Tuning Drums

[DrummerMan]

OK, so upon finishing that last entry, I've thought of more things to go on about.

What kind of beater heads you use will, obviously, adjust the sound of your kit. Just to be really basic/stupid about it, like, if you don't know shit about drum heads, you've got 2 main choices:

-regular plain-old REMO coated weatherkings (most likely *ambassadors*, being the middleweight [*diplomats* are thinner, *emperors* are thicker])

-or REMO Pinstripes (these are two heads fused together near the rim with oil in between the layers for deadening purposes)

(I know, I know there are many choices out there, but at least 85% off all drummers use one or a combo of both of these two, these are what we hear on most records. I'm not saying you should buy/use these, I'm using them as examples because their ubiquity makes them a good point of reference for someone who doesn't know much about drumheads)


Anyway, when it comes to toms and kick at least, Pinstripes'll give you a sound more like "DOOOOOOO!!!!!". Punchy. Closer to what we probably think of as a modern "pro" studio sound.
Plain coated ambassadors'll give you more of a "DAAHHH!" sound. Jazzier, not as punchy, more like what alot of indie rock bands are using again nowadays.

Affecting the sound similarly is the ratio of diameter to depth. Older drum kits generally had drums wider than they were deep, or equal. Alot of modern kits have the toms and kick deeper than they are wide. The older style will contribute more to the "DAAHHH!" sound while the more modern style will have more "DOOOOOOOO!!!"

I apologize if you think the last two paragraphs are the stupidest thing you've ever heard in your life. The above statements are definitely generalizations, and there are, I'm sure, tons of exceptions to them. My opinions, though, DO come from 25 years of playing the drums, so I feel I've earned the right to be a bit stupid about it, and without busting out a mic and actually recording different drum heads with different drums, that's about as close as I can come to giving information that I think might be useful.

(maybe one day, when I've finished my new trailer studio, I'll actually sit down and record a bunch of different drum heads on a variety of drums, you know, for "the people")

OK. that's it. G'night.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

good stuff.

one other thing i thought of the other day...if you've tuned the toms and they're ok and you get them on the kit and play 'em and they suddenly seem too high....to use drummerman's technical jargon they go "daaaah" or "diiiing" and you want them to go "doooooooom", pick one lug and crank that sucker way down, like almost all the way loose. see what happens. sometimes it totally works, the pitch'll drop like a 4th. worth a try.

drummerman that's interesting you say have the reso heads looser than the batters, i always feel like i need to have them tighter...usually i have my toms about as low as they'll go while still giving me a nice sustained note. hhhmmm. i'll have to check it out. but you're right, certainly if the reso heads are too tight you're not gonna get any meat outta the drum

tell us more! how do you deal with a particularly problematic floor tom? those are the hardest drums to tune imo.

[AstroDan]

Wouldn't a drum dial be dependant on the state of the lugs? Seems if you had bent, rusted or stripped threads on the lugs it would affect the tension reading.

[@?,*???&?]

Wouldn't a drum dial be dependant on the state of the lugs? Seems if you had bent, rusted or stripped threads on the lugs it would affect the tension reading.

Yes, but then so would tuning the drum anyway. If the lugs suck, tuning is difficult.

[DrummerMan]

tell us more! how do you deal with a particularly problematic floor tom? those are the hardest drums to tune imo.

It's always amazing to me how different everyone's needs/frustrations/strengths/weaknesses are. Like, for me, I feel like getting guitar sounds is a breeze, yet bass tracks are a never-ending source of head-bashing-against-the-wall frustration. Yet I know engineers who have the EXACT opposite experience. It just goes to show...

On that note... I've never found floor toms too problematic. Granted, I've pretty much been using 2 floor toms exclusively for the last 10 years. One is a 14x14 70's Ludwig, the other is a 16x16 '64 Slingerland. I'll even bring one of them to a recording session, even if they've got a kit there, if I can (of course, after I've brought my cymbals, snare and bass drum pedal).

My general tuning technique for floor toms is similar to your rack tom concept. I generally tune the top head as low as it can to still produce a tone, but then I detune it JUST A TOUCH more, trying to find a spot where it's a little deader, without making the head flappy. I don't personally like too much tone in my floor tom (though I do like some tone in the rack tom) and I don't believe you need to match the sound of all your toms for a unified drum set sound, IMHO.

The bottom head thing might just be more how I like the drums to sound than a *rule*, as it were. I find that having bottom heads tuned just slightly above flappy gives me just the right mix of *tone* and pure *punch*. I don't like really tone-heavy drums, myself... I feel they get in the way of the music often, except when I'm playing straight ahead jazz (tuned kind of high), but then only on an old drum (you know, before computer-tuned shells), those drums seem to, even when in tune with themselves, disperse the tone of the drum over a wider frequency range, making the sound non-conflicting with the other instruments.
Anyway, I'm certainly not tuning my drums to different songs, and neither do the VAST majority of the drummers on records I like.

Again, this is all just personal taste, so I don't hold it against anyone who disagrees, but I DID, for a time, make a living on having drummers come into my studio and record on my drums and my cymbals because my shit had a classic sound that seemed to be eluding them (these are really good, pro drummers I'm talking about).

The other thing which I'm sure I'll catch a ton of shit about is: I don't change my drum heads until they are dead. Granted, I don't hit very hard (example: the coated emperor head on my 16x16 fl.tom has been there since I bought the kit in 1998, and the coating hasn't come off AT ALL, and there aren't any pits in it either). The drum still sounds great to me, and to most engineers when recorded. I don't think I've turned a single lug on it in years. It ain't broke, so I ain't fixin' it!!
I'm not saying you should keep a head on that is dead, lost all it's body, or beat to shit, I'm just saying that changing it before each session can be overkill. I'm of the same opinion about guitar strings and DEFINITELY bass strings. I don't feel the sound is right until the temporary aspects of the instrument (ie-strings/drum heads/sticks) are broken in.

This probably came from the fact that when I started playing professionally, I was primarily a straight-ahead jazz drummer, and therefore playing with brushes alot. When playing with brushes, a new coated head is the scratchiest/shittiest sound to me. Most of the top backline companies that I worked with keep some used ambassadors on hand for drummers like me, and I ALWAYS requested these in the rider (ryder? sp?). In the end, though, these heads always just sounded better to me than new heads when I was using sticks as well.

Again, if you disagree with me (which by reading alot of previous posts and threads about putting on new heads, most of you will) that's fine. This is what works for me. I'm not presuming to tell you what you have to do, but since alot of really great drummers always ask me for help getting their kit to sound as good as mine does when they play it, or to borrow my stuff for high-end recording sessions, I'm going to take a leap and say that I must be doing something right. I am, by no means, a technical expert on anything, really, I go by instinct and gut feeling, and this has ALWAYS served me best.

One thing that I feel makes drums, especially toms, sound FUCKING PHENOMENAL, but is a total, and expensive, pain in the ass is using real calf-skin heads on the batter side. They, pretty much automatically, achieve a perfect balance of tone and thump without requiring any dampening. They also will stretch and contract themselves over time to even out the tension around the lugs.
Of course they can go severely out of tune if you sneeze on them wrong, not to mention move them from one location to the other, or keep them in a non-humdity-controlled environment. And if the drummer bashes too hard, you can punch right through them pretty quick, which gets expensive, as mounted calfskin heads, I think, go for between $45-$70 each. But, if you think you can logistically pull it off, I HIGHLY recommend trying them out.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

yeah i'm pretty sure the guy from calexico rocks the calfskin heads, and what a sound...it would be a nightmare here though i'm sure...maybe in the wintertime...

fiberskyns are not a bad alternative, i like them on snare especially, they seem to have more going on in the midrange compared to ambassador/emporers...the harmonics are different...

totally agree about guitar sounds, by far the easiest thing to record IMO. agreed about changing the heads too, if you're not beating the shit out of them they'll be good for a long time. that said, i definitely think it's worth it to shell out for all new heads now and again.

i really like the idea of tuning to specific notes, and i've done it before successfully, but i do agree that it's not really necessary for most projects. and certainly if you were tracking a whole record's worth of songs in the usual timeframe (i.e. a couple days), you would be crazy to take the time in between takes to retune all the drums. in my experience you might have the drum sounding really great on say a c#, and if you try and nudge it up to a D....well, good luck. it might work, but usually i find you end up going past it and have to start all over again. plus you have to consider the natural range of each drum. that c# might be as high or low as it'll comfortably go, and changing it might get you the note you want, but it won't resonate right cause it's out of the natural range of the drum.

my ideal is to have a big enough variety of drums on hand, and have them all tuned to specific notes and then you can just swap out the drums for different songs. one day i will actually get around to tuning all the drums i have here really specifically like this....

one other thing...lug locks. love 'em. they aren't perfect of course, but i really think they help a lot in keeping the drums in tune. i have them on all my snares and toms...definitely helps, especially if you've got a heavy hitter on the kit.

[sonic death]

My floor tom has prolonged resonance (because of the resonate head being too tight/loose?) and one of my toms sounds flat (tune batter head up?)...

I just got into drumming and have nearly abandoned my years of guitar for the skins. This thread brought tuning the drums to my attention and, lo and behold, one of the toms was missing two lugs and hardly any of the remaining ones were tightened. So I attempted a quick (which seems to be shunned) tuning and came up with the questions seen above.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

usually if the floor tom is resonating like crazy i think of it as the reso head being too loose, but honestly see what drummerman thinks, cause he obviously knows more about this than i do.

are you saying the rack sounds flat pitch-wise relative to the floor? or it sounds "flat" meaning there's no life to it? if the former, i would tighten the reso head a bit, if the latter, tighten the batter.

[DrummerMan]

My floor tom has prolonged resonance (because of the resonate head being too tight/loose?) and one of my toms sounds flat (tune batter head up?)...

hard to say without being there, but on the floor tom, try loosening the resonant head. not quite "flappy", but almost.

for the "flat" tom, do you mean, like, boring/lifeless/dead? or flat pitchwise? to raise the pitch, start with the batter head, but as per some previous suggestions, don't try to get the drum sounding higher than it wants to.


And, there's nothing wrong with tuning quickly. If the sound improves at all in 2 minutes, then you're better off than you were 2 minutes ago. If you get it sounding nice to you in 30 seconds, don't think that you haven't put enough time into therefor it can't be right and you have to keep fiddling with it.

[DrummerMan]

usually if the floor tom is resonating like crazy i think of it as the reso head being too loose, but honestly see what drummerman thinks, cause he obviously knows more about this than i do.

are you saying the rack sounds flat pitch-wise relative to the floor? or it sounds "flat" meaning there's no life to it? if the former, i would tighten the reso head a bit, if the latter, tighten the batter.

I guess we were writing this at the same. That's awful nice of you to say about my knowledge, but even I don't trust myself all the time. It's worth trying both directions on the floor tom reso head. It won't take that long and the direction you should be going in should become obvious pretty quick...

[DrummerMan]

usually if the floor tom is resonating like crazy i think of it as the reso head being too loose, but honestly see what drummerman thinks, cause he obviously knows more about this than i do.

are you saying the rack sounds flat pitch-wise relative to the floor? or it sounds "flat" meaning there's no life to it? if the former, i would tighten the reso head a bit, if the latter, tighten the batter.

Just read that again, wow... bizarro-world....



I could be wrong about everything. I'm no technician, just using me guts...

[MoreSpaceEcho]

even I don't trust myself all the time.

haha, yeah same here. i post on here like i know what i'm talking about, but really i'm still kind of guessing most of the time!

it takes a while to become a Jedi. and i am definitely not there yet. i am only at the stage where i'm not totally intimidated by having a set of drums to tune. i at least have *some* idea of what i'm after, and can tell when i'm on the wrong path, but there's still a lot of trial and error involved.

the "old guy at the mom and pop drum shop" i mentioned earlier...that actually happened, he slapped new heads on my snare, and just went around it, casually tuning it up, not looking at it, talking to me the whole time, seemingly oblivious to what he was doing. and seriously a couple minutes later he hits the thing and says "how's that?"

and of course it sounded amazing. i couldn't believe it. and i said as much to him. and he replied "i've been tuning drums for 30 years. the first 20 didn't go so well...."

[DrummerMan]

"i've been tuning drums for 30 years. the first 20 didn't go so well...."

nice. I like that...

[cgarges]

REMO Pinstripes (these are two heads fused together near the rim with oil in between the layers for deadening purposes)

This is a common misconception. None of Remo's two-ply heads have oil in between. Often times, it appears that there's oil between the plies of Mylar heads because the friction between the layers of plastic create a rainbow kind of look, similar to oil. Evans Hydraulic heads are really the only drum heads with oil between the plies.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[DrummerMan]

REMO Pinstripes (these are two heads fused together near the rim with oil in between the layers for deadening purposes)

This is a common misconception. None of Remo's two-ply heads have oil in between. Often times, it appears that there's oil between the plies of Mylar heads because the friction between the layers of plastic create a rainbow kind of look, similar to oil. Evans Hydraulic heads are really the only drum heads with oil between the plies.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

I stand corrected...

That's one of those things that I had learned the truth about somewhere along the way, but for some reason, in my head, I still jump to the myths I picked up when I was 10. Oh well...