One of the hardest concepts, but definitely one of the more important, to understand as a beginning drummer is the process of drum tuning, and what it really means to get your drums in tune. I would like to shed some light on this subject today because I have been playing the drums for almost fifteen years, spent the first six of them not knowing what it meant to have my drums in tune, and believe that if you understand the basics of how to get good sounding drums right from the start of learning to play drums, then you will be sounding great from the start and you probably be more motivated to play because you will sound that much better.
If you are just learning drums, then there are three basic parts of tuning drums that you need to understand. The first, and most critical, is getting each drum head to be in tune with itself. Even if you only do this one step when you are tuning the drums, and even if you only do this on your top drum heads, then it will make you sound about fifty times better. The way to get your drum head properly in tune with itself- or at least a way that I like to do it- is to tap around the edge of the drum, by each individual lug, and gradually tune each one until the pitch by every lug is the same. When this happens you will notice increased resonance and purity in the overall sound of the drum, and depending on how badly out of tune it was before, it should sound much better.
tuning drums
Of course, listening to the pitch on a drum is not necessarily as easy as I have made it out to be, and you will probably need to spend quite a few hours listening to your drums very closely to really be able to identify the subtle differences in pitch. One thing that can help though, is to mute the drum head that you are not tuning, as this will help to clean up the sound a little bit and might help you to hear the pitch a little better. Once you have gotten all of your lugs in tune with each other you are ready to move on to step two. (Note: I recommend tuning from the bass drum up (yes, the bass drum has a pitch), because otherwise once we get to step three you will have to go back and redo some of your work).
Step two of drum tuning is to get each drum head on the drum in tune with each other. To do this, you will need to decide which head you want to tune, and which head you want to use as your reference point for pitch (I usually use the top head for reference, which means that for step one you really only need to tune the top head).
drum tuning
Flip the drum on its side and tune the bottom drum head using the top for reference pitch the same way that we talked about in step one. At this point you have a choice of what intervals you want to use between the two heads, or whether you want to tune them to the same pitch. Tuning your bottom head lower will give you a long sustain that is cool for individual drum hits or timpani, but can often muddy up the sound of a full drum set. Tuning the two heads the same gives you a very open and warm resonance and is good for jazz, but still can sound muddy. I usually tune my bottom head higher because it gives a much shorter decay and more presence to the attack. But use your ears and do whatever is best for the music that you will be playing- if you don’t play fast fills around the toms, you may find that having a much bigger and more open sound is perfect for individual hits or sparse fills.
The final step in drum tuning is to determine the relative intervals between your drums and taking the time to perfect these intervals can really take the sound of your drum kit to the next level. This is why I recommend tuning from the bottom (bass drum) up, too, because you can determine what intervals you want as you tune each drum, and you want have to go back and change anything later in order to get your whole kit sounding right. Any intervals can be used between the drums, but the most common are major seconds, minor and major thirds, and perfect fourths. Too, you should try if at all possible to tune each drum so that it sits with the middle of its tuning range, as this will give you the best resonance and tone from each drum.
These are the basics of tuning drums that you will need to know as a beginner, and as your ear matures, you will continually improve the sound of your drums, as well. But for now, get the individual heads in tune, get the two heads on each drum in tune with each other, and get the intervals between your drums as best as you can.
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