Unless you’re a drummer, tom-toms are probably something you give very little thought to, calling on them in your drum kit recording or programming ventures only when something more extravagant than the snare is required in a fill or break of some sort. There’s far more to the humble toms than merely serving as an occasional rhythmic condiment, though, so here are some things you can do to get more out of them and perhaps bring a new sense of percussive identity to your tracks in the process.

1. Understand What Makes A Good Tom-Tom Sound

Whether you’re recording live drums or programming/triggering a multisampled kit such as Superior Drummer, EZdrummer or BFD, key to successfully capturing, deploying and mixing tom-toms is knowing how to get the right sound out of them for the track in question. There’s never a right or wrong answer to this, naturally, but things to consider include the sizes of the drums, as well as their tuning, decay time and tonal character, the last largely defined by the blend of initial stick (head) sound and ‘body’.

The size of a tom-tom determines its pitch range, as well as the broader depth and colour of its sound: an 8 or 10” tom delivers a very different tonality and resonance to a 12 or 13” rack tom, let alone a 14 or 16” floor tom. Very generally speaking, rock music will demand bigger, boomier, deeper toms (12“ and 13” racks and a 16” floor) than, say, pop, R&B or jazz, which tend to feature smaller, tighter, more melodic sizes (10“ and 12” racks, 14” floor).

For tuning, it’s fairly standard practice to pitch the toms apart from each other in fourths, but don’t be shy about experimenting – if it sounds good, it is good. When it comes to the physical process of tuning real drums, there are plenty of guides to be found online, so we won’t get into specifics here. We will, however, mention one nifty trick that works particularly well on smaller tom-toms: loosen one lug a little after you’ve found the tuning you want to add a pleasing downward pitch bend.

Decay time is easily manipulated through the use of damping tape or pads on real drums, and amp and/or filter envelopes in sampled instruments. Do bear in mind that your drums might have reverb added at some point, so always set up your envelopes with that added tail in mind (or return to it afterwards). And speaking of reverb, dryness is another dimension to think about with your toms. If you’re recording in the real world, this will be less readily tweakable as it is with a sampled kit, so make sure the recording space is as dry as possible – it’s far easier to add reverb than it is to take it away.

As for the stick/body balance and broader tone of the toms, this can be tailored with EQ (boxiness and mud will usually need sorting out), compression (use the attack time to emphasise or de-emphasise the stick), and perhaps microphone levels if your toms have been simultaneously captured through spot mics and overheads.

2. Include Them In The Groove

As suggested in the intro, most of the time, tom-toms are used as embellishing elements, reserved for fills and little more, but integrating the odd tom hit into the main groove (a flick of a rack tom on the last offbeat in every bar, for example) is a quick and easy way to up the complexity and interest of the part without detracting from the all-important backbeat. Of course, you don’t have to do this all the way through a track – it can be saved for points at which a change in energy is needed, such as the middle eight or chorus.

3. Substitute Them For Other Elements

Expanding on the previous tip, why not try replacing a more focal kit piece with a tom or two? For example, beating out eighth notes on the floor tom instead of the ride cymbal or hi-hats profoundly alters the perceived brightness of any mix, creating a darker, slightly suspenseful vibe that works brilliantly for changing the overall feel. Or how about moving the backbeat from the snare to a rack tom in the bridge, imposing a similarly intriguing sound that gives the returning snare real impact when the chorus drops?

Implementing this sort of thing with a virtual kit is as simple as dragging MIDI between notes in the piano roll; but if you’re using EZdrummer 3 or Superior Drummer 3, the Power Hand feature even lets you switch the ‘riding’ drum or cymbal within the plugin itself.

4. Bung ’Em Through A Gated Reverb

Ah, gated reverb – the pinnacle of OTT ’80s-style production bombast. It’s a wonderful thing in the right circumstances, and it sounds every bit as awesome on toms as the snare drums with which its primarily associated. This does require a particular type of tom sound to really work, though: big and barking, heavy on the attack, and with an emphasis on the upper mid frequencies.

5. Use Them As An Instrument In Themselves

So far, we’ve talked about tom-toms exclusively as a component of the drum kit, but they’re also highly effective as a separate percussion element in their own right. Underpinning a drum kit groove with a dense, rolling tom-tom pattern is just the thing for evoking a hypnotic, tribal feel – famously effective in house and techno, but potentially equally groovy as a textural layer in any form of beat-driven music.

6. Explore Interesting Variants

The history of drum manufacture is studded with occasional attempts at reinventing or modifying the tom-tom, some of them still relevant and well worth seeking out. We’re talking Octabans, Rototoms and concert toms, and while such oddities aren’t easy to find in sampled form, there are a few libraries that take them in. Without meaning to bang the Toontrack drum too hard, the best of them, to our mind, are the extraordinary Hitmaker SDX and Rooms of Hansa SDX, which feature all of the above and both sound incredible.

And why stop there when you can get stuck into even more radical tom-tom alternatives? Timbales, timpani, taiko drums and anything else that essentially comprises a snare-less, stick- (as opposed to hand-) played drum of any kind might be just the percussive curveball your latest track is crying out for.

7. Know When To Use Them And When To Lose Them

Finally, we’ll wrap up by saying that although tom-toms are by no means the most intrusive of instruments, they are generally perceived by the listener as part of the drum kit, so exploiting them beyond punctuative fills will always draw some level of attention. This is both a good and not-so-good thing: good as described in the various scenarios above, and not so good in that using them inappropriately for the context in which they exist can sound clunky and weird. So, never throw toms into the mix just for the sake of it, and always be sure that they’re making a valid contribution to the track as a whole. Less is so often more, after all, and whatever way you decide to deploy them, tom-toms are, when it comes down to it, ancillary instruments that take up a lot of sonic space and thus should be among the first things to go if a mix is starting to sound cluttered.

Do you use toms in your drum tracks for more than just fills? And how do you go about recording/programming and mixing them? Let us know in the comments.