How to Set Up a Bass Drum

Series Summary

The drum is perhaps the oldest known musical instrument and its basic design has not changed in thousands of years. Far from today’s uses as a percussive foundation for pop music or for fueling marching band excitement, drumming has a more profound history as a method of communication, and as an implement of religious symbolism.

In this free video series, our expert Patrick Sapia will show you how to set up a drum set or drum kit. Mr. Sapia will show you how so set up a bass drum, a bass drum pedal, the tom tom stands, the cymbal stands, and the hi hat stand. He will then teach you how to mount the cymbals, snare, hi hats, and toms on their respective stands. Patrick will even teach you about tuning the drums, storing the drums, positioning the drums, and setting up a microphone for both the drummer and the bass drum.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village my name is Pat Louis. Here in Miami I'm going to show you today how to set up a drum kit. The first thing to set up would be the bass drum it's the name drum that you are going to get a lot of sound out of. What I like to do is set up these anchors here so you are going to be able to dig into there carpet until you get set up. I prefer to have a carpet if you bring on along that is even better, but once you set this up even if it's on a flat board type of location. This won't slide on it because those anchors dig right in. It's important to have this centered this is where you are going to build all the other drums out front. We are using a pretty good set here you'll notice there is no head one of the things that are very popular today. Is to take the head off of here and actually put something inside to kind of dentin the sound and give you more of a fat sound. Usually a pillow or a blanket that kind type of thing will give you a nice dead sound as you'll see once we put in the pedal, it will have a nice fat sound for you."