A snare drum is different from other kinds of drums in one crucial way. You wouldn't know it from

looking at it because on the top it looks like any other drum but on the bottom

there are snare wires stretched across the bottom of the drum that rattle up

against the drum whenever you hit the head on top.

It's kind of a violent life for a drum when you think about it. Nothing but getting

hitting the head all day long. And the Welcome to Strong Songs, a podcast about Music. I'm your host Kirk Hamilton and I'm so glad that you've

joined me to talk about music with lots of snare drum and music with no snare drum

and sometimes music with just a little bit of snare drum. We're definitely going to be

talking about a lot of drumming on this episode and I am excited to get into it, so turn up the volume, find a comfortable place to sit, and enjoy the show.

There may be no more complex drum in a drummer's arsenal than the

snare drum. It's a pretty fascinating thing when you think about it.

It evolved from a 14th century drum

that kind of instituted this idea of putting something you know like some snares

some wires on the drum to give you a slightly different sound and it's pretty weird when you think that like the central drum of a drum

which the snare drum absolutely is,

is this just very different kind of drum that's set up to sound so unusual. You know, you can have a whole ton of

tom-toms on your drum and those all sound a little different depending on how you

tune them, but the snare drum is just this totally weird completely

other thing. And it's just like taken for granted, you know, oh yeah, you just, you have this

drum and it goes right in the middle of your drum set and it has these wires on the bottom and it

sounds very strange and oh yeah, you know, it's the backbone of groove in modern music. No big deal.

So we are definitely going to be talking quite a bit about drumming on this episode

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