How do I tune my drums? or The 5 elements of good drum tone

How do I tune my drums or the 5 elements of good drum tone

By Danny Thompson

 How do I tune my drums? If I had a nickle for every time I heard that I would be out paddle boarding in Hawaii and not writing this post. How to tune drums is a complicated and involved art form. Part of the problem is there is so much bad information out there and most drummers get frustrated with it that they just half ass it. Now there is no way I can cover all of the issues, techniques and tricks needed to properly tune here in one article. What I thought I would do instead is cover what I consider to be the 5 elements of good drum tone, in order of importance, and why I put them in that order. I'm sure there will be some disagreement from the drum community out there so feel free to comment on this one. One of the things I do to continually work on my drum tone is to remain open minded. My techniques and procedures with drum tuning have evolved over the years and will continue to do so. So here we go..

                                           The 5 elements of good drum tone

1) Tuning
     When I really look at everything this is where it starts. Many people I polled on this repeatedly said the player was everything. Now I agree that the player is very important but think about this fact. I would consider myself to be at the level of player that I know how to properly hit the drums. If I was playing a show today and the drums had old heads and were severely out of tune, it wouldn't matter one bit how well I hit the drums, they would sound like crap in the context of the song.
     Secondly, good tuning with new heads on a cheap drum kit sounds way better than a great kit with old heads and bad tuning.

2) Player
    Hitting the drums properly is a huge element of good drum tone. It's amazing what a bad player can do to a well tuned drum kit. Choking the drums with the way you hit is a very common mistake that drummers make. I would highly recommend you watch the JoJo Mayer DVD to see some great demonstrations of this. Certainly having exceptional technique, dynamics and proper grip are all going to impact the sound of the drums. The simple fact is that if you can't hit the drum in the center every time you are going to struggle with a good sound.

3) Drum head
      An old or dented drum head is going to make it harder and harder for you to keep your sound at an acceptable level. Proper drum head choice is also going to impact the sound. There are some heads that no matter what I do I am unhappy with the overall sound.

4) Drums and Drum shells
     Certainly a better quality drum, with all other factors the same, is going to sound better. However, there are high end drum companies that , in my opinion, don't design drums that sound very good compared to some cheaper kits of better design. Design being shell material, thickness, bearing edge etc. Just because a company is using some fancy, hard to find wood with special processes involved, doesn't mean it actually sounds good.

5) Environment
     The room has a huge impact on the final sound. The reason I put this at number 5 is that you usually don't have cont roll over this. In your home studio you can use some treatments to the walls to try and develop the right mix of ambiance and diffusion to have a great sounding practice room. This will inspire you Io play more for sure.

That's it. The 5 elements of good drum tone. For more info on drum tuning you can email me at the Music Factory School of Music.
Danny@themusicfactoryoc.com
also, you can check out my pod cast  thedrumtuningguru@libsyn.com