You’d be forgiven for thinking a drum head is a drum head and that’s that, especially on a single drum, but that’s not the case. The top head has a very different job to the bottom drum head, so they’re tailored accordingly.
Also known as a batter head, the top drum head is designed to be as durable as possible, so you can play hard and get lost in the music without having to buy replacements every two days. Along with the player, the batter head controls volume, timbre, and attack.
You may have noticed that snare batter heads are often white, while the bottom head is clear much like tom heads. This is because they’re coated to reduce the sharpness of the snare’s sound. Coated batter heads are also more robust and slightly louder.
The technical term for a bottom drum head is “resonant head”, and that’s because they do just that. When you strike a drum, the batter head sends a rush of air down through the drum shell, and much like a tennis player returning a serve, the resonant head pings the air back.
As long as this little rally continues, the sound of the drum strike will be audible. After a few back and forths, the energy finally dissipates, leaving you in silence. Resonant heads are almost never as durable as batter heads. Even slight imperfections can be detrimental to their overall performance.
Are snare and tom heads the same?
For all intents and purposes, snare and tom batter heads are the same thing unless they have different diameters. Coated snare batter heads are far more common than coated tom heads, but that’s not to say they don’t exist.
The big difference between snare and tom heads occurs on the resonant side of things. Resonant snare heads tend to be much thinner than resonant tom heads to encourage the vibration of the snare wires stretching across the base of the drum.
These wires give a snare drum its signature rasp. If you used a resonant snare head of the same weight as your resonant tom head, the distinctive “crack” would remain, but that rasp would be short and muted. But you don’t have to stick to these standards with your own kit.
The truth is that so long as it fits, you can use whatever head you want, batter or resonant, on whatever drum you want. The important thing is that you enjoy the sound the heads are making.
Early in your drumming career, I’d recommend sticking to the accepted standards for drum head type and placement. You should be prioritizing durability over sound because your ear probably hasn’t developed much of a tonal taste yet. What’s more, you don’t want to be forking out for new skins every week.
Once you’ve developed your skills, feel free to get experimental. Explore the sonic possibilities of your drum set. Don’t stop with the drum heads. Mess around with the whole thing.
Quest Love of The Roots famously beats up and cuts holes in his cymbals to make them sound what most would say is worse, but to Quest, the crashing of unrefined cymbals is the quintessential “garage” sound.
Do toms need bottom heads?
While they do serve a purpose, your toms don’t need to be fitted with resonant heads. The batter heads and drum shells of your toms are all you need to cause a headache or three.
Even though the air and energy are being released out the base of the drum, the soundwaves are still highly audible, so you can remove the reso heads if you like.
If you’re not sure whether removing them is the right course of action, you can do a little test to see if you’re going to enjoy the sound of your toms without them.
All you have to do is choke the resonant drum head of one of your toms by placing your hand flat against its surface. Hold your hand firmly in place, then strike your batter head with your stick. Do this a few times, then remove your hand and strike the batter head again. Which sound did you prefer?
This isn’t a foolproof test as choking the resonant head isn’t the best representation of what your kit will sound like without it, but it’s close enough to give you an idea.
Do bottom drum heads matter?
Although you can opt to omit them from your setup altogether, yes, bottom drum heads do matter. Sure, you can still make plenty of noise without them, and it’ll probably sound great too, but bottom drum heads are the only way to add sustain to your strikes.
The type of resonant drum head you choose will also play a significant role in shaping your own personal sound. Each resonant drum head has a sonic profile unique to its thickness. The thicker it is, the more resonant your sound will be, meaning the longer each strike will ring out before silence resettles.
Consequently, thicker heads emit far more overtones than thinner heads. I won’t go into too much detail (I could waffle all day about overtones), but for the uninitiated, overtones are essentially higher pitches derived from the fundamental note. Simply put, no one note is a singular entity; they’re more like chords made up of these harmonic overtones.
The thinner the resonant head is the more of the fundamental you’ll hear, the fundamental note being the dominant sound. Thick heads exhibit a slower decay overall, but thin reso heads will still add resonance to your sound; the reverberations will just remain a steady pitch.
How often should you change resonant drum heads?
As resonant heads are tucked safely out of the way at the base of our drums, it stands to reason that you wouldn’t ever need to replace them, but unfortunately, we do.
Even though they don’t take anywhere near as much abuse as our batter heads, they still wear naturally over time. After all, they’re still constantly getting pounded by the vibrations sent down from the batter head.
A reduced force version of each drum strike hits the resonant head. Even though you’re not physically hitting them, the effects are as if you are actually playing on them very softly.
How often you replace your resonant drum heads is entirely up to you and how refined your tonal ear is. Some won’t notice a difference in the sound of their reso heads from the moment they’re fitted right through to years after. Others will be more acute to the sonic degradation.
If you’re planning on hitting the studio or doing some home recordings, I’d bring in some fresh skins to ensure your sound is as crisp as can be. If you just want to keep your kit in tip-top shape in general, a good rule of thumb is to switch your resonant heads every two years or after you’ve changed a drum’s batter head three times.
Should you be ready to replace your reso heads now, I recommend these Remo PP-1190-BA Ambassador heads for your toms. They’re considered an affordable industry standard, and they’ve never steered me wrong.
In terms of reso snare heads, I’ve been using this Evans Clear 500 for years now, and I love it.
Why do drummers remove bottom heads?
There are a few reasons why you might have seen a drummer do away with bottom heads altogether.
1. Tuning
Having to tune two heads can be time-consuming and irritating, so it’s not uncommon for a drummer to simply remove the resonant head to give themselves an easier time of it. Even some elite-level drummers struggle with the tuning. Focusing on a single head makes the process a lot easier.
2. Mics
Removing the resonant head on a drum is a great way to welcome a mic into the shell when you’re in the studio. Rather than recording from outside the drum, you can go straight to the source for a more pure sound.
3. Tone
Some drummers just prefer the way their drums sound without resonant heads in place. Getting rid of the excess resonance amounts to what’s often referred to as a “punchy” sound, one that you’ll recognize in plenty of funk music from the 70s and 80s.
Removing the resonant heads gives you a lot more attack and shed loads of tone, but you sacrifice sustain, and sometimes, that’s exactly what a song needs.