Before bugles, snare drum patterns told soldiers when to wake, eat and sleep
Long before radio, armies ran their day on drumbeats. American troops rose to roughly five minutes of fife and drum, often a piece called Three Camps, were summoned to meals by tunes like Roast Beef, and were sent to their tents by the Tattoo. The snare's crisp crack carried orders across a camp.
That cutting sound comes from the drum's underside. A modern snare has two heads, now usually Mylar plastic though once calf or goat skin, and against the bottom one sits a set of rattling strands of metal, plastic, nylon or gut. Hitting the top head sets the thin lower head vibrating, which buzzes the strands. A lever on the strainer can lift them away, turning the voice into something close to a tom-tom.
Players have plenty of colours to choose from. Brushes, the bundled-twig rute or bare hands all soften the buzz. A rimshot catches head and rim together, while the cross-stick technique rests the stick's tip on the head and knocks its butt against the rim for a dry click. Kit and concert drums typically measure 14 inches across and 5 to 8 deep, the piccolo only about 4 inches tall, and the rope-tensioned field drum stands tallest and heaviest of all.
The ancestor is the medieval tabor, a war drum with a single gut snare, often played by one person who also blew a fife. By the 15th century it had grown larger and cylindrical, and Swiss mercenaries carried a deeper version at their side through the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 17th century screws began to hold the snares in place.
Sanford A. Moeller, in The Art of Snare Drumming, called it essentially a military instrument whose true character depends on studying martial drumming. During the late 18th and 19th centuries the bugle took over most signalling, yet the snare survives in a few, such as the Adjutant's Call. Physicists still find it tricky: acousticians studying its vibrations report that a simple two-mass model explains only the lowest modes.
Source: Snare drum
