Is it just me, or is it harder to perform scrapes and sweeps on 8" 10" 12" 14" drums than it is on 10" 12" 14" 16" drums? I also seems to have a harder time doing them on certain brands of drums because they do not go out far enough from the body, etc. I was just wondering if anyone felt the same way, or if i am just using incorrect technique with scrapes and sweeps. Thanks

Yes, scrapes are more difficult on smaller drums because you need to be more accurate. If you miss your playing area by an inch or two on big drums, there's a pretty good chance you're still on the head. If you miss by the same amount on smaller drums, you could be hitting a rim.

(Larger sets are generally 10-12-13-14, by the way. You'll pretty much never see anything bigger than 14" in a modern set of tenors.)

Wow, a 16" drum four. Sweet!

SkyDog, as a fellow "old-timer" you'll probably remember the old full-shell, deep tri-toms with the die-cast rims. I think those were 12, 14, 16...and felt like they weighed 300 pounds.

I taught at a school that had a set of tenors that were 8(spock)10, 12, 14, 16. The 16 was a custom drum with Pearl championship series hardware on it. It was an interesting setup and I found it hard to tune them to notes that I liked. But by no means is this a common setup.

I was just commenting to a friend that you almost need a tenor book dedicated to playing on small block tenors. It seems to me that many of the techniques require modification to work appropriately on the smaller drums.

I don't just remember those old tri-toms -- I marched them in junior high school!

I still have a picture of me with my tri-toms in 8th grade.

I hope you kids realize how easy you've got it nowadays.

Yeah small blocks are a pain in the butt. I've never even played normal tenors and i know this. Scrape patterns on small blocks just seem jammed up, squeezed into small spaces. You kind of just feel like your confined to a very small space when scraping on small blocks.

I wish I had a picture from back then. It was the first year the school had a marching program, so everything we used was an ancient hand-me down from the high schools in town. It would be fun to contrast that with the ultra-competitive percussion program the school has nowadays.

Ah okay thanks for your input guys, just wanted to make sure because i was starting to get really frustrated trying to play them on our school drums and i would constantly be hitting rims compared to the larger sets we use in corps. And Aaronicus, in what state is your high school located, because I know of a londonderry high school in our state. I know a bunch of people from there.

Oh wow, you are from NH. Thats cool, me too! I go to Winnacunnet high school.I know a few people from your school from camps and such hehe.