How to Tune Your Drums

Unlike other musical instruments like guitars or pianos, you don't have to tune your drums to certain notes on the musical scale. Although some drummers do this, it is not necessary. The type of music you play can also determine how you will tune your drums, for there are different sounding drums for jazz, country, and rock. However, you can tune your drums any way that sounds good to your ears. For the purpose of this article, we will concentrate on the basic steps of tuning your drums and let the reader decide the pitch. This article will discuss how to tune the snare drum, but these steps can be applied to tuning the bass and tom-tom drums as well.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Drum Key

Drum Tuning Steps

1. Using your drum key, loosen all of tuning rods around the drum head until you can turn them with your fingers. Then retighten them to finger tight in the order shown on the drum tuning pattern diagram.

2. Once all of the tuning rods are finger tight, tap on the drumhead about 1 to 2 inches from each of the tuning rods. If the tuning rods are tightened evenly, the tone of each tap should be relatively the same. If not, you can make minor adjustments with the drum key to get the tone all around the drum head as close as possible.

3. Tighten each tuning rod one full turn with the drum key; remembering to use the drum tuning pattern diagram. After all tuning rods have been tightened, tap on the drum head. If the desired pitch hasn't been reached, repeat this step until you are happy with the sound. Remember; the more you tighten the tuning rods the higher the tone will be. Therefore, it might be necessary to loosen the tuning rods on occasion in order to get the sound you desire.

4. After getting the sound you desire, turn over the drum and repeat steps 1 - 3 on the bottom drum head, if your drum has one. An important note to remember is that It's not necessary that the top and bottom be tuned to the same pitch. Experiment with varying pitches on the heads until you get the sound you want.

Tips & Warnings

• As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there is no specific way to tune your drums. Experiment with different tunings until you are happy with the tuning and it works with the style of music that you are playing.
• This article only covers the basic tuning techniques. Keep in mind the type of drums, drum heads, and the size of drums you use are all major factors on how your drums will end up sounding.
• If you prefer to tune your drums to specific notes, you can use a guitar or piano at tune to the notes you wish to. You can also use a bass guitar, tuning the bass drum to the E string, left tom with the A string, right tom with the D string, and the floor tom with the G string. You still will have to tune the snare how you like, and this method depends on your musical ear, because drums are not usually melodic instruments.
• Do not overtighten your drum heads! This can damage and ruin the drum head!
• Do not keep your drum heads too loose! An easy way to recognize loose drum heads is that waves or wrinkles will appear on the surface of the drum head. If your drum head is too loose, you can easily put a hole in it by hitting to to hard!

[pensivemusician]

on 9/6/2008 Another tip I just learned - if you put one finger lightly in the center of the tensioned drum head, then tap in front of each lug with the stick, you can clearly hear subtle overtones. This way, you can be sure that tension on each lug is nice and even.

[pensivemusician]

on 9/6/2008 Another tip I just learned - if you put one finger lightly in the center of the tensioned drum head, then tap in front of each lug with the stick, you can clearly hear subtle overtones. This way, you can be sure that tension on each lug is nice and even.