hmm...rydberg wrote:On one of the last jazz session I did, I talked extensively to the drummer about how he tuned his kit. Not only is he an excellent player, he's very aware of how his instrument is tuned and how it reacts to other instruments. His tuning system involved every drum tuned to a minor or major third (or sixth) away from each other to avoid sympathetic vibrations from other drums. Whenever he hit the kick drum, nothing else would ring. Same thing with the snare. Made things real easy.
P.?
although there's something to be said for tuning one of the toms to ring a chord w/ the kick as well...
on a recent song toms were tuned so i could play "oh-oh see can you say," w/ the "say" note being played on ride bell. i'd originally intended the floor tom's "see" to be key of song, but found it worked better a full step sharp of that (don't know much about chord theory, so i'm not really sure what kind of scale was being formed or anything). it was fun stuff, but i'd hate to go through that for every song - and how would go about replicating several songs like that, in different keys, live? (assuming you wanted to...)
A local drummer was showing me how to pull multiple notes from every drum on the kit, depending on how you finesse the hit...but i'm not quite there yet, probably never will be. as long as the kit sounds good against itself, i usually just hope for the best.