also usually played on the first beat of a measure or bar. Drummers play the bass drum by stepping on a pedal. The pedal is attached to a hammer/beater which strikes the drum membrane. It is often called a "kick drum" because the foot is used to trigger it in this way. In his tutorials, TyTe uses 'kick' rather than bass so users don't get confused between bass drum and bass guitar.

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THE TOM:

A tom is a small version of the bass drum but the drummer uses drum sticks to hit it. Toms are pitched (that means they are tuned to a particular note - like on a piano). They are usually lined up in front of the drummer. A "floor tom" is large enough to need its own stand. Toms are not typically used within the context of beatboxing except when mimicking drum fills.

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Click here for the corresponding video tutorial (WMV format, 0.5mb)..