Hello good people, so there's this drum recording that I am going to be doing over the weekend and I thought of trying to tune the drums to the key of the song. How would you go about doing this ? I think i'll be tuning the kick and the snare to the 5th because the tonic is too low. How would one go about the toms ? Is there like a "standard" way of tuning the rack and the floor tom ? I have 0 experience in doing this but I really want to try it out this time. Thank you for taking the time !

 

The easiest (and quickest) way to get drums in tune with themselves and with correct intervals between each instrument in the kit is with a tune-bot device. Process wise this all depends on the number of drums in the kit and the individual sizes of each instrument. Snare drums are typically tuned with the lower head (the snare side) very tight and top head tuned to blend correctly, interval wise, with the rest of the kit. There is no real advantage in attempting to tune an entire drum kit to a specific key. As long as the individual drums in the kit are in tune with themselves, and intervalic relationships between the drums are aesthetically correct (highly subjective), pleasing, and fitting the musical genre, you're basically good to go...

typical ballpark tuning's for a two tom kit are thus;
10" and 14" toms typically tuning both heads to same pitch (for max sustain) would be 131Hz (C3) and 87Hz (F2) respectively (perfect 5th). For 12" and 16" toms 110Hz (A2) and 73Hz (D2) respectively.

typical kick drum tuning's depend on the size of the drum. Personally I prefer kick batter heads being tuned higher than the front (resonant head) for playability. Usually around a perfect 5th or higher. Being that the batter and resonant heads are tuned to different pitches will result in a more atonal tuning. Kick drums do not blend well musically when tuned to specific pitches.

 

Last edited: Jan 12, 2024

as always, it depends on the situation, the track, and the recording. I am usually dealing with individual drum hits or loops, so if something is way out I will just replace it. I might chop it up and process each hit individually. I might use some plugins to fix/improve them. I do not do that very often, but the plugins I will normally use are Fuse Audio - DrumsSSX, Zynaptiq Pitchmap, Dj Swivel Knocktonal, UVI Drum Replacer, and typically Fabfilter Pro-q3 instance for each hit, but I am going to try Scaler EQ the next time I run into something like this. It's not all that often I don't just replace the individual hit.

 

Don't know much about mixing drums.. But whenever someone asks this question I ask myself - what if a song, heaven forbid, modulates to another key.. or even "goes up" a semitone or a whole tone, like many pop songs do

In this context, what guys above wrote, makes perfect sense.

I sometimes saw engineers using (notch) filter to tame the tone freq of the drum, if it gets in the way. It may work for some genres, when you purposely want to bang on a certain note/frequency, idk tbh..

 

As a listener, not a drum mixer, i prefer sustain and resonance to "tuning"

Love that tom "tump" impact AND resonance
Kind of impact and spring like.

And this thing can't be reached by tuning , because you will get "out" of the optimum tension.

 

dhooo

 

One thing to be aware of is once the drums are tuned, keep them that way. It doesn't take long for them to go out and if there's any editing to be done this can ruin an otherwise good drum recording. An Evans Torque Key is an invaluable tool to keep consistency throughout a session.

 

Be careful. If you have drum ring in resonance with the song chances are you'll be spending a couple days later with your favorite eq going "wtf IS that and where is it coming from?" trying to kill it again.
My advice- tune drums so they sound good and forget it. If you asked John Bonham to tune his drums to your song he'd have jammed a stick up your ass.

 

"ring resonance" is mostly high pitched snare drums resonance because drummer think his snare is a picolo snare
I hate high tuned snares ... they sound horribly metallic.

 

Imo 2 drummers have made that sound work, Bill Bruford and Stewart Copeland, other than that I tend to agree with you. The '90s were painful

 

For a live acoustic kit no, the kit should be tuned to get the best tone from each piece. The current fettish of tuning drum to the song key is fairly well encapsulated by EDM. Unless you are going for a distinct effect and are willing to work around the inherent problems with keeping a real kit in tune with the song as it evolves...

And also Trurl... DRUUUUUUUUUUUMS

 

The only way to achieve sustain and resonance is by tuning and tuning alone.

 

As far as unwanted resonances go, moon-gel's are the goto anymore for fixing those in a couple of seconds. The drum needs to be in tune with itself first though.

 

Bruford's snare sound is legendary and it's not a really high pitched tuning at all. It's a very well balanced (tuned), metallic and very open (little to no head treatments) sound. Dave Garibaldi (TOP) pretty much pioneered the funk back-beat "crack" with his signature piccolo snare which made its way into more and more genre's as time went on... Not painful at all and very effective.

 

Bruford's snare was considered high tuned by the standards of 1971 no one had ever heard a snare go "boink!" like it did on Roundabout... but no, it's not like a ska snare, or Spin Doctors, or something. Thank gawd.

 

I never said not "tuning" the drums, but not tuning related to the songs/band.
Only to his OWN resonance and relative to the whole kit, not the band tuning/songs.

If you move too far away from optimum tuning, you will just get a flabby OR over tight "twing" sound.
And i hate both :D

 

When it comes to VST drums, I definitely find value in tuning to help things set in the mix (or stand out of). I've never tuned a real drum though

 

The best way to tune drums sounds is to get a drummer that is tunned with the song.
Just push Rec and everything will sound magic.