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Preach! Gotta tune for the perspective of those listening - be it your fellow bandmates and/or the audience depending on the scenario. Bringing up the batters a bit will help to transfer more energy to the shell and get it vibrating. As a result, this will communicate more of a full tone around the kit instead of just on-axis with the heads. Love the vids, Stephen! Keep up the great work.
I agree, high tuned my reso’s a couple months back and it’s like a whole new kit. Just wish someone would invent reso lugs we could tune from the top $$$ idea!
There also used to be niche company that sold this setup in the late 90's, It had the bottom rods as full length tubes that fitted over the normal top's, you used a two size tuning key, sadly I cant for the life of me remember the name of that system, but i remember thinking it was pretty Kooky.
thanks for getting to the meat of the video and teaching me something. i love watching a youtuber that doesn't have annoying fast edits, terrible jokes, and rambling about their day or girlfriend before the point of the video. great video and insight!
Personally, what I like, and what works for me: I tune my tom reso heads quite high, usually a fifth higher than my batter. Yes, you lose the low end, but not every piece of the drum kit is a bass instrument. A 10" tom is a mid range instrument, maybe even an upper mid range depending on the style. I try to set my kit up like a full ranged instrument. I hear a lot of drummers who make their drums sound great, but there is no range in their drums. It's like having a bass guitar with 1 string a 4 frets. Tighter reso heads lets each drum find it's home in the sound, and it extends the musical range of the kit. Plus, when you play your toms together, you can hear the actual harmony between the two. Just my perspective, no right or wrong way, just depends on the goal.
The higher pitch reso head technique is what I have been doing since I started playing in the 90's (yes, the 1990's). It is a big band technique (so I have been told) and John Bonham's awesome sound is attributable to similar tuning.
Some Silly Anecdote: When I was quite a bit younger and poorer, I had Pinstripe on the bass drums but when one broke I could only afford an Ambassador head... the Pinstripe sounded a lot better for me while drumming, but a friend told me that the Ambassador sounded a lot better out in the room. I barely believed him at first, but then we swapped places and I could hear it for myself. An eye opener for sure... (Or maybe ear.)
Which one broke, batter or resonant? I have Remo Ambassador Coated Pinstripe P3 on the bass batter and a regular Remo Ambassador Coated P3 on the resonant (stock head with Gretsch logo). I've been thinking about switching to a regular (non P3) Ambassador Fiberskyn on the resonant. What do you think? I play mostly small acoustic venues.
Great video and a very important point that was illustrated. In my opinion, I think the drums (toms) would have sounded even better with the batter head tuned slightly higher as well. When you hit the kick drum, it displayed the same characteristics of more slap, less tone too. A little tighter batter and tighter reso works for the kick as well in a small room. I’ve been tuning this way for a long time in unmiked situations and it makes a world of difference. We played a show with another band in a big garage at a private party. The first group’s drummer had a small kit with a big pillow in the bass drum and moongel all over the toms. His drums sounded like boxes out front. No tone and all attack. Mine were larger sized drums wide open with tighter resos and medium tight batters. Kick was the same, felt strip on front head only. The drummer from the first band asked me where my mics were hidden on the kit. Haha, big difference.
Hey Stephen, great lesson for me. I realized some years back the audience doesn't hear the same thing I hear behind the kit. so I'm concerned and have been experimenting trying to find how I can get the best possible sound so the audience can have the best possible experience through the music. Thanks for the tuning tip. Your awesome!
There was actually a Modern Drummer article about this back in the 90's. Another effect with tuning the resonant head higher that wasn't mentioned, is you tend to get a "pitch-bend" with your tone. As a side note, the article also mentioned you could tune your toms to its natural pitch, which can be gotten by taking out all the hardware, suspending the toms with your fingers and tapping the shell. Obviously a more involved process, but something that can be quite rewarding.
Was exploring with tuning and ended up with high tension on reso, it also eliminates lots of crazy overtones and shortens excessive sustain, on my kit. No added damping materials.
I had this same realization at some point. Was trying out CS dots on my toms for the first time and wasn’t finding the sound I was wanting so just decided to crank up the resos and was amazed with what I was hearing. Didn’t sound all high and boingy like I thought it would. All the power and attack from the low tuned batter but with so much more tone. Makes my cheap kit sound mighty fine
I found out this formula a long time ago. Single ply coated heads on top. Single ply clear on bottom. Tune top medium high. Tune bottoms high. Gives warmth, and resonance. It's the old jazz method.
Playing a lifetime even before any miking, except the studio. Early on the first time a drummer friend sat in, my drums didn't sound the same at all. From then on I would tune then have bass player, whomever, smack around so I could hear what audience heard to get reso's right. Retired now I record demos & just backing tracks. Some tracks sound better with just overheads, snare, kick like blues shuffles, while say a ballad I close mic. In the process I also reduced the notorious Ludwig Supra snare buzz from the first tom. Your observations are spot on~!!
First time I’ve watched a video of yours my man. I liked it a lot. Have never really considered tuning the reso’s high. I will now. Thanks. Have subscribed as well.
How i tune my reso heads: Mounted toms very high and floor toms very loose. This way i get full & rich tone for smaller toms and thunderous punch for floor toms.
Dude this is a big deal. I'd always wondered about this. I've been playing for so long that tuning has just become so natural too me that i've never really wondered why I loved the way I tuned my toms. Thanks for the drummers Edu. Video
+1 on the muffling. This is actually old news for us 50+ drummers. I have fine-tuned my drums for years by having someone whack my drums while I walk about at expected audience positions to check my unliked sound. I have found tuning my batter head to my preference at the throne, then tweaking my redos for the audience position gives the best results. The best tunings seem to occur when the resos are tuned tighter than I normally like. But when the sound guy straight-lines his EQ, and simply balances the amplification, you know you’re doing something right!
Many many years ago (1995) I was a lightning guy working on a punk gig in Australian. The bands bassist had the craziest rig I'd ever seen. Turns out it was 2 custom made speaker cabs consisting of 24, 6 or 8 inch speakers (my memory fails me now, but I just remember lots of speaker) about the size of a Ampeg fridge. He'd set 1 cab vertically, but then lift the other cab onto the top of it to form a T shape. I had to ask WTF? His explanation was all about controlling his on stage tone & letting the FOH PA control the power. He found using a big 18 inch speaker, while doing his slap punk stuff meant the sound wave propagation at close range was tight at a few feat, but off stage it had built up enough energy to crush a wall (his words not mine) & was killing people in the front row. Also it would hit the FOH sound guys even harder, & they'd all but pull him out of the mix. It did make a lot of sense, & I do remember thinking it was a great sounding rig live. Perhaps this is why the drums sound so different at close ranges compared to from a distance. The sound wave builds up energy as the move out.
That sounds like Phil Jones Bass cabinets. They had like 24 (4x6) 5" speakers in them. They had a really short throw, so the sound didn't travel very far. They were fairly heavy, and quite expensive custom made speaker cabinets. www.cliffengel.com/interviews/phil_jones/
Interesting but if you go a bit deeper, each shell have resonating pitch that if you tune to you'll get even better tone and sustain. Tuning drums is such an abstract thing for beginners, there is a world of Technics and possibilities. On thing that you should try is to remove any muffler and control the overtone and sustain via tuning alone.. Just a suggestion ;)
That’s B.S and has been disproven, it’s dw marketing scheme. Hit the shell with the hardware off and get tone a, do it with hardware get tone b. Dw stamps that pitch on the sticker inside the shell and when they get that frequency it’s with the shell w/o hardware. I used to think that you need to get the shell vibrating more for more resonance when it’s completely backwards, you need a shell that does the least amount of vibrating and sucking energy away from the heads b/c the heads are the sound. So a thick, dense shell that doesn’t vibrate or bleed off energy from the heads moving will have way higher fundamental tone, more volume and less overtones because it’s letting the heads move up and down with lease interference
Warmth, tone and resonance in a small room with acoustic instruments - perfect for my world. I'm a soft jazz drummer who has always tuned my single-ply clear resonant heads slightly higher than the batter heads on everything but the snare drum. My snare resonant head is quite a bit higher and I use Remo Renaissance heads for better brush sounds. My cocktail kit has an 18" bass, 12" rack tom and 14" floor tom. The Gretsch 33-degree bearing edges on my mahogany shells makes them sound bigger than they really are. This would not be ideal for a rock kit, though. Just my two cents.
I use really tight snare resos, and almost completely loose tom resos. I find the snare responds really well with tight resos and I did that low, big sound lose resos get with the toms
You are quite right, out front counts! Very interesting video. I just started watching so you may have done videos on cymbals. They rarely sound the same out front as they do behind the kit, Especially a heavy ride.
The problem with loose bottom heads is the tuning pegs get loose and fall out... S Copeland is said to have SUPER TIGHT batter heads, and loose bottom heads. Like many New Wave drummers, Copeland used A LOT of rim shots on the toms. He contrasted his tuning with John Bonahm who had loose batters and tight resonant heads.
Not only do the tighter resonant heads sound better, they give better stick rebound. A drum should sound like a drum. Love Bonzo - without jazz, he would not have been so good.
This is interesting, reminds me of the thin shell trend when it started, the thin shell kits sound more appealing to the player and sound pretty good near field, but when you stand back a ways they dont project and cut through the mix like a thicker shelled drum does, if the fundamental pitch gets to low it's gets muddied and lost in the same frequencies the bass guitar occupies, it's so tempting to tune for your ears rather than tune for projection and tone for the audience or the tape
At 2:01 floor tom tuned low sounds the best IMO. This reminds me when I was recording in the studio. From behind the kit my set sounded like shit. I mean really bad I thought. but I listened to the playback after recording. The drums sounded awesome. Don't judge the sound from behind the kit.
I've discovered mid to high reso tuning also tends to result in sympathetic or collateral snare buzzing. Maybe not so bad for loud, live playing, but not so good for recording. Ross Garfield (aka "The Drum Doctor") offers some tips for eliminating snare buzz and other tuning tips. Google him up. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and all the hard work that goes into making these vids, Stephen.
I tune mine super high, almost to the point of choking. It gets rid of super long sustain without moongel or anything. It's aggressive and not too round, which is what I like.
I've been saying for years that most drummers don't know how to tune their drums because they haven't touch the Resonant heads since the drum came out of the box. Different rooms and recording situations require different tuning to get the sound you want. BTW ... I've been a drummer for 39 years and was once a touring drum tech for one of the bigger bands that came out of the Midwest U S in the late 80's.
I took an old snare head sanded it down almost so it's a cloudy clear and I'm using that for my reso head and my snare sounds great instead of a clear one
Like Mel Lewis and other pros have said - tune to the audience, tune to the room. This can be difficult if it results in the kit sounding thin on stage while you are playing them. With a proper monitor mix, everyone should be happy. Hearing the sounds you like on stage of course drastically improves the comfort and confidence you can have with your performance, but if it sounds like garbage to the audience, you may as well stay home and entertain yourself.
The room can affect the sound tremendously! Carpet, hard floor, curtains, drapes, height of ceiling, indoors, outdoors, quantity of people are only a few of the environmental impacts. I've been playing since the 60's and I am constantly amazed at my chameleon drums. The only quick remedy I have is carrying many different models of sticks and brushes.
i have my resonant heads tensioned higher than my batter heads, i start with the lowest sounding tom and work my way up from there, always starting with the resonant head then going onto batter. that way i get decent projection from my drums. rule of thumb i try for 1/3 higher resonant than batter. it heps if you start from your bigger drums first, that way then you have somewhere to go for the tuning range, as sometimes if you start from the highest sounding drum, you end up with nowhere to go once you hit the bigger one :)
low tuning reso is always going to have a longer sustain than tighter tuned reso... not sure where you are getting more sustain from a tighter tuned reso otherwise... Unless you are tuning to same pitch, and your batter head is already pretty tight... then being in the same pitch will reinforce resonance... and coming from a tuning of mismatched pitch will already sound short in decay... Just so everyone can follow along and be on a theoretical common page. At some point... tuning your reso toms tighter will alter pitch... and I'm surprised that was not even mentioned, which would be invaluable info for someone tuning to a certain pitch. Where this video shines is in the audio demos of how it sounds and through different mic situations. All the rest, great vid!
Thanks again for the good work Stephen! I discovered the same thing as you and have a problem with that. Because my conclusion is “you’ll never know how your kit sounds if you are playing live for an audience” Off course you can sound check and let a band member bang your drums, but that is not the same as playing with the whole band in a room filled with more people, which gives a different acoustic surrounding in most rooms. How to tackle that issue? Hope someone has a strong idea, this has been bothering me for a long time, because I think sound is important.
Hit the " 'stick' on the head" here. I was taught to tune the drums even top to bottom, and tweak the bottom head up slightly (1/4-1/2) turn-ish. As sound travels in the room which parallels your advice. Great news for us drummer, we can do what we want depending on style, room, ear, etc. Question: What was High and Low in this video to compare top to bottom head? How can diy drummers practice adjusting/learning-to different rooms?
I think the room has a huge effect on how your drums sound un mic'd if the room has alot of reflection and sound bouncing it can be quite jarring so dampening the room if you can probably has just as big an effect as anything.
Can you explain some lingo for a beginner? By "drastically tuned," do you mean drastically tightened tension rods (higher pitch)? What would a low tuning be in terms of tensioning - would a low tuning be just getting the wrinkles out but no tighter? How many additional turns of the tension rod would bring it up to medium tuning? And how many more turns for a high tuning? Thanks.
I use drumtune pro and tune both heads the same. It gives great resonance and tone. I tune all my toms to the same pitch and the size of the drum takes care of the rest.
I honestly try to go for the best of both worlds. I tune my drums so that they have good tone that projects and I also try to dampen out any overtones or excess ringing. That way, the drums sound good on their own, but if they have to be mic'd up, there aren't a bunch of overtones and ringing that will cause trouble for the sound engineer. The approach to this for me is making sure the drums sound full and alive enough when I'm behind them. This usually translates to an even more full sound when standing far away. And again, I only use muffling/dampening to take out overtones, not to deaden or alter the overall sound of the drum. I really can't stand it when drums sound great through mics but sound like wet cardboard on their own. BTW, I hate low-tuned tom heads. The high tuned ones sounded the best to me here. I've found that this is especially true with larger toms...if it doesn't sound nice and full, try tuning the resonant head up even more than you think is necessary.
Always wanna note as when you have your drums set up in your studio and have not played them in a while the lugs will losen up and be out of tune as well just a heads up drummers for some that know and don't know 😉
This is why tuning drums can be hard and a pain. It depends on your situation really. If you play on your own then tune to please yourself. If you'r playing to a room of people then tune to the room. Plus the room will be different once people are inside. Less space and changes the acoustics of the room. I go 50/50 on tuning. I tune the toms with both heads even. I tighten the tension rods till they touch the rim or finger tight. Then I put a bit of pressure in the centre of the head till it wrinkles. Then just turn each tension rod till the wrinkle has gone. Quick and easy and sounds great, easy to tweak to taste or room later. Remember most of the time you won't be able to tune to every venue. Unless you play in the same place. Also the drums need to sound good to you playing as well. If they don't sound good then you won't be inspired to play.
So maybe a dumb question, but after watching, I should ask, what's the best way to get that audience perspective when you're by yourself and don't have access to a room mic?
I acknowledge that tuning drums and 'pitch' is largely subjective...that being said; your 'normal'/'medium' (beginning) tuning seems quite low... And as others have commented, objectively...you're employing a fair amount of muffling. So many factors affecting how drums sound in any given environment...Excellent video, with useful info!
In your opinion, what is the best tunning scheme for a practice kit in a small room? I am looking for something that will make it sound a little quieter rather than getting the best tone out of the drums.
I think you've tuned the resos too low - I tune them low, about a 2nd to a 3rd above the lowest note and they sound great no matter how high or low you tune the top head. The next question is how much of that tone really came from the higher pitch of the drums? They sound higher and the higher the tuning the more the projection.
I play one up two down,.... Have always tightened my reso heads a hair tighter... Always just under the pitch of the batter head... My floor Tom's ring like timpany's...
Nice Video. I'm assuming you are calling a low reso tuning lower than the batter and high, higher than the batter? I would like to see the batter/resonant comparison.
I remember the day I went to a pal’s band practice and the drummer’s kit was all ”ringy”...and I thought “this sounds gawd awful!”. Well... then they played...and the drums:: a) cut through the massively loud guitars b) sounded amazing in the room. I went home and retuned my drums for the next 3+ hours and never looked back. This was 1994 maybe?
Yeah, I learned (around the same time oddly) that over-muffling is often the worst thing you can do for your drums. I had grown up listening to 70's rock and punk, which often only used a batter and no reso head on the toms. Once I got into jazz I realized how much more alive the drums sounded, and how little the ringiness mattered. Now I use zero muffling on my single ply coated toms (reso always tuned higher than the batter), and just a circle over weather stripping on the batter head of the kick (with Pinstripes on both ends). People always comment on how good they sound, even though it's a cheap, off-brand jazz kit. I knew a guy who had a ~$2000 Gretsch kit, and he literally taped ripped up t-shirts to the bottom of his batter heads because he didn't like the ringing. They sounded like ass, when you could actually HEAR them. What a waste.
I appreciate that comment you made because I moved to rural Nebraska from near Detroit and everyone bitches about my drums being wide open. They always want to throw blankets and tarps and all sorts of shit on them because they are too "loud"... Well then I'm forced to explain to them that when you play music with me, you are going to learn something new every day starting today. It really pisses me off when people who don't know shit think they know everything. So I appreciate you making that observation and learning from it.
