What is Sound Quality?

Written by Thomas Claesen, RMS Educator & web designer
Originally published on medium.com

Two years ago because I wrote an article on sound quality because I felt like it’s a widely used term in marching percussion, but I wasn’t convinced everyone is really talking about the same thing. We’re now republishing it here on RMS because Taha Ahmed mentioned it on his episode on the Rudimental Mindset Podcast. My insights on sound quality are a humble attempt to provide a framework for conversations about the subject.

Before we can talk about sound quality itself, it’s worth addressing two other questions first: what is sound, and what is quality?

What is sound?

Basically sound is air vibrating—there’s more out there for physics enthusiasts, but this simple definition will do for the scope of this article. When we sing, our vocal cords make the air vibrate. When we play a wind instrument, blowing air through the instrument in a certain way makes the air vibrate. When we play drums, three things make the air vibrate: the drum head (or ‘membrane’), the drum shell, and—this one’s often overlooked—the stick itself. Obviously, the stick hitting the drum head makes the head and the shell resonate, but following Newton’s third law¹, the drum head makes the stick resonate in return.

What is quality?

Quality can have different meanings. For our purposes we’ll differentiate between three:

1. Quality is often paired and contrasted with quantity.
   
E.g. quality over quantity


2. Quality can also refer to a grade, to a scale ranging from (very) poor to (very) good quality.

   E.g. a product of superior quality, quality assurance


3. Lastly, quality can refer to a characteristic.

   E.g. those colors have a warm quality


What is sound quality?

Combining insights from the two previous sections, we can now return to our original question. First and foremost, sound quality does not equal sound quantity. It’s obvious that quality and quantity are two different things, but in drumming this difference is often overlooked. Sure, in marching percussion we like a lot of sound, we like hitting the drum hard, but overplaying is a real thing. It exists in any instrument, and in drumming we call it pounding. We can be heavy hitters, but in the first place we’re musicians.

How do we grade sound quality? An important criterion is evaluating whether all three elements are resonating: the head, the shell, and the sticks. Can’t tell whether your sticks are resonating? Play on a pad—the sound of the pad won’t overbear the sound of the sticks. Squeeze and you’ll get less sound out of the stick. Soften the touch and you’ll hear the stick resonate more—we call this letting the stick breathe.

Furthermore, evaluating sound quality depends on the setting. In a drumline setting we’ll often talk about the velocity of the stick into the drum head. We want as much velocity as possible without overplaying and without causing physical injury. However, that same velocity that would be rated well in a marching setting would be rated poorly in an orchestral snare drum setting, which brings me to my last point:

Sound quality is sound identity.² Just as colors can have a warm or cold quality, sound can have different qualities, e.g. warm, full, aggressive, staccato, legato. As mentioned above, a certain quality can be a better or worse fit for a certain setting, but it can also depend on other factors: your personal preference, the identity of your ensemble, and different expressive qualities that different musical phrases call for. This is where we start moving away from grading—where we realize there’s not necessarily good or bad quality, but just different qualities, different expressions, different identities.

And that’s what I’ll leave you with: my insights about sound quality, as well as a framework to think about the topic. Have fun exploring the different qualities of sound!

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¹For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

²A long time ago I read someone using the term ‘sound identity’ when they were quoting Mike McIntosh. This must’ve been over 10 years ago, on an online forum that’s no longer around. I had no way of tracking down that post, and I couldn’t find where Mac originally said it—it might’ve been at a camp or a clinic. Feel free to contact me if you can give me a citable source!