Tenor drum: Encyclopedia II - Tenor drum - Band Tenor Drum

Tenor drum - Band Tenor Drum

Tenor drums (commonly as mounted sets of 3-6 drums) are worn by percussionists in a drumline. They are also known as toms, duos, tris, quads or quints depending on the number of drums. Typically there are four main drums and one or two accent drums (typically 5 or 6 inches in diameter). The accent drums are also known as shot, gock, or spock drums. Sometimes there are other accent instruments added such as cow bells or cymbals.

Most of the time, tenor drums are tuned relatively tightly, giving them a high-pitched sound that can be heard from miles around. The gock drums are generally tuned as high as possible to produce a piercing sound. Occasionally, they are tuned lower as well. Some drumlines may employ multiple tenor lines, or high-toms and low-toms.

Most tenor players use match grip. This facilitates tenor techniques such as "scrapes" (moving the hands between drums while playing rolls or diddles) and "crossovers" (crossing one hand over the other to reach a drum). These techniques allow an incredible variety of rhythmic and melodic figures possible on the tenors.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Band Tenor Drum", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki