Drum stick
A drum stick (or drumstick) is a type of percussion mallet used particularly for playing snare drum, drum kit, and some other percussion instruments, and particularly for playing unpitched percussion.
This article is about the musical tool. For other uses, see Drumstick (disambiguation).Specialized beaters used on some other percussion instruments, such as the metal beater used with a triangle or the mallets used with tuned percussion (such as xylophone and timpani), are not normally referred to as drumsticks. Drumsticks generally have all of the following characteristics:
Conventional numbering[edit]
Plain wooden drumsticks are most commonly described using a number to describe the weight and diameter of the stick followed by one or more letters to describe the tip. For example, a 7A is a common jazz stick with a wooden tip, while a 7AN is the same weight of stick with a nylon tip, and a 7B is a wooden tip but with a different tip profile, shorter and rounder than a 7A. A 5A is a common wood tipped rock stick, heavier than a 7A but with a similar profile. The numbers are most commonly odd but even numbers are used occasionally, in the range 2 (heaviest) to 9 (lightest).
The exact meanings of both numbers and letters differ from manufacturer to manufacturer, and some sticks are not described using this system at all, just being known as jazz (typically a 7A, 8A or 8D) or heavy rock (typically a 5B) for example. The most general purpose stick is a 5A. However, there is no one stick for any particular style of music.
There are two main ways of holding drumsticks:
Traditional grip was developed to conveniently play a snare drum while riding a horse, and was documented by Sanford A. Moeller in The Art of Snare Drumming (1925). It was the standard grip for kit drummers in the first half of the twentieth century and remains popular.
Matched grips became popular towards the middle of the twentieth century, threatening to displace the traditional grip for kit drumming. However the traditional grip has since made a comeback, and both types of grip are still used and promoted by leading drummers and teachers.