Snare drum: Barbados musical instrument

The snare drum which can also be called side drum is a widely used un-pitched percussion musical instrument that is mostly used in the orchestras, marching bands and concert band together with drum corps and many other places. The snare drum is the center of the drum kit and it is more prominently used in the marching band and stage bands and the drum the students of the orchestra land many other places around the world learn to play first. The snare drum is two-headed with rattles of gut, having metal wire or synthetics passed across one or both sides of the drum head.

source of picture: www.ebay.com 

There are different types of the snare drum that are in existence today, like the piccolo snare drum that have a smaller depth and popcorn snares that are smaller in diameter but have a higher pitch, there is rope-tuned snare  and the Brazilian tarol which usually has snares on the top of the upper drumhead. This musical instrument has been used in most military and parading context to produce rhythms. And today the snare drum is used to play a backbeat pattern in the popular music especially with the rock drum kits.

The musical instrument can be played by striking the drum with a drum-stick or any other form of beater such as brushes and rutes that produce a softer sounding timbre from the wires. When a performer is playing the drum with a stick, he can strike it both sides of the drum, the rim or even the shell to produce the sound he wants. When you strike the top head of the drum, the snares vibrate against the bottom of head which can also be called resonate head and give out a cracking sound. If the player wants the drum to produce the tom-tom sound, all he needs to do is to remove the snares with a lever on the strainer. The rim shot is a method that is associated to the snare drum, here the rim and the head is beaten at the same time with one stick by one player. This can be found in the contemporary pop and rock music where the snare drum is used as a part of a drum set. In jazz music, notes can be played as rim clicks where the sticks back end is positioned on the edge of the top head and forced downward on the rim to opposite side to make it less harsh. The snares is crucial component to the drum roll as they assist in blending together of distinct strokes that are seen as a single sustained sound. This drum can also help a beginner in getting used to the drum set without playing the complete set of the drum.

 The snare drum could be produced from so many types of woods, metals, or acrylic materials. A specific diameter for the snare drum is about 14 inches although the marching snare bands are deeper in size than the ordinary snare drums that are used in the orchestral or drum kit purposes. The orchestral and drum set snare drum shells are about 6 inches deep while piccolo snare drums are more shallow with about 3 inches  deep. Most snare drums are carved in plies that are heat-moulded and compression-moulded into a cylinder. Steam-bent shells consist of one ply of wood that is slowly rounded into a cylinder and gummed at one seam. Reinforcement hoops are generally needed on the inside surface of the drum to make it perfectly round. Segment shells are made of multiple heaps of segmented wood rings; the segments are gummed together and rounded out by a lathe. Stave shell are similarly carved of vertically gummed pieces of wood into a cylinder that is rounded out by a turning tool called lathe. Solid shells are carved of one solid piece of hollowed wood. The head or skin of the instrument is made of batter head that forms the playing surface on the top of the drum and a resonant head at the bottom head. Most of the used modern drums are plastic skin of about 10mils thickness.

The snare drum is assumed to have descended from an old fashioned drum that is called ‘tabor.’ This was the drum that has a single gut snare passed across the bottom of it. It is a bit larger than the medium tom that was used in war that was often played with a pipe; the player plays the pipe and drum. The tabor was not all double headed and not all of them were made with snares. The size of the drum was increased by the 15^th century and had a cylindrical shape.  The drum became popular with the Swiss soldiers that were paid to fight, who used the pipe and the drum around the 15^th to 16^th century due to influence from the ottoman Turk’s use of the drums in their armies. Further development came upon the drum in the 17^th century as the drum was made deeper and carried along the side also with the use of screw to hold the snares down giving it a sharper sound. During the 18^th century, the drum went through series of changes that improved the timbre of the instrument and in the 20^th century, the drum was built with a metal snares and today the drum is used in the pop music and orchestral music

The development of drum skills seems to have graduated with the snare drum. The Swiss pipe and drum groups are sometimes credited with the invention of the snare drum.