A comparison of the timbral characteristics of steel and wooden drum sets

Abstract

Although it is quite common to construct snare drum shells from various metals, it is still rare for full drum sets to have shells made from metal. Several manufacturers have produced metal drum sets intermittently since the 1970s. However, they still remain a niche version of the instrument that has received less attention than their wooden counterparts. This paper compares the timbral characteristics of a drum set made from steel against a maple drum set. Audio samples of the two drum sets are meticulously recorded in a recording studio with high grade equipment. The configurations of the two drum sets are made to match as closely as possible. Then the recorded audio samples are analyzed using computational methods—looking at both time-domain and spectral features for both instruments. In this way we observe how the different construction material and methods result in contrasting timbral characteristics.