Drum tuning

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Judas Jetski
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Drum tuning

Post by Judas Jetski » Mon Mar 26, 2007 3:05 pm

Just an idle question: is there some sort of standard tuning for drums?

I was just setting up a drum set for a friend of mine and realized that I always tune my drum sets the same way.

On a 5-piece :

Floor tom: root.
big rack tom/small floor tom: 4th
small/only rack tom: 6th
snare: octave.

I know it's right if I can play the "cavalry charge" bugle call on the drums.

On a 4-piece :

Floor tom: root
rack tom: fifth
bass drum: about a fourth below root
snare: frightfully high (maybe an octave or 2 above bass drum?)

I ask because

a) I never really thought about it until I was tuning my friend's vintage Ludwig 4-pc and he was complaining that his drums were too small. I remembered this old Ludwig 16" tom I had in the basement and we brought it up and it was already in tune to the rest of the set, and

b) they have this thing called a "drum dial" which tells you when your drum head is at equal tension all the way around. Having spent a significant amount of time behind a torque wrench I now have to wonder whether my drums are "out of spec." (Or really, whether there are reserves of tone out there that I am not tapping into by forcing my drums to a pitch they do not "want" to hold.)

Most of my drums have been old jazz drums but I got a beat-down set of Mapex Orions and lo and behold they did the same thing. All by themselves, seemingly.
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Post by floid » Mon Mar 26, 2007 3:14 pm

skabaconska wrote:tune to the 8th mc 16th mc burrito of 8. You want it sounding warm. I will never use a drumdial.
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Post by Judas Jetski » Mon Mar 26, 2007 3:57 pm

floid wrote:
skabaconska wrote:tune to the 8th mc 16th mc burrito of 8. You want it sounding warm. I will never use a drumdial.
Yeah, thanks for clearing that right up. Any other comments from the peanut gallery?
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Post by @?,*???&? » Mon Mar 26, 2007 6:34 pm

There's a whole thread on this already from not long ago...

But, tune them to tensions, not notes. The size of the drum will dictate where the drum will sound best based upon pressure at each lug- not which note. You may get them in tune to a note and the drum still may sound terrible.

Get a drum dial too. They are a snap to use.

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Post by The Scum » Mon Mar 26, 2007 9:35 pm

On a 4-piece :

Floor tom: root
rack tom: fifth
bass drum: about a fourth below root
snare: frightfully high (maybe an octave or 2 above bass drum?)
I do the same thing with my toms. Make them so there's a power chord when they're played in unison.

Kick and snare I tune for response. The snare often winds up a little above or below the small tom when the snares are off (depending on the sizes of both drums). Kick gets set up so it speaks when I smack it.

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Post by floid » Tue Mar 27, 2007 11:56 am

Andy Smash wrote:
floid wrote:
skabaconska wrote:tune to the 8th mc 16th mc burrito of 8. You want it sounding warm. I will never use a drumdial.
Yeah, thanks for clearing that right up. Any other comments from the peanut gallery?
yeah, sorry for being an ass like that. it's just that the thread a few weeks back proved once again that musicians rarely agree on the proper way to do things, even though all of them have found the absolute best way to do it. apparently skabaconska prefers a rather flatulent style.
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Post by Judas Jetski » Tue Mar 27, 2007 7:46 pm

Yeah, I read through that other thread. It doesn't really say much, and is actually about tuning drums to absolute pitch, not relative. I'd never intentionally tune a drum to an absolute pitch outside of necessity; that just seems like asking for trouble once everyone else starts playing.

I guess I was just curious if anyone else found themselves in similar circumstances. I think it's odd that a drum I tuned years ago and forgot I even had would be in tune for an entirely different set that I tuned and re-headed four years later.

The drums are probably 20 years apart in age, too, and are totally different construction and yet sound fine together. So that says something for Ludwig's consistency of design or tone or whatever.

I also found it odd that my preferences between a four piece with 2 toms would be different than they would be for a five piece with 2 floor toms. I guess I was hoping someone could say something like "oh that's standard jazz tuning" or whatever, so I'd know where I got the idea in the first place. I guess it just came out of my own little head.

As far as the drumdial goes, it seems like it'd be useful for making drums sound OK quick, or "roughing in" a pitch on a new head. I doubt it'd be as good as a practiced ear, though.
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Post by Judas Jetski » Tue Mar 27, 2007 7:49 pm

Oh... meant to say, I like the "power chord" idea. Somebody once told me that a simple fifth is a very useful chord because it contains tones associated with both alarm (like a siren) and completion (like a power chord). I'm way into the ring-y snare sound, too. Like in "Roundabout" by Yes.
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Post by glagola1 » Wed Mar 28, 2007 1:29 pm

As a drummer, I simply tune them so that they sound cool to me. If they are too high, I make 'em low. If they flap in the wind, I tune them up. Once I get the overall note and feel about right, I tap near each bolt and tune them to sound the same and to get rid of out of tune ressonances.

That's just what I do. The drums are dialed in to fit the sound of my band. If I played in a different band, I may tune them differently.

I don't think striving for a "correct" way or absolute is a good idea.
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Post by Judas Jetski » Wed Mar 28, 2007 2:28 pm

As I may have said before, I'm not looking for some absolute set of rules to be applied to all drummers for all time. I just noticed something interesting about the way I have chosen to tune my drums, and wondered if anyone on the board knows of any standard of tuning. Always looking for new ideas, you know...

I keep my resonant head about 1/2 step lower than my batter head as well, unless the shells are maple in which case I find that I usually have to tune both heads to the same pitch. That's why I usually steer away from the maple drums--it's tough for me to get any depth out of them. Most of them anyway. Those Ludwigs shined up nicely.

And, I plan out my fills in advance.

Come on! There's so many drummers in this community! Surely there has to be some variety of opinions? Or do you mean to tell me that all you engineers and producers never gave an organized thought to drum tuning?

If it helps at all, I was listening to the local jazz station today and heard a drummer playing who had his toms all tuned about a major third apart. I read somewhere (that *other* thread :roll: ) that some drummers tune their toms like that so they don't all resonate off each other. But boy did those drums sound awkward.
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Post by Centaur-Related » Thu Mar 29, 2007 10:31 am

I would have to agree with Glagola 1. I just tune it 'til it sounds good. I know...I sound like a Philistine. But it works for me. Though this thread is of interest to me. I'm always curious to how other drummers tune their instruments.

Oh...if it makes a difference...I use coated heads.

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Post by Judas Jetski » Thu Mar 29, 2007 7:47 pm

I certainly think coated vs. non-coated makes a difference. I nearly always use pinstripes... one time I had to use a coated pinstripe rather than plain... tone was totally different.

I use those mylar rings to kill the overtones, and I've noticed that even the brand of ring makes a difference. They've gotta be Aquarian Zero-rings or they just don't sound right. Why? I have no idea. It's all mylar.

I'd be willing to bet that those of us who tune our drums in an un-examined manner still tune them to similar pitches every time... the tension of the head changes the "feel" of the drum as much as it changes the pitch, and people tend to stick to what they're comfortable with...

What about cymbals? I'm really careful to pick complementary cymbal tones, arranged high pitch to low pitch, short decay to long decay, left to right.

I'll bet there were some really awesome Philistine drummers, back in the day...
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Post by riantide » Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:11 am

I once heard something about old jazz guys tuning their kick drums to the lowest note the bass player will play in the song. That sounds pretty neat.

That being said, I have to agree with the peanut gallery and say that it's really so case-specific, it's hard to have a specific plan of attack. Sometimes a rack and floor that are quite tonally separate sound really effective, sometimes it's fun to have them kinda close together. Sometimes a really flubby kick and a really tight floor tom will sound cool together, other times the opposite. And as far as snare drum tunings, that REALLY depends on the song.

My gut reaction is that paying close attention to specific intervals around a drum kit is overthinking things a bit, but then again thinking kinda hurts my brain, so I tend to avoid it.

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