Drum sets were first developed due to financial and headroom considerations in theaters where drummers were encouraged to disguise as many percussion parts as possible. Up until then, drums and cymbals were played separately in chauvinistic and orchestral music settings. Initially, drummers played the bass and snare African Drums drums by hand, then in the 1890s they started experimenting with footpedals to play the bass drum. William F. Ludwig made the bass drum pedal fixed order practical in 1909, paving the manner for the modern drum kit.

By the 1930s, Gene Krupa and others popularized streamlined trap kits leading to a primary four piece drum bent standard: bass, snare, tom-tom, and floor tom. In hour legs were fitted to imposing level toms, and "consolettes" were devised to hold smaller tom-toms on the bass drum. In the 1940s, Louie Bellson pioneered account of two bass drums, or the double bass drum kit. With the ascendancy of rock and roll, the role of the drum kit ape became more visible, accessible, and visceral. The watershed moment occurred in 1964, when Ringo Starr of The Beatles played his Ludwig kit on American television; an event that motivated legions to take up the drums.