Definitely, it is extremely rare though, and usually has a good reason for it. Had one guy I worked with who used to be Rihanna’s sound engineer, I asked him why he stopped doing that and started working for a local corporate AV company. His simple response was that it wasn’t worth the stress, and he got to stay home and see his kids.

Dude was easily one of the best sound engineers I’ve ever heard, he could make anything sound way better than it had any right to be, and yet he was the local guy pushing cases, running cable, and basically playing second chair to all the corporate AV guys thinking they were sound engineers, including myself for a while. All because it meant he could see his kids and not be stressed about it.

I ended up making him my go to audio guy anytime I needed someone, and stepped back so I could learn.

It’s not supposed to be played without belts, I’ll tell you that much.

Basically, also trains, so many trains.

I beat Factorio without using belts.

…

No, I’m not a masochist, why do you ask?

They do have a pitch, however because it is percussive as opposed to sustained, we don’t register the pitch as easily. Many will also purposely obfuscate the pitch, such as cymbals, they don’t hold a tone, but rather multiple tones at once, making a washing sound and working for any key. If you ever look at a cymbal you will see the rings and divots around the cymbal, because if they weren’t there it would ring like a bell which definitely has a pitch.

As for the drums themselves they definitely do a have a pitch and it is common for to tune them in fifths, or octaves. Think of a drumline, those drums all have pitches and tones, they also function identically to a traditional drum kit. You can very similarly to the cymbals obfuscate this tone by doing an offset tuning so your drum head resonates unevenly across the head creating multiple tonalities at once.

You can achieve this by being lazy and not tuning.

I’m a professional sound engineer and ex-professional drummer BTW.

Party of the rule of law… wait…

My entire career path.

I knew I liked concerts, and knew that people had to run that equipment, so I decided to get a job in an event company warehouse to learn what was happening. About 2 months in a sales guy apparently oversold a job and came running downstairs asking if anyone knew how to do video. No one did. So I said “have you got the manuals? I’ll learn.” He said, “Great! You’re going out on a North American arena tour in 6 weeks, good luck.”

Talk about getting thrown into it. I was the projector tech for a show that was running 10 screens and I had never touched a projector before then. I thankfully had a director who realized the crap I was in and helped me out.

That was almost 15 years ago now, I’m no longer on the road, but I’m still in it. Every show is different and every show is a learning experience.