First things first - download your free transcription here.
Notice one drummer doing something, and you’re like “hmmm, that’s novel.”
Notice two doing it, and you’re like “that looks familiar.”
Notice 3, and you’re like, “needle scratch. That’s a thing.”
So it was with the drum setup change that’s the subject of this lesson. I’d see the odd drummer doing it on Instagram, and think “those kids, always experimentin’”.
I’d notice Anika Niles doing it in a Rush soundcheck, and think “hmmm maybe I should try this.”
Then, like the snare cowbell, or the bass drum bongos, it started to take over.
I’m speaking of course of switching the position of the “high” and “middle” toms in a “5-piece”, which is to say any arrangement in which you’ve got at least 2 toms more-or-less over the bass drum, as opposed to the “4 piece”, in which you’ve got only one, usually in the left-hand position, and the others are floor toms.
Was this a viral meme? If so, who started it?
My research indicated no single point-or-origin. Anika, yes. But also Macro Minnemann, Kenny Aronoff, Jimmy Chambelin…all the way back to Bernard Purdie.
Hmmm, well maybe everybody’s doing it because it serves some musical or ergonomic purpose. Digging deeper, I found out that a lot of drummers like the “4-piece skeleton”, with a medium-high tom on the left-hand side, and a space for the ride cymbal to the right.
By putting the high tom on the right, you leave more space for the ride, and also “preserve” the layout of the 4-piece, allowing you to play this kit as if it were a 4-piece, but with an extra tom in case you want it.
As we’ll cover, the 4-piece is the original incarnation of the tunable drum kit, which Slingerland and Gene Krupa popularized. And many of the jazz and subsequent rock greats created a lot of the canonical vocabulary on the 4-piece. Such that, if you’ve played any jazz, let alone simply played the layout a lot, it “feels great”.
Switching to a “high/middle/low” 5-piece can feel awkward, since your melody now changes. Sure, you can still “play it as a 4-piece”, but the high tom sounds higher. And you have to reach to play the middle-tom with the left hand.
Finally, I discovered a third great reason to switch the toms: modularity. If you quickly want to revert your kit back to a 4-piece for space or the preferences of other drummers, the “inverted” tom layout allows that - just pull the high tom off the stand, and you’ve got your original 4-piece.
At any rate, we explore this “weird” setup, complete with some tom flow vocabulary, and why it’s fast becoming my preferred way to set up the drums.
P.S. did you know you can sign up to be the first to hear when we open up new slots for Impossible to Fail, my flagship 1:1 coaching program? Just click here to sign up for the waitlist.