Drummers that can't tune drums.

N

Noestre

Guest
So, I've recently started studying music and sound production with studio-recording specialization, and I've had to be hired by the people in the other classes(above and below) because none of the drummers they hire/got can tune their drums.

I'm not the best at tuning, but I have some general idea on what makes the drums sound good for studio-recordings. As the great Simon Philips said, you can't make a good drum recording when the drums sound bad from the get go(or something like that). No matter how much EQ'ing and expensive compressors you add, it always starts with the drums as a whole.

Anyone else come by a lot of drummers that can't tune for their life? On the positive side, I've gotten a lot of good connections and favors, but on the others side I'm pretty flabbergasted that there are so few that actually can tune the drums without slapping 10 pounds of gaffa-tape and toilet-rolls on their kits.
 
It happens everywhere/all the time.
Rehearsal studios, jams,shared gigs ......
95% of the time , it sounds like playing on some cardboard boxes.
 
I've known dozens of drummers over the years. Most of them could play circles around me. Most of them could tune, at least after a fashion.

I can count on one hand the number who could properly manipulate the sounds their instrument made.

For a while I worked sound at a large-ish and rather popular bar. Every time - every single time - a new act came in to play, I'd have to spend an hour telling their drummer to sit down over there, have a beer, watch and learn. I'd tear every head off the kit, remove all their junk/gunk/foam, and patiently reassure them as they grew more and more frantic that I was ruining everything.* After I'd tune their drums, I'd have them go stand in the audience's space while I jammed a couple dozen bars with the other band members.

100% of the time they'd freak. About 80% of the time they'd have an epiphany and commit to learning how to actually make their instruments sound good. (The other 20% were too ego-driven to change their ways. There was one older player who liked that 70s cardboard-box sound so much he told me he wouldn't change if I was Jenna Jameson offering him a hummer.)

The whole point to this is that drums sound different when you're behind them vs. in front, in the mix. Ensuring that they recognize what their instrument sounds like when it's properly tuned and live in the mix was the key to that epiphany.

Most drummers go to great lengths to make their kits sound good to them, or like their favorite drummer's recordings. Trouble is, the sound one hears in the mix is hardly ever anything like what you hear behind the kit. That's just acoustically; I was glad when a drummer started coming to our local open mic (where my drums aren't mic'ed at all), so I could hear my kit from the house. It's especially different when you mic everything up and start throwing electronics in the chain from strike to ear.

So keep doing what you're doing, Thaard. You're doing a Good Thing.

* It didn't help that I told them I was ruining everything - everything they were doing wrong. ;-) Sometimes I'd resort to ridicule, especially when they got snippy with me. I'd do things like point to the lead guitarist and say, "He knows how to tune his instrument. Why don't you?"
 
For the first fifteen years of my playing I had problems tuning my drums. I could not get the drums to sound as good as I wanted them to. I eventually settled on a method I got from some recording studio that emulated the way a very famous drummer had his drums tuned in the studio. I did some recordings with an engineer who worked with this famous drummer and I decided to use that method myself. The engineer had taken strips of towel and placed them between the heads and the rims. The engineer also had used only one head on the drums. The same engineer would put a ton of tape on the cymbals to deaden the sound and he would tell me when I was playing to not crash the cymbals, they would over dub the crash cymbals later so they could record them at a faster speed and so when it was played back on a slower speed it would have a longer sustain. I did not adopt that method on my cymbals. In my youth I figured if it was good enough for Ringo it was good enough for me.

I took a long absence from playing, and when I started playing again, I decided to figure out how to tune the drums using two heads and without the muting strips. This time around there are a lot more head companies and choices of heads available. Back then it was either remo ambassador or remo emperor. I knew that some drummers used calf skin heads at the time, but I knew nothing about them except they were expensive and needed to be tuned a lot.

I think it is a lot easier now to find out how to tune the drums, and experiment with different heads to see how they react to the sound. Also high quality recordings are also very easy to do now. With inflation prices it is much cheaper to purchase a recording device now then it was back then, so it is now easy to tune the heads, record and listen how it records.

When I first started playing there were no videos on tuning drums. I did not know of any books on the subject either. The method drum books did not say much about tuning the drums.

I was taking lessons from a very good jazz drummer who had some fame at the time. He did not discuss tuning of the drums with me. If I can extrapolate my own experiences with what may have been common to a lot of drummers at the time, tuning was not something that was taught or talked about too much. So if there are a lot of drummers out there that do not know how to tune the drums, it may be left over from the last generation of drummers.
 
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Thaardy, Im over 50 years old. When I was growing up there were plenty of guys whose drums were too choked, or too taped up, or over-muffled etc etc..

We had nobody to teach us. Heck, I learned so many drum parts by rewinding cassette tapes over and over again ( remember those... nah, you won't... ) to hear what Cobham, Lenny White, Ian Paice, Bonham etc were doing.

Today, I think there is no excuse. With the information age just youtube drum tuning and you'll find 15 ways of doing it. Pick a card, any card.

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Constantly. I'd say around 70% or more of the drummers I see don't know how to tune their drums. My drummer friends actually often ask me to tune theirs for them. One of my buddies will periodically ask me to meet him at the gig a little early so I can help him tune his drums.

I just don't understand why somebody wouldn't take the time to learn something so important. Most guitarists wouldn't go on stage (or even play at all) without first tuning their guitars, so why should anybody else do so without tuning their respective instruments?
 
Tuning drums is really ridiculous, when you think about it; eight or ten lugs on each side, times four or five or maybe more drums; an ambiguous fundamental with overtones; intervals between batter and reso; intervals between drums; snare beds; muffling; ports. And let's not even get started about drums that are out of round or have bearing edge issues. It's like a cruel joke. A guitarist turns six knobs and she's done.

We must like things to be hard to keep building them this way. Or we like all the options we have, but most of them are bad and only certain magic combinations work.
 
Tuning drums is really ridiculous, when you think about it; eight or ten lugs on each side, times four or five or maybe more drums; an ambiguous fundamental with overtones; intervals between batter and reso; intervals between drums; snare beds; muffling; ports. And let's not even get started about drums that are out of round or have bearing edge issues. It's like a cruel joke. A guitarist turns six knobs and she's done.

We must like things to be hard to keep building them this way. Or we like all the options we have, but most of them are bad and only certain magic combinations work.

I love this post. So true!
 
Tuning drums is really ridiculous, when you think about it; eight or ten lugs on each side, times four or five or maybe more drums; an ambiguous fundamental with overtones; intervals between batter and reso; intervals between drums; snare beds; muffling; ports. And let's not even get started about drums that are out of round or have bearing edge issues. It's like a cruel joke. A guitarist turns six knobs and she's done.

We must like things to be hard to keep building them this way. Or we like all the options we have, but most of them are bad and only certain magic combinations work.

Still not a reason to not tune, but...
 

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Thanks Evolving Machine - you covered everything for me. When I started out it was fashionable to dampen the hell out of everything. That was the "pro" sound every drummer I knew was trying to emulate at the time. These days the spoiled puppies of today with all their resources and hi tech engineered drums spit on us for it ;-)

Example - a recording from a local band's album who a bunch of us local kid musos used to go and see and looked up to ... note the dampened toms ... I still think his drums sound cool but might not have much company at the forum :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lAtQT0tfO8

And thanks Larry - never thought of it like that, just taking it for granted but so true!

It also depends on the genre. Just as with cymbals, some drummers enjoy drum tuning with a bit of trashiness. Not sure engineers are so keen on trashy, edgy sounds in a drum set, though ...
 
It's rare that I meet a drummer outside of the pro circuit who can truly appropriately tune a kit taking into account a wide range of rooms/circumstances. The reason for that is often simple, they haven't experienced a wide range of rooms/circumstances over a long period of time. The ability to do that, & do that well is earned through mileage & a willingness to investigate/overcome. It's not something you can pick up out of a book or even from the internet in any meaningful form.

Then there's players on the pro circuit. Sure more of them know what to do & when (still not a big percentage though), but few really understand what they're doing, they just do it because tuning x has always worked for them in situation Y. That's fine, but to truly understand how the instrument reacts opens a path to more informed choices, just in the same way that having better technical mastery of the instrument opens up more musical choices.

The biggest shameful situation I come across is the standard of tuning at trade shows. It's really rare to hear drums that sound good on a manufacturers booth, & it's usually very little to do with the drums themselves. Some staff seem genuinely not to be bothered about this, some clearly have absolutely no idea what they're doing. No excuses for that, non whatsoever. Even worse, many drummers seem untroubled by the sound of the drums either. Their concentration is much more focussed on the latest finish or other largely periphery matters. maybe that's why the staff manning the booth often can't be arsed. Head in hands time for Andy :(

Unfortunately for us, we play an instrument that's arguably the most difficult modern instrument to get right by far in terms of tuning, but the flip side of that is we also have by far the greatest range of sounds available to us outside of electronic processing. No other instrument is as customisable in every respect.
 
1 in about 25. In my world, only about 1 out of every 25 drumsets I encounter are tuned decent. Maybe about 1 in 50 are tuned freakin awesome. The rest sound like crap to me.
 
The whole point to this is that drums sound different when you're behind them vs. in front, in the mix.

Trouble is, the sound one hears in the mix is hardly ever anything like what you hear behind the kit.

So what is the solution to this?

How do you tune your drums so they sound good "in the mix".

.
 
In very broad terms, tune the drums such that they occupy a different sonic space to other low frequency instruments. If in doubt, crank the reso ;)

Thanks Andy. That helps. Great point about occupying a different sonic space. Love it !


I know how to tune drums pretty well.
What I mean is physically how do you tune drums as if you are standing in the audience, and while the band is playing ????
What technique should be used?

.
 
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Tuning drums is really ridiculous, when you think about it; eight or ten lugs on each side, times four or five or maybe more drums; an ambiguous fundamental with overtones; intervals between batter and reso; intervals between drums; snare beds; muffling; ports. And let's not even get started about drums that are out of round or have bearing edge issues. It's like a cruel joke. A guitarist turns six knobs and she's done.

And it gets better. Guitarists and bassists have electronic tuners that work with extreme accuracy, easily and in next to no time with zero training. It takes mere moments for me to tune my 5 string bass and I don't even have to listen to it while I'm tuning it. And it stays in tune for weeks at a time in spite of daily playing (being in a temp/humidity controlled studio certainly helps but hey, that's where my drums are, too).

And then to make your day worse, consider the modern keyboardist. They never have to tune their instruments. NEVER. We're talking parts per million frequency accuracy and stability. I bought a Yamaha stage piano several years ago and I've never had to tune it. In fact, you can't!


Unfortunately for us, we play an instrument that's arguably the most difficult modern instrument to get right by far in terms of tuning

I've never done it, but I understand that tuning a grand piano is no walk in the park, either.
 
Anyone else come by a lot of drummers that can't tune for their life? On the positive side, I've gotten a lot of good connections and favors, but on the others side I'm pretty flabbergasted that there are so few that actually can tune the drums without slapping 10 pounds of gaffa-tape and toilet-rolls on their kits.

When I had those two DW kits I could've fallen into that category, you know. I just for the life of me make them sound good and had to try a second kit to see if it was just me. When I couldn't make the second one sound good I thought I never knew how to tune a drum! And then when I went to other brands I was back to normal. So maybe you're just running in to a bunch of guys like me with DW drums?
 
I use a torque wrench to get to where the proper tension is the same on all lugs and dependent on each drums particular diameter. This brings them up and in the ballpark whence I fine tune from there. My drums are tuned in fourths (i.e. Here Comes the Bride) with each other, low to high. The Bass drum is usually a thud for gigs but out in the practice room I take the EQ pad out and let both heads naturally vibrate.

Keeping lug tension in close relation with each other reduces undue wear on the bearing edges. And even pics on this forum shows unevenness and warp due to uneven lug tension.

Are your bearing edges uneven? Strip off the heads and put your drum on a nice sheet of glass. Any gaps?

A couple of drummers I know do it on the fly, by ear. They are good at it and have been playing and tuning for decades and the best drummer I personally know uses the drum head gauge, where the gauge is placed on the head and the head is tuned to a pitch. But that doesn't address the damage to bearing edges caused by uneven torque around the edge. You can be in tune, in great tune, but torques can vary if you are not mindful of even torque around the drum.

I was given my torque wrench by a retired banjo builder and I can and do attest that it works well for me. Banjo builders rely on proper torques around those banjo heads. They have many lugs (25 or so in many configurations) and they are absolute in setting up a banjo head properly with the correct torque all the way around. BTW Banjo builders strive to maintain a G# tuning on most banjo heads.

There are a number of tuning devices for instruments. They are tools and as tools they can help anyone achieve a respectable tune on their instruments.
 
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I know how to tune drums pretty well.
What I mean is physically how do you tune drums as if you are standing in the audience, and while the band is playing ????
What technique should be used?

I too can tune my drums pretty well. I've put in a lot of time to get to know how my drums should sound. But, this is once again only from the driver's seat.

For me, my method for the mounted toms is find a good sweet fundamental note or sound that emanates from the drum and get everything perfectly matched to that sound top and bottom. My floor tom is a bit different. For that I tune the top head where it sounds good to me and then tune the bottom a couple of pitches higher. On the bass, the batter is tuned about in the medium range - No JAW. And the reso is tuned slightly higher - basically medium tight.

I really want to know:
How should drums be tuned for the audience perspective?
 
I know how to tune drums pretty well.
What I mean is physically how do you tune drums as if you are standing in the audience, and while the band is playing ????
What technique should be used?

Get up and move out front. Let someone else hit your drums. Listen while taking mental notes. At least that's how I've always done it.

Really, what I'm getting at is overuse of dampening/muffling. When they're practicing - either by themselves or with their band in the rehearsal space - they are (? certainly were, when I was working that sound gig) muffling the hell out of everything in order to reduce ring and overtones. They didn't know how everything changes once you step out front.

Drums are a projecting instrument. When you strike them, the majority of sound goes away from you. Plus, what sounds all ringy and boingy won't, not to the audience, not when you play in an ensemble with other instruments. Those high-frequency sounds tend to blend with the other instruments.

I'm explaining this badly. Someone else better step up. Andy? Help? I think you grok what I'm trying to say, but I'm really goofing up the explanation.
 
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