In all seriousness, tuning drums is an essential part of any record.

This is what happens when you don't tune your snare drum to the rest of the track, it can cause severe consequences forever

 

For those not realizing that drums create a frequency, well they of course do. Snare and kick drums can be tuned as well as toms. For the kick as an example, if one uses Bazzism Kick you can sweep through frequencies to choose what sounds right for the song or part of it. In the real world drums can tuned by a knowledgeable sound engineer or the drummer to impart cohesion with a song. It's a good idea to be able to do so

My brother who had just started playing drums and was in a band had bought a super inexpensive drum kit which sounded like crap. His band's first gig was to warm up for a pro band, and when their drummer heard the sound check rushed over to my brother and on the spot tuned up the kick and snare for him. Those shitty drums then sounded like a million bucks after that.

 

Yeah regarding the 'you can't tune a kick to fit in with the track' this is exactly what they do in hardstyle/hardcore.

Usually a 909 kick with lots of distortion on will turn into a sort of bass sound, and they are often tuned to change with the bass note changes in the track.

Essentially, distortion will add upper harmonics to a kick track which will make it sound more tuneful to the ear, but the pitch still remains in the kick even without the distortion on, it's just harder for our ears to determine, often why people dismiss regular kick drum tuning entirely (they can't hear it so how can it matter?)

 

There is no "right" nor "wrong" to this, but I myself tune sampled drums as I see (hear) fit to do so. Sometimes snares are punchier when tuned down a bit.

 

Tuning drums can work, not tuning them can also work, detuning might even work. Literally tons of dance tracks became huge hits, with untuned drums. Now you have millions of tuned-drum dance tracks that are absolute garbage, littering the streaming platforms. And of course also a lot of of tuned-drum dance tracks that are great. There are also still untuned-drum dance tracks being made that are great. That's the beauty of dance music, you don't have to follow certain rules.

 

For audio tracks, ReaPitch. Comes with several sliders for pitch and formants(!) and various algos.

 

Yes exactly, sometimes tuning a snare down, or up, sounds better.

Some would argue to always bring a snare forward, or rather to always delay it to make it groove more. But it depends on the sample/sound, and groove of the rest of the sounds & patterns, there is no right or wrong.

Don't waste your time on self-invented 'laws' of others, but listen to what sounds or feels right for you.

But if you want to program realistic pop drums, make sure the whole kit is out of tune, make the snare randomly too late, overuse cymbals especially during choruses, and use a tempo track to speed up the tempo during the song.

 

No. Not unless it's very tonal and part of the tonality (808 bass, tuned toms playing a rudiment, etc).