How Do You Tune Your Drums?

Do you tune your drums to specific notes? Which drum gets what note? Do you use bottom heads, or no? Do you use dampers?

 

When hubby wakes up, I'll see what his answer is.

I don't think he tunes to specific notes.

There are no bottom heads.

I've seen a head with band aids applied to it for helping get the sound he wanted.

 

No bottom heads is old school from the 60's.

I've heard of duct tape for dampers, but band aides I haven't. Does it stop the over ring? I would think there isn't much over ring without bottoms.

 

I joke that I had a nightmare that I was this dudes Drum Tech:





Not only is it huge but every piece is tuned to an actual note.

C/S,
Rev J

 

Sweetwater has some very accurate drum tuners. It's vital if your recording but high end DAWS can tinker but not fix the problem. It has to do with tightening and losening the bands mostly on top or adding tention to the surface--so the tunner tells you what note your heading for--you need to know the standard note for each drum. Like and E string or A string but jazz drummers offten alter the tone of the note.

So buy a tunner--from there it's easy.

As I said in the studio or if your playing to 50,000 to 100,000 people I highly recommend your drums be in tune--or studio you woun't get thru the door if your drums are out of tune.

 

How do you know?
My guess is your right--just curious

 

Yes! When you buy it it should say--if not it's printed on there somewhere if it's a pro drum kit.

Some drums have bottom bands--you can tell if it has keys for fighting and losing.

Dampening like pillows in kick drum are for small Venus where your not mic'ing each drum. Bars and such anything over 2000 to 200,000 you probably need mics and thus must be in tune or you'll mess up the vocals. Buy a tunner--Studio@Sweetwater.com has the best.

 

I only have a five piece kit, a 60's champagne sparkle Rogers set. I just use a guitar tuner. I mic them for recording through a 12 channel mixer that has 40 effects. I have seven cymbals, but only use two condenser mics for them.

 

Wouldn't fit in my studio. Way too much work, tuning and set up. I have a travel kit for playing out that takes five minutes to set up.
Plus, I'm not that good a drummer to play a kit like that. And that kit probably costs more than a new Corvette.

 

Yeah. Having gone to school for audio production I can also imagine that miking and processing it would be a bitch. The drummer in question is Terry Bozzio who's played with Frank Zappa, Missing Persons, Steve Vai, Billy Sheehan, etc. Vai talks about one of the tunes on his album "Sex and Religion" there is a guitar and drum unison passage where he just gave Bozzio the guitar lead sheet and he played the whole passage in one pass the first time.

C/S,
Rev J

 

They sell electronic tuners. studio@Sweetwater.com or just google sweet water--they have the best quality and will help you learn how to use them.
These days most pro drum its have bands on top and bottom. A Pro set will most likely have keys to tighten or loosen on both

Buffering is used for small venues. Bars, churches with less than 200 seats. And it is still used unseal home studios because the drums often drowned out other elements. Its like a volume button
In a small venue you don't need mic'ing. Above 2000 you begin needing mics. But it's often simpler from 2000 to 10000 or so to just hang 2 full range condencer mic's over the drum set--kick drums, are normaly loud enough to compete with guitar, bass, and keyboard PA's. Of course it's best to have a mixing board and power amps--these days you don''t even need to run a snake--it can all be wireless. from 30,000 to 200,000 people you'll need to mic every drum--so they must be in tune. And there's no need to go into the studio without tunned drums
So you'll need a turner and know how to use it. Ofcourse if your playing to venues above 50,000 you can forget how to tune drums, you'll have a slave to do it it for you. After my first band broke up I became a roadie for a band that was on tour fall on the east coast and played places like Medow lands, Madison Square Garden 20 shows at a time with a night off here and there. And stadiums and amphitheaters all up and down the east coast. They also played much smaller but acoustically perfect venues like the Fox Theater in Atlanta, or Stanley in Pittsburgh--point is if we wanted to be rehired and move up the chain which happened quickly because many roadies quit mid tour, or just didn't show up for the next. Point being Drums are one of the only common instruments I don't play, but I did learn a lot on the job.

So if you ever plan to record then tuned drums are a must. And large venues such as 50,000 + The drums must be mic'd and therefor tuned. It will throw off the vocalist.

I wrote all this out last wrote a very coherently organized post saying the same thing but every word of it disappeared?? No grate loss.

 

I was drum teck for 2 dudes along with speaker monkey, and many other things--3000mi on the back of a truck tends to throw off the tunning. But once you hit the East coast or get back to the west they tend to stay tuned.--This has to be a studio set up but I've never seen one this big. Grad programs in music have setups like this. Where'd you see this monster?

 

With my raw deer hide drum, you need to have a precise amount of heat and humidity to obtain your sound. If it's dry in the air, and relatively cool, the hide will "ting" or "ping" as it vibrates, however as the humidity seeps into the hide, a powerful "BOOOM" can be produced with fantastic results and bass.

Sometimes heating it with a hair drier can allow the skin to stretch too for anything note and sound.

I use my drum to bring the rains towards me, so it's relatively humid when I do use it. As good as the thunder, BOOM BOOM BOOOOOM.

 

I have read interviews with him and others who have played with him who have attested to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDQE82ElyJg

I also just read that he played with Korn.

C/S,
Rev J

 

No, you do not tune your drums to a particular note, unless you want that. Bozzio did it because he wanted to have a kit of melodic drums. Those drums were custom designed and built for that purpose, they aren't just ordinary drums tuned to notes.
And I'm pretty sure not the entire kit is melodic drums.

Kettle drums are tuned to a particular note, and their construction is conducive to enhancing the fundamental frequency. Timpani are also tuned to particular notes, thought they have a footpedal tensioner to change the pitch by a certain interval.

The only drum in a kit where sometimes a pitch is used in tuning is the snare drum, but the batter head is tuned to a different pitch than the reso head. up to a minor 3rd.
I tune my steel snares reso head to f# and the batter to f for a fat rock sound. I tune my little popcorn snare differently.

All the other drums, the toms and bass drum, are tuned to their most resonant sound. You must strike a balance though between the drums full resonance, and a certain amount of atonality. Some de-tune the resonator head slightly to give that decending pitch sound.
If your drums sound too much like musical pitches, your toms will sound like crappy concert drums, which have open shells with lenghts calculated to resonate at or closer to musical pitches. Bass drums are usually damped with blankets and such anyway so theres a lot of flexibility there. I just try to get the lowest pitch possible on the bass drum and not have too flappy of heads. If all your drums bearing edges are true, properly profiled and lightly lubricated, tuners clean and lubed, basic drum tuning consists of evenly tensioning the tuners until the drum head sounds very resonant and loud. You do the same to both heads (do it on a carpet to damp the other head) and your drums are tuned. If your drums are too resonant and/or seem to have odd resonances you can tape felt or some soft fabric to the heads at the node of the offending overtone to damp 'em and still keep a good drum sound.

Note hippy duct-tape n' felt dampers lol


They have these 'damping gels' now you just stick to the head, not as ugly as a tape-and-felt bandaid, lol sticky shit you just stick to the head, but comes off easily. Gotta get me some of this...http://www.musiciansfriend.com/drums-percussion/rtom-moongel-percussion-dampening-gels

Warning; even major brand drums often come from the factory with bearing edges that are not flat and true with fucked up, uneven profiles, confounding tuning to a considerable degree.

 

I remembered incorrectly, hubby's drums did have bottom heads.

 

Sweet...pics?

 

Sounds sensable.

 

Ofcourse you can google "tuning drum kits" and find about 100 very good ways to tune your drums. You'll sound like an expert in a half hour and in an hour you'll be an expert. Then you can get a Phd in drum tuning, Or just pick the articl that fits your needs best.