How High Should Your Drum Throne Be?

Happy Friday! I’ve dubbed this weekend a "bye-week" on the channel. (Maybe some of you astute viewers happened to notice that a video didn’t go up today!). So instead I’d like to shoot you a sneak peak of an upcoming lesson in the works.

I’ve been getting questions about drum stool height... How do you know what your ideal stool height is? How does this factor into your height, playing style, and foot technique? Let’s dig into this. (Stay tuned to the channel, because the full video on this will be up soon.)

I’m just under 6’4” tall. For you metric folks, that’s roughly 193cm. I measured both drum thrones that I use often and found both to be right at 22” (56cm). If we do the math here, that gives us a 3.45 to 1 ratio - or 29%. My throne height is 29% of my physical height. So take that for what it’s worth, and use this as a starting point if you’d like. But there are other factors to consider since this really isn’t the perfect end-all-be-all measurement.

Here’s the big question: Which foot technique are you using? Are you playing heel-up or heel-down?

If you’re playing heel-up primarily, you’ll want to sit higher. Think about this logically... If you’re sitting on your sofa, you’re sitting pretty low. You’d have to literally lift your entire leg manually in order to get your heel off the floor of your living room. But if you were playing heel-down, you could technically get by sitting this low.

Contrast this by sitting on a bar stool. When you’re sitting this high, it feels much more natural to keep your heels up and tap your toes on the floor. Heel-down would feel weird. If you choose to sit high, heel-up will feel very natural. If you choose to sit low, heel-down will feel much more natural. Choose your stool height based on your technique. Or if you’re just getting started, choose your playing technique based on how high you want to sit.

Another angle to check out here... How far back do you want to sit? - Or how close do you want to sit? When sitting high and playing heel-up, you can sit very close to your kick and that work just fine. But when playing heel-down you HAVE to sit much farther back so that your leg still forms an angle greater than 90 degrees. That principle pretty much sums this up.

The angle between upper leg and lower leg needs to be greater than 90 degrees.

Otherwise your ankle and knee will be cramped and stressed, and you won’t be able to play as loud or as fast as you’d like. This means scooting back OR raising your stool - either works. It doesn’t matter! So find what’s comfortable to you.

Use my 29% ratio to get started if you like, but ultimately just find what’s comfortable to you. This doesn’t need to be math-based, and it’s not rocket science. Just get comfortable, and don’t be afraid to constantly experiment. Also in case you’re interested to see more detail, here’s a shot of my throne and kit from an angle that gives you a good look at relative heights.

(Also for what it’s worth... my snare is roughly 2-3” above the throne, and the floor tom is a little less than 2” higher than the throne.)

Thanks for reading! Stay Non Glamorous.

God Bless,

Stephen