7 Seriously Cool Drum Tuning Tricks

Date:2020/2/13 22:24:07 Hits:

While there are loads of steps you can take to shape drum tones — muffling, miking, processing, etc. — the most holistic approach is tuning. Getting your toms, snares, and kick drums to sound right at the source will inspire the best performances and maximize projection out into a room. The following tuning tips come from a variety of sources across the Web.

Control snare ring through tuning
Cutting tracks in the studio? Sweetwater’s Nick D’Virgilio demonstrates how to get a fat, dry, record-ready snare without damping. Tune your batter head until you find the body and stick response you’re after. Then, detune the bottom three screws closest to where your stick strikes — the center of these just finger tight, and the ones off to each side about a half-turn higher. Adjust to taste. Compensate for any loss of pitch using the screws farthest from those detuned. Now you have a controlled, cutting snare sound and plenty of tension to pull of double strokes, all without the overring.

Caution: this method may damage hoops and thin shells over time. Use care.

Contemporize your kick drum
Specialized bass batter heads, with a little work, can make just about any bass drum — any shell, any size — sound like a modern rock recording. The Evans EMAD Clear is a great place to start. Begin with the batter head just past wrinkle, then tune to taste. If you start hearing a defined pitch, you’ve gone too far. Once you find a sound and response that inspires you, go around to each screw, starting from the top, adjusting for greater attack (looser) or greater tone (tighter). To be clear, this is not proper tuning theory. Expect to have a drum that’s unevenly tensioned. What you’re after is punch and low end, not a pure pitch. Use your ears. Once you have the batter head tweaked, the front head is pretty easy to dial in. Use this to manipulate note length (shorter or longer) and bass frequency (lower or higher).

Give your toms “the bends” (John Good)
In his video on tuning tips, DW’s John Good refers to the “bend” (bow) of a tom’s pitch: a sort of ski-slope tonal effect that sounds particularly good on high toms. This is accomplished by tuning reso heads up to resonant pitch (found by tapping on the shells before heads are tensioned), then tuning batter heads several semitones higher. Adjust to taste. More disparity creates a more dramatic bend.

Use mesh reso heads for a classic sound

Many drummers, this writer included, still love the sound of single-headed power toms. Unfortunately, leaving hoops and heads off your modern 2-headed shells leaves them susceptible to warping and damage. As a nice compromise, try air-permeable mesh heads, like the Remo Silentstroke series. These provide that neutral, uncolored sound with a subtler look and greater protection of your shells over time.

Tune top for pitch, bottom for resonance (Steve Maxwell)
Vintage authority Steve Maxwell presents a compelling counter to today’s fussy tuning arguments: use your batter heads to dial in pitch, then tune bottom heads for resonance. It’s that simple. This philosophy was developed in the ’40s and ’50s, before close-miking became the standard, and generally results in tighter batter heads with more rebound and greater acoustic projection. Steve recommends keeping tuning intervals relative: tune no more than 30% higher on top than on bottom.

Get a mechanical advantage
Precise tuning is easier than ever with today’s tools. Drum tuners, like the mechanical DrumDial and digital Tune-Bot, record your favorite tension settings at every tuning screw to eliminate guesswork every head change. Alternatively, the Evans Torque Key has a preset tension dial built in for close tuning matching without the separate tuner.

Detune in seconds
This last one may not be a true tuning tip, but its effects are just as dramatic. This comes from instructor Stephen Taylor, courtesy of Benny Greb. Save your old snare batter after a head change. Once you’ve got the new head tuned to taste, invert the old one and drop it right on top. Not only does this kill off any unwanted overring, but it actually drops the pitch a whole tone or better. Now you can cop that Rumours snare tone in seconds without touching a tuning screw.

Prev:Digigram VX442E

Next:Wheatstone VOXPRO Controller USB

Leave a message

Message List

Comments Loading...

Products Category

Products Tags

Fmuser Sites

7 Seriously Cool Drum Tuning Tricks

Leave a message

Message List