Do you tune your drums to the room?

Hey all,
If you have ever read any of my posts, you know that I'm a tuning fanatic and have used a certain technique involving tuning my drumheads to specific pitches via the use of a pitch pipe. To make it clear, I'm NOT tuning the entire drum to a pitch or trying to get a drum to speak out in a certain pitch. All I am doing is tuning the drum by ear and feel, and then finding out what the pitch is when I tap the head at each lug point. Then I tune in intervals from there, making sure each drum is in its sweet spot. It gives me a reference point that I can dial up every time in seconds.

Anyway, the point of this thread is to see how many of you tune their drums differently in each venue. I myself do not. I know that there are different acoustics in each room that affect the sound of the drums and enhance or diminish certain frequencies, but I don't find it beneficial to tune one or all of my drums differently to adjust to the room. For me, it messes up the intervals I tune to, it changes the feel and may take the drum out of its sweet spot. For example, if I am playing in a room that is very bright sounding, I don't detune my snare and toms to make them sound lower in that room. I just deal with the fact that my drums may sound a bit brighter in that particular room, knowing that the drum is in its optimum tuning range already. I have them dialed in to their sweet spot and in a musical interval and that's where I leave them. If I'm playing mic'ed up, the sound engineer adds what I am lacking in the house.

Anton Fig, the well known drummer on the David Letterman show told me via email that he does tune differently in each room, while others, such as Gavin Harrison, do not. What's your take on this issue?

Mainly, I get to the venue, get things ready and see how each drum sounds there.

I'll tweak a bit to make sure the tom sings, & the floor tom tones are even (no wobble), and then make sure there's good separation between each drum.

Most of the time there's not more than a quick adjustment on any one thing.

cdrums21 said:

Anton Fig, the well known drummer on the David Letterman show told me via email that he does tune differently in each room, while others, such as Gavin Harrison, do not. What's your take on this issue?

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You need to take such comments in context. High level players rarely play smaller rooms. Certainly, most stages bigger than 40ft wide & of theatre height sound similar. the biggest variation being the degree of natural reverb, & tuning won't make any difference to that. Tuning according to venue becomes a bigger thing in small to medium sized gigs, & certainly a factor when going from mic'd to unmic'd.

keep it simple said:

You need to take such comments in context. High level players rarely play smaller rooms. Certainly, most stages bigger than 40ft wide & of theatre height sound similar. the biggest variation being the degree of natural reverb, & tuning won't make any difference to that. Tuning according to venue becomes a bigger thing in small to medium sized gigs, & certainly a factor when going from mic'd to unmic'd.

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Well, I'm assuming that these players have played in small venues over the course of their careers and may or may not have tuned to the room acoustics. I got an answer from Anton and Gavin and now Karl, just looking for other similar responses, not necessarily the factors pertaining to when and if it is appropriate.

Generally, I don't find that I need to retune. There have been two major exceptions that I recall. I was playing in a jazz band years ago that did a gig at then-governor of Delaware Pierre DuPont's home. We were set up on a landing between two huge staircases that opened out into a big ballroom. For what ever reason, my 12" rack tom sustained FOREVER in that location. It was ridiculous and I had to tweak it some. The other case was fairly recently, and again it was a rack tom, but this time it just sounded dead as a doornail. Some slight adjustments remedied that, as well.

But as a rule, no, I don't find I have to retune a great deal.

KIS is correct, the theater stages sound similar, and most of the "rooms" my band is playing in too.

The smaller 200+ rooms usually sound pretty fat too. For the last several years, thankfully, I haven't played in a crappy sounding room.
Even the small ones have been pretty good, without a bunch of mirrors or something like that behind me.
The worst was just a little dead, which is no biggie--and better for a PA anyway.

The outdoor shed we've played a couple of times is weird though.
The sound is there and gone for the drums. The main sound is through the monitors.

The festivals have been under some type of cover, so those drums (always back line provided stuff) have some resonance to them, but not a lot.
I do go and tune those drums up! Usually they have pinstripes on them, so it's fairly quick.
The kit Friday (opened for Ace Frehley of Kiss) actually had 2 floor toms!! Woohoo!
I was happy. Same Mapex Saturn kit, which sounds darn good, but the tom holder is a monster. I just flipped the L-arm over to get the tom low enough, & since I used that kit before I was prepared!

I have a gig on another back line kit tonight, so we'll see how it goes.

I change the tuning only if I have to: when a drum sounds bad in a particular environment. Peace and goodwill.

I always tune to the shell's resonance and the size of the room rarely has any affect on the shells themselves. 99% of the time, if the tuning sounds right at home in the studio it will also sound great at the venue. Of course any fine adjustments are made on location such as keeping the heads in tune with themselves, but re-tuning the drums to fit a particular venue was never an issue for me. When working in a studio as an engineer, not as a drummer, I find the people who bring in their own drums sometimes need a major overhaul just to make them sound close to what the producer has in mind, even though the drummer might think that they sounded decent at their rehearsal space.

Tuning to the shell is the best common denominator I've discovered to be able to encompass a majority of venue settings.

Dennis

Drumolator said:

I change the tuning only if I have to: when a drum sounds bad in a particular environment. Peace and goodwill.

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Ditto. I almost never re-tune my drums. I played in the pit for a musical at a school where my son teaches and he told me a story about a drummer who played there previously who wouldn't allow his drums to be moved because he had "tuned them to the room" and moving them would change that. I had never heard of that before. It is now a standing joke among my son, my wife (who was also in the pit) and I.

Originally Posted by Drumolator
I change the tuning only if I have to: when a drum sounds bad in a particular environment. Peace and goodwill.

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Same here. I re-tune only if the drums sound bad.

I've always tuned a drum to itself, so to speak. Each drum has a more-or-less perfect tuning zone, one that shows it in its best light, one where the drum is really singing, Once I've arrived at a procedure that always gets me to that zone on that drum I stick to it.

I generally have the drums dialled in at specific 'notes' and intervals like yourself and don't change the pitch of them from venue to venue, unless the music calls for it (ie rock gig vs jazz gig).
However I will sometimes change the phasing between the batter and reso heads to increase or shorten the sustain of the drum depending on the venue. For example I have played in many halls before with lots of reverb and natural sustain and have had to raise the reso in tension and lower the batter, resulting in a phase shoft between the two heads which makes for a punchier drum with the same tone.
Jackson

IDDrummer said:

Generally, I don't find that I need to retune. There have been two major exceptions that I recall. I was playing in a jazz band years ago that did a gig at then-governor of Delaware Pierre DuPont's home. We were set up on a landing between two huge staircases that opened out into a big ballroom. For what ever reason, my 12" rack tom sustained FOREVER in that location. It was ridiculous and I had to tweak it some. The other case was fairly recently, and again it was a rack tom, but this time it just sounded dead as a doornail. Some slight adjustments remedied that, as well.

But as a rule, no, I don't find I have to retune a great deal.

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Good point and one I kind of forgot about. I had a floor tom that sounded great in most rooms but would sustain like mad in certain places. It was a pain, and I did have to tweak it slightly to make it stop. It was cool, but like you, one standard tuning that I use works pretty much everywhere.

Drumolator said:

I change the tuning only if I have to: when a drum sounds bad in a particular environment.

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Another vote for this.

Small tweaks are sometimes necessary for me in smaller venues, but usually only when I am using overheads for toms and snare instead of close mics. Some rooms sound very different 3ft above the kit. This is due to high or low ceilings, being in a corner, goofy wall materials and other strange things venue owners can think of to kill a good live sound.

I'm not gigging. And my kit is in a pretty small room, so I tune it for me in the drivers seat.