My understanding from a practical standpoint is the deeper the drum the more it will projection or louder it gets.

No please pardon me while i put on my geek hat.

The deeper the drum the larger the wave and therefore the lower the fundamental frequency of the shell. You can see the solution to an open cylinder at this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_resonance

Being that lower notes tend to carry further it sort of makes sense that the louder the drum would be the deeper it is.

In my experience the tuning of the head has more to do with the primary note of the drum. You can see the solution to the vibrational modes of a circular membrane which is at this link

http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demos/MembraneCircle/Circle.html

I'm sure there is someone out there that knows more that me about this than me but just figured I'd offer my 2cent.

tom

Good info above! On a modern bass drum, I kind of wonder if a deeper depth is necessary to acheive a similar pitch to many vintage bass drums...I've been curious with that specifically. In other words, take a new maple bass drum (say 7 ply of today) vs a 60s 3 ply Ludwig of the same size...would be interesting to see how the fundamental note compares, given heads and tuning are similar. I'm almost most thinking that a modern 22x14 maple might be higher pitched than and old 3 ply Ludwig. But then again, maybe it's possible to tune a "new" bass looser to acheive a lower note...

Don't worry about geeking out, that's how we roll here, at least when we talk shop.

My bass player is a physics prof, so we geek out @ practice a lot. I've learned a great deal about vibrating membranes from him.

I have a 14x22 '66 Star 3 ply luan w/ maple rerings and a 16x22 80's Tama 6+ ply. Volume & projection are the big differences, for outdoor gigs. Without a mic, my Star is lost outside but the Tama carries to the next town. Inside at a standard or smaller venu, the Star is perfect. Though note tone may be the same with careful tuning, the thin shell vibrated more so produces a warmer, more resonate sound. IMO.

Peace & rhythm & happy Friday!

Brian

Two drums of similar construction, with the same heads and same tunings, but with different depths will indeed sound different. I got to check this out first hand at a local drumbuilder's shop. We were having this exact conversation. We used 2 Keller shells, one 22x14, the other 22x18, same heads, same tuning (verified via drum dial...), and took turns playing them and standing back and listening. The main difference is that the 18" deep bass drum had more "boom" and the 14" deep drum had more "punch". By "boom", I mean that resonant, almost concert bass drum-sounding boom, that sounds like it's processed with reverb. By "punch", I mean that t sounds more like a chest-thumping in-your-face bass drum sound, like it was processed with compression in a studio. The 14" depth sounded more articulate and thumpy, and the 18" lost articulation but gained "bigness".

No wonder people tend to use treated batters and ported resos on deeper bass drums, and conversely tune 14" bass drums more "open". There's some middle ground that drummers must be trying to achieve...

Do you think Al Van Halen was onto something???