Back in the day, about a million years ago, we used egg cartons to attain the effect you want. Not too pretty but, they seemed to work.

Brian

Yeah, I can picture that! Lol

Nobody seemed to have much money BITD, so yeah, we used our imaginations and came up with a bunch of cool, but rather ugly, ideas! Egg cartons would definitely make the list. LoLoLoLo

The foam will attenuate the higher frequencies but do nothing to control bass.

Not sure what your ultimate goal is...

If you don't want to use egg crates you can always do what we did with free cardboard purple apple trays from the local Piggly Wiggly (or IGA) . I don't know if they still use them or not. You may have to try a farmer's market.

Yes, the high frequencies is what I'm looking to soften-up, so I might try them.

As far as the egg carton idea, well, I'm a married man, and let's just say I'd likely come home one day and find my drums out on the street covered in egg cartons! Cool Dude

My drums are in the main area of the basement where our TV and sitting area is, so any acoustic tiles I use will have to look nice and tidy. I might even use red tiles to match the kit. We'll see.

For a low cost and simple approach I would recommend putting the foam onto a thin board (4x8 sheet) and then securing them to the wall with about a 1/2" - 1" air gap between them and the wall. Cover the entire sheet with the acoustic foam. The air gap will also help to deaden the sound and not make a mess on the wall by just adhering the acoustic foam to it and it is easy to take down in the future. The plexi-glass panels sold by GC and others can help to lower some of the projection of sound however sound waves tend to bounce and it may not be optimal. For the bass drum dampening, you can also make a 3' x 3' panel with foam on the front (facing the BD). Like with the wall, an air gap really helps to deaden the sound so 2-panels would work well with the gap between. We do this a lot in industry to reduce machinery noise in the workplace (Safety Professional here)