I can't believe how good this drum sounds when it is essentially cut in half and clamped back together again. I never would have imagined it.

I picked up a few drums recently that were owned by a local drum mentor of mine (who passed 12 yrs ago). One is a late 80’s Tama Imperialstar 16” floor Tom with like 5-6 cotton balls in it. It sounds soooo good. He would have put them in their around ‘90-‘91. Dudes has been doing this for years and for good reason.

I was under the impression that Benny Grebb flattened and pulled his cotton balls as to increase the surface area and reduce the rebound from them. Great video! Oh and putting them in through the vent hole is easy if you use a q-tip to push through.

This channel is a blessing to the drumming world... Thank you so much for existing 🤘🏻

My father was a fairly successful drummer in the 1960's - 1970's. He told me about using this method back then. At times he used a handkerchief or something similar inside the floor tom. I've never tried it and honestly never noticed anyone else doing it, but always thought it was pretty clever.

I was hired to do a stage lighting design and show control for a local cover band. The drummer had an acoustic kit, but all the drums were full of poly fill......the stuff they put in pillows so that there was very little acoustic sound. But he used triggers so what everyone heard were sampled/digi drum sounds. He did this because he liked the look of the setup and the feel of the drums over all Digital drums kits. And If I remember, the cymbals were the low volume drilled type. Worked quite well. Really solid band with lot of other tech like sequenced sounds and guitar pedal presets triggered by MIDI.

Love that tom music between the scenes! It doesn't sound like a solo, but more like music dedicated to some kind of ambience.

That b roll was awesome! I'm loving these new episodes and the new style!

Another wonderful, well presented video. Keep up the good work.

This was great! I'll definitely try this. I always struggle with muffling the floor tom when I'm trying to tune it low enough for that thunderous almost kick drum-like sound, gaffer tape just takes the cool bits of the tone out and usually doesn't kill the sustain quickly enough.

Definately a video worthy of watching, I found this to be a great, well made, informative video,...very helpful easy to understand descriptions. ThankYou

Thank you for another excellent video your videos are by far the most informative without any unnecessary detail just practical straight to the point ....

Hi Cody - Just got myself a Sonor SQ1 - was having a ton of trouble with the 14 inch Floor Tom. 14s have always given me grief in the past, so I thought, 'Uh oh - here we go again...'. But two things have sorted it beautifully: 1. Tuning - Batter 142, Resonant 131. Yep, top head tighter. I don't normally do this, but for the 14 it works brilliantly. Thanks to Mike Evangelista for his youtube post on this particular tuning. Then ... the all-important cotton balls. As my balls are smaller than yours (stop it), I used 10 inside, and retuned the batter to 142. Bingo. A great thump, just enough sustain. Fundamental of E, which is about the right ball park for a 14 Floor. Thanks for the tip - I'd heard it before but had forgotten it!

Always the best content AND production on the interweb! Just came across a Jim Keltner studio trick as related by Don Lombardi - You take one (or more) legs off the floor tom and turn the leg UPSIDE DOWN in its bracket so that the straight metal shaft is on the floor. The straight metal leg on the floor really cuts the sustain for a shorter floor tom sound. I usually use floating floor tom feet for a fuller sound so as to match the full tone from the rack tom, but I was looking for a shorter, drier sound (without using muffling) and found this old-school recipe!

Great demonstration! I have always struggled with getting the sound I needed from the floor tom. I’m going to give cotton balls a try. Thanks for these useful videos.

Dig what you're doing with this whole channel and every direction you lean as far as content. Nice variety 👌

I found your channel not too long ago and I must say you guys are doing excellent work!!! A lot of useful knowledge, really appreciate you guys. You guys earned another subscriber for sure.

I’m fairly late to this party, great idea for demonstrating with that split drum 🎉 The one detail I noticed with Benny Greb, and no clue if it makes much of a difference, but he pulls the cotton apart a bit to make it lie flat in the drum head. Love the content guys 🤙🏻

Fantastic tip!! Can’t wait to give it a go! Thanks so much!

Cool! I like your sound experiments!

Great in depth look at this! Gonna try a few in my floors ✨

I’ve been doing this for quite some time! The second I heard Benny Greb did it, I basically made it a task. I did it for a show about 8 months to year back and out probably 8-10 in there and I was like uhhh.... this is really isn’t useable. Took a bunch out and have I think 5 in the floor Tom. I actually put a couple in my 10inch Mounted Tom and it gave it a lot of beef that I’ve been missing with it. Also allows me to tune it up high to get the attack and sustain I need but still gates the sound like you said! Great video.

Very nice video! Now i know about nesting drums. I found out about this trick through the comments of your first floor tom sustain vid, and i've done it ever since! I didn't have cotton balls around but used small lumps of mattress foam instead. I actually ripped them from the old foam pillow i used to have in my bassdrum :) Totally similar effect.

Wow, you saved me! Tried this method on a 14" rims mounted floor tom that seemed to have sustain for days. Raided the wife's cotton balls that were small enough to jam through the drum's vent hole with a drum stick. Lost count but probably got about 15 of the extra small balls inside for the desired results. AWESOME HACK, thank you guys, priceless!

Great stuffing and great stuff! Thanks

Such a good idea! Would love to see you guys make a video comparing similar metal and wood drums

This is an awesome idea sounds great!

Amazing. Five seems to be the sweet spot for me. Doing this tomorrow! I love how you stare at the drum after it, all serious and stuff. Makes me laugh every time. With you not at you. ;)

Been doing this for a couple years, its such a neat trick.

Now I know how to optimize the tom sound whenever a band wants to come in and record a version of "Cotton Fields". Many thanks!

Saw this comment on a rdavidr video “I fill my drums with cement” for muffling

I didn't know this yet! Thanks for sharing this! :)

I first learned of this around 1995 and have been using cotton balls ever since! I almost always go with 6, sometimes 5 and currently, as an experiment, am not using any and I am very much missing them! LOL Needless to say, there will be cotton balls in my floor tom by the end of the week :-)

Perfection. Thank you sir.

In one of his videos , Benny states something like how he found this from a show he was at and from then on has always kept cotton balls and a small allen key ( for shoving the cotton through the port hole) in his bag . I do it and its pretty cool , works kinda like a sound gate . It doesnt fully take away the res but will bounce to release but then silence when it rests again , depending on how much you add dictates the sound .......pretty cool !!!

Im 53 and was doing this in high school in the 80's so this has been around for a long time. My rule of thumb is use 4x cotton balls in 14" floor, ...5 in a 15", ..6 in a 16" and ...8 in an 18". And that's for square sizes. If the drum depth is shorter, add an extra, or if you want more sustain, then subtract 1-2 balls per drum. And I don't pull them apart or flatten them. My theory is you want them to be able to bounce up from head vibration, allow sustain, then land to kill the overtones. I like live, singing, resonant drums but don't like excessive overtones so I prefer minimal damping. Secondly, I also regularly use Moongels on top heads in similar fashion because I mainly like single-ply coated heads so I use 1/2 of a gel on 10" tom, 3/4 gel on 12", 1 full gel on 14" floor, and then 2x of .75 gel (so 1.5 gel total) on a 16 floor, (thus .75 on top of head, .75 on bottom). For an 18" floor I'd use 3x of ~5/8 to 3/4 gels placed in a triad. I've found this system works extremely well and it makes sense as there's no reason to dampen a small drum the same amount as a larger one and vice versa. You have to scale the damping for the shell size. (and fyi, this is using the rectangle gels mind you but a similar theory would also apply to the round dot type where you use more dots on a larger drum).

I just recently used bull dog clips to cover the half of the reso head with a very thin very light weight piece of flannel from a craft store. Any really thin or really light weight piece of fabric works. Cool thing is you can dial in the sustain by how much you muffle the reso head. No need to remove heads and it happens on the fly. I’m getting Benny Greb deep tones on a 14x14 DW Maple/Mahagony floor tom.

I was impressed with how much even 1 and 2 balls cut the sustain down from the base level. It was almost 30% percent without really being perceptible. If the time wasn't visibly measured, I would have never noticed the difference. 3 and 4 is where it started to sound gatey, which is fantastic for being able to acousticly craft your sound; but 1 and 2 are a great way to practically affect the baseline of the sound without it noticeably affecting it. I am definitely going to play around with this.

I will sometimes place a folded piece of paper towel under one of the end plates of my snarewires to help deal with sympathetic snare buzz if the electric guitar is really setting them off. The snare then press it into the head. Don't need much and each drum likes it placed in a slightly different spot (throw off side of the reso head, butt plate side, barely under the snare wires end plates, ect.), but it works great when its in the right spot. I use a 1 invh by 6 inch section (folded in 4ths) on my drum and the butt plate side of the reso head (6 by 14 poplar snare with triple flanged hoops and 20strand pureaound snare wires.)

Amazing channel!

Great experiment! Proved quite well what people say about Benny Greb’s…

I recently converted a 13” rack tom that I never used into a floor tom and it sustains like crazy! Can’t wait to try this damping method after work

Awsome video as always just an fyi a friend of mine wich is a drum tech showed me this trick but ye would grab 4 to 5 of them and mush them together and it sounds amazing without a bunch bouncing around

it really works! from 8seconds sustain down to 5seconds!

Yet another killer vid. I'd say *if* someone wants the balls to stay towards the edge, you could use plastic pipe straps hanging on the inside of lug hardware and hot glue the balls to strap, or use velcro (hook side) inside the shell. Both cheap, easy to find at any hardware store, and no permanent damaging mods to shell, easy to remove if you don't like it. Idk if that would sound better or worse, but probably different. lol

Great video dudes. Excellent editing too! Levelling up every time

Cool muffling hack :-) Never saw this before.

thanks Cody!

Great Episode!! 🥁

In researching the cotton ball in floor tom hack , i ran across this gem. How about strands of yarn that can be easily threaded thru the drum shell's vent hole. I think I would add 8" lengths of yarn, one at a time, until the desired effect is reached. Other option would be adding a continuous length of yarn while leaving a piece outside of the shell. That would leave the option of pulling it all out. Can't wait to try, unless Cody wants to test it out. Hint , hint. Such a great resource we all have in Sounds Like a Drum. Update- i did try the yarn inserted via the vent hole and the results were not positive for me. What worked best for me was 3 flattened cotton balls when they were on the center of the reso head. Initially had to tilt the drum to get the cotton balls together then shook them to the center. My floor toms are not tilted so they stayed there while playing. I haven't tried this yet, but i think loosely securing the balls together with thin sewing thread, might be great to keep the cluster of cotton balls together and having the most effect. Many drummers tilt their floor tom and the cotton balls may just drift to the edge and not control the length of sustain. My 14 " very resonant drum went from 8 seconds of sustain to 3 seconds and sounds amazing.

Great VID. thank you

Tried this after watching Kenny sharrets. I fluffed the cotton balls first, but it's a great way to incrementally find that sweet spot of damping/gating.

Using custom custom cut poster board in a zero ring style inside the drum works as well. When you strike the drum it hovers for a split second allowing the initial boom but gating it off gently.

I use 3 and it’s awesome!

I use 5 in my FT. Definitely the best 'muffling' technique imo. Tip: push the cotton balls through the hole(w a lil stick) so you dont have to remove heads. Edit: i see you mentioned that. Works on my yamahas.

I highly recommend Evans staccato disc. Place that on the inside of any snare drum to get a wonderfully dry sound. It is especially great on an auxiliary snare drum or for those who want a high and tight sound with lots of attack

Cory, great info . Very interesting, vid. I just got Evans EC2s for batter heads and also using G1s ckear heads touse as reso heads fir all of my toms, 12,13 and 16 inches. No matter how I tune both heads , i still get too much " ringing overtones". The ec2s translucent coating, according to Evans, should not need muffling. So far I found that putting the standard reso head with the G1 clears on the batter with moon gells are yielding the best sound to my ear. I seek that Doo.....Doo..... Doo sound with little overtone . As a resurgent drummer, at age 68 , after 50 year hiatus, and using a cheap Gammon drumkit (wifes xmas gift to me for anticipated retirement), i am learning how much tweaking of the various heads affect the sound. BTW, the Evans EC2s gave a sound treatment technology of a ring around the edge which appears to have an oil moving arou d the ring . The oil is between the plys . Stay safe all.

I use one square of toilet paper and just one ply of it. This gives me a good tone and just takes that extra 20% or so of resonance off. It's also very easy to insert it into the drum through the vent hole, which is a plus!

Every time I have a question, you guys have a video!

Thanks for another great video. I would like to try this on a rack tom as well to try and achieve a similar gated effect on both toms. Wonder how much the slight tilt will matter. On a somewhat related note you should do a show about vent holes. I am thinking more presence/absence on tom, snare and unported kick at rock, pop, bop tunings rather than 2000s style ultra vented snares. Do unvented drums choke out at some tunings/volumes as some say and/or are they more sensitive and responive at lower volumes as others say. Keep up the great work.

Love it!

Super cool trick! So far, no easy way out of developing your tuning tool box! Some guys give up and go to Edrums! Not me! Never! Though, I’ve used a ton of them in the studio! Mr. yuck!

I’ve been trying to make my floor Tom sound like yours with 10 cotton balls for 2 days and I haven’t been able to so I’ll just do that. Thanks! I love low tuning so I’m gonna try something similar with the rest of the drum.

Cool never heard if that before. My opinion is that most floortoms don't have enough tuning lugs for the larger diameter of 16 and up. A 14 is just easier to tune evenly and get a good sound. I gave up on my 16 ft altogether and now just put a 14 tom on a low snare stand in its place with clear or coated Emperor tuned low, just half a turn or so above slack on the batter and over a turn on the reso. works for me, no damping.

I first learned of this from Gene Hoglan, he was talking about it on the making of Strapping Young Lad's Alien (I think). I might be completely misremembering, but he said that this is a kind of a Whitney Houston thing or ballad thing and makes a fun "rrrr" sound when the balls are falling back down on the reso head after hitting. It's been a loooong time since I've seen it, so don't quote me on this.

I play jazz as well as more backbeat oriented music. I have a range of dampening in my ft. Cotton balls, yes, but also a thin felt strip on occasion. I love the sound.

Thanx Cody and Ben for exploring this idea! I’ve always muffled my ft in some way or another. And, always looking for new ways. But, recently I’ve attached a 20 strand snare wire and had a snare bed blended into the bottom bearing edge of one of my ft and I feel like I’m always on the verge of getting the sound I want from this drum as a deep snare, but never really achieving it. Wondering if y’all have ever explored the ft/working sd conversion??

Hey, great episode as always. Could you do a video on muffling a drum by taping the head from the top or the bottom? I know that Alex van Halen used to tape his snare head from the bottom in kind of a triangular fashion, that would be interesting. Cheers! :)

Recently i tried poking some holes on the edges of the floor tom head in order to mimic the hd dry concept. I think it does a pretty good job, considering that i reach for a similar tone as this one (single ply coated, of course)

Good video.... To me, it sound nice on my floor toms (TAMA Starclassic Performer 100% Birch / Evans G2 batter - Evans G1 reso) this way: 14"x14" = 5 - 6 cotton balls 16"x16" = 8 - 9 cotton balls 18"x16" = 9 - 12 cotton balls ...Its just a personal opinion

I would be super interested if you guys experimented with absorbing sound reflections off of the inner shell of drums, without touching the head. For example, if you taped strips of towels to the inside of this nesting floor tom.

I know what I'm doing on my day off tomorrow

Dude! This reminds me of a trick I recently learned when you have a floor tom with too much sustain. Flip a floor tom leg upside down, or two or three if it's really extreme... works quick and easy with no fussing around

Great, as per usual and fab playing. Loved it when you stated that the drum had reached its 'cotton ball threshold' and, was that a smile? Something so simple and unsophisticated reminds me of my Grandma's days. She'd sit me on her knee and say 'shut up ugly or I'll stuff cotton balls in your mouth'.............Happy days.

Great video as always. 100 cotton balls sounded a lot like the poor abused Rototoms in my elementary school band.

Love this channel and very interesting topic, but was it just me every time it goes to the floor tom i have to crank the volume on my head phones and then BAM when i goes back to talking and i crank it down

So weird. I literally had this idea come to mind while watching another of your videos! Then this popped up in my feed before I even got a chance to try the cotton balls myself. I was thinking that they would be great because you could push one through the breather hole (tho getting it back out would require removing the head. Maybe run some thread through the cotton balls, so you could lift them off the head by pulling up the strings through the breather hole.

great video. thank you. floor toms are temperamental

thanks for the tip! I tried it but just didn't like the material bouncing around inside the drum like a popcorn machine. my floor toms are 16-18 it took some work to get them right. I heard about using a 2" felt strip across the bottom of the head, just to the side a little bit, just like you would the kik drum. the sound was as expected*

I use studio rings on the INSIDE of my floor toms so it's sitting against the inside of the resonant head. Worls well, but you need to make sure its a good fit so it doesn't cause a vibrating sound

Hi!! Nice comprehensive and scientific test!! Thanks a lot. I personally would tend to refrain myself to use to method. In fact, I am afraid that while playing, cotton balls would release a lot of dust inside the drum. Being a super-lazy guy, I do not like the idea of opening the drum every second or third gig just to blow away the cotton-dust.

y'all should try this in some mounted toms and on a snare drum

Best results with muffling a fat floor tom was throwing on 4 moongels in a pattern that would accomodate a round weight. I then placed a weight from one of my cymbal stands on top of the moon gels, very near to the edge. Almost did nothing to the fundamental, but killed basically all the overtones and sustain!

Great tip Cody. I might try this with both my floor toms . I'll be getting new heads for all my toms soon but its such a hard decision on what to get. I bought an old Samick 16" ×16" floor tom a couple of days ago for another old kit I'm refurbishing . I was surprised to see an internal muffler on the ol girl. Couple of new heads should have it singin ! It may also get the cotton ball action. Great vid guys . Rock on !✊

I was always taught this was called the Nashville cloud....plus they're flattened out for less rebound and floating ability.

5 is right. Good topic

I personally use a half of a paper tissue, it works very well!

First off, do you think using fewer cotton balls in smaller rack toms will help with the little bit of muffling we may want on them? So I tried something similar, but different a couple months after I got my kit. I used a wash cloth, but didn’t want it to cover the whole head so I rolled it up before putting it in. I think the weight on the bottom head plus how dense a rolled up wash rag is made the air not able to really go from the batter head to the reso head, so I ended up with like a really dead floor tom. This was actually a blessing in disguise for me because this led to me messing around with the tuning of my toms after this. Since I was focused on my floor tom I started with that and to make a long story short, this is when I decided to flip my tuning for my toms and go for a tighter batter and slightly less tight reso. The distance in how far between tones are between batter and reso heads vary from tom to tom slightly as well, similar on my bass as well to get some extra tone while having a decent size pillow inside. I still use a pretty classic tuning on my snare though, near table top reso and medium-ish battter, you can really hear and feel the difference in the attack and reverb I get from the snare w/out snares engaged versus the toms. Sadly, I still have to use some dampening. I use 2 Meinl drum honeys on the floor tom, 1 small trutone on my 12, 1 big trutone on my 10 and 4 Meinl Drum Honeys in a diamond pattern on the snare with half a moon gel on the snare side to help temper the snare sensitivity. I do think I’ll try out the cotton balls in at least my floor tom though. I’m also thinking it may be possible to also put like 1-3 of them in a rack tom for similar results, just with a smaller drum, if needed. On another note, you said in one of your videos that this channel is really huge on the premise of tuning and tone, which you have proven with like almost all of your videos having something to do with one of the two. But anyway, due to you clearly really being involved in that aspect of drumming, do you like/listen to Terry Bozzio? Have you seen or heard of his “all cymbal drum set” although I think he has a couple now lol and wouldn’t that just be called a cymbal set or cymbal kit when there’s literally no drums, just cymbals of all kinds? Also have you ever seen his kit that has the 3 rows of rack toms? With that kit it’s almost like he made a drum piano because I’m pretty sure he gets piccolo toms made to be tuned at certain notes. I say that because I saw a video of the guy who does his drums for him and he said that Terry would just call him up in the middle of the night randomly and just say “yeah I need an F in there somewhere” and then Terry also credits DW for being able to make these toms that are small, but due to technology, they’re able to get low tones from much smaller drums than they used to, so he can fit many more drums on a big rack in front of him and that’s why I call it a drumming piano because it sounds like he could likely create almost any note depending on whether he hits a single drum at once or sometimes potentially having to hit two different drums simultaneously to create a third note or tone that no single drum on his kit or possibly no single drum for certain notes and tones are capable of creating that sound he’s looking for. I’m sure you’ve obviously heard of him, I’m just curious just how much you like him and what he’s done. I’m also curious as to whom your drumming inspirations are? What made you wanna start in the first place? Btw, here’s Bozzio doing amazing work. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/edifi5VknMrelo0.html

I really like the open sound, but 3 cotton balls also sounds good. It starts to sound a bit choked around 5 or 6 and certainly the batter head overtones start to dominate the fundamental around 6-8 cotton balls. 10 is way too much for me. I have successfully used a half sized drumtacs on the reso head just to take out strange overtones that I can't tune out without dramatically changing the tone of the drum. They are stickier than moongel so they hold on to the head and don't fall off.

Another great video! I've always had problems controlling my floor tom sustain while maintaining full tone, so this will definitely come in handy. What are your thoughts on using a dampened head, like a PS3 or Studio X, on the bottom of a tom?

Another great video,I prefer mine wide open ,but I'm not recording in a studio with them.The thing I don't understand, people buy great drums,expensive drums ,and then find a way to make them less resonate. People stopped using toms mounted on bass drums, toms are suspended by rim mounts,I don't get it. IF the drum rings out a little in a confined space put a little moon gel on it.playing live you need your drums to resonate. Just my two cents.!!!

i was at the benny greb masterclass and he told uss that he picks the cottonballs into to small pieces, i believe it is because of surface area.

Other ways to control floor tom note length: remove one or more rubber tips on legs or use one ore more legs with adjustable spikes. Works for me.

My old drum instructor told me about news paper yrs ago for a base drum.. I took 1 section fold on the crease and cut.then cut into 1 inch wide strips and throw it in the drum.. nothing touches the head and it takes out the ringing..

I recently worked with a guy that loved dead drum sounds. His toms sounded like your 100 cotton balls and deader. He had his bass drum completely stuffed with zero tension on the batter. His share was snare sound only with no fundamental.

I've also tried a similar thing using paper towel sheets. About 2 or 3 individual sheets will do the trick. I would also cut them a little so they would lay flat inside the drum (depending on tom size)

If the drum were tipped a bit just enough to hold the balls against the side would that help with sympathetic harmonics? Just 2-3 on the side to keep it from ringing? Just curious...

Use some thread through the cotton ball. Tape the string in the best position, with the length just right, so that the ball ends up where you want it.

Good piece. Can you guys do one on how weight in the bass drum focuses and tightens up the low end? Simon phillips swears by using a paint can in the bass drum filled with sand. I think Eddie Kramer gave him that tip. Yamaha has weights in the shell of the bass drum on their new oak live kit and the reviews say it really works. Just an idea.

How would this idea work with angled mounted toms?