How did the modern drum kit come to be?
The humble drums are quite possibly the world’s first musical instrument and almost certainly the most common. However, the instrument’s history is not discussed as often as it should be. By charting a course through drumming, one can understand pop music on a very deep level, and that goes for the drum kit, too.
The earliest drum kits, as we’d recognise them, actually came from the world of theatre in the late 1800s. Orchestral music was still the prevailing form of music performed in concert, and in those vast halls, one could easily have an entire percussion section populated with trained players. However, in smaller theatres and playhouses, the music would still have to come from somewhere and from far fewer people. All the drums, then, would be linked together and played by far fewer people.
This led to a technological development known at the time as the double drum. The drums would be literally stuck together in a way that seems somewhat crude by our vantage point. One would have a large double bass drum with a smaller snare drum strapped to the side. This allowed one player with two sticks to play them at the same time. This was enhanced further by the presence of the adorably named “low-boy”, a pedal that would allow a cymbal to be played alongside the two drums.
This first incarnation of what we’d call a drum kit was called a “contraption” or “trap” set at the time, and it also began to revolutionise how music was played away from the theatre. Now that one could have a full percussion section played by one person, live music could happen in far more places, places like bars and clubs that allowed for dancing.
The “trap set” complimented this by allowing for more complex, syncopated rhythms to be played as well. This resulted in a few drummers taking the “low boy” and adapting it to play the bass drum rather than just the cymbal, hence the term “kick drum”. In fact, the company that would later become Ludwig Drums was built on a patent for an effective bass drum pedal made by brothers William and Theodore Ludwig.
There was just one problem with the direction the drum kit was heading. All this was taking place before amplification, and especially at an intimate level where the only accompaniment might be a banjo, a few horns, and a singer, the drums would overpower everything. To quieten things down, some drummers began to use wire brushes to drum with, and thus, the jazz drum kit, more or less as we know it, was born.
The next stage of development would come from Louis Armstrong’s drummer, Baby Dodds, in 1918. Part of his experimentation with the sounds you could get from a kit was hitting the cymbal itself with his sticks, previously only operated by the pedal, using it the way we would use a ride cymbal today. A chat with the aforementioned William Ludwig led to the invention of the hi-hat, combining the pedal use with the stick to create the backbone of the drum kit we know today.
Thus, the combination of bass drum, snare, and hi-hat created a blueprint that changed the face of popular music. Tom-toms came along in the 1930s, and additions have been made ever since. Multiple bass drums, tuned toms, more cymbals like the crash for when you really want to make an impact and many more. Production software may make the act of making professional-grade music easier than ever, but there’s still nothing quite like an expertly played drum kit for that real feel.
