Drum sound effects

A beater into a large head, four strokes evenly spaced. The version most edits want, because it works as punctuation and as a pulse under picture without ever reading as music.

Wood into a taut head with wires buzzing underneath. It is the brightest thing on the page and the one that cuts through dialogue without needing any level to do it.

Three heads struck in turn, each lower than the last. The descent is what carries dread, since a figure that falls in pitch reads as something going wrong rather than as rhythm.

A thin metal plate opening into a long shimmer. The decay is the useful part, because it runs across a cut and carries the edit point rather than stopping at it.

Two small metal plates clamped together and tapped. Dry, tiny, and almost pitchless, which makes it the one drum sound that can sit under speech without arguing with it.

Bare palms and fingertips on a stretched skin, alternating between a low centre thump and a sharp edge slap. Skin on skin sounds nothing like a stick, and an audience hears the difference immediately.