How To Tune A Drum Head - The 5 Step “Tuning Chore”

6Jan/100

How To Tune A Drum Head - The 5 Step “Tuning Chore”

I hate chores. Photo credit: <a href='http://www.flickr.com/photos/davies/'>David Davies</a>

I hate chores. Photo credit: David Davies

I'll start with a confession.

I rarely tune my drums. I hate doing it. There's a whole bunch of things I'd rather be doing: Getting a drink at the bar, updating my Twitter account, preparing my hilltop mansion for when I'm a Rockstar, talking to hobos. You know, interesting stuff.

I mean... I know I need to be tuning more, its just that it's so boring. When you are tuning, you will find yourself doing the same thing over and over again. It becomes a real chore.

By now you know what drum tuning is, and you know that your drum head is badly out of tune. So its time now to actually tune it. Let's look at what's involved. I call this process the "Tuning Chore."

This toiling task will get your drum head in tune, will reduce "ringing" from your drum and will make you look like you know what you are doing. Pretty cool eh? Here's how it goes:

The Tuning Chore

1. Tap your drum head lots of times about 1 inch away from each lug. (5 - 20 seconds)

2. Ask yourself, are they all the same pitch? (1 - 20 seconds)

3. If no, tap them all again and find the area with the lowest pitch. (5 seconds - 3 minutes)

4. Tighten the lug at that area slightly then go back to 1 (1 - 5 seconds)

5. When they are all the same pitch, stop. (12 seconds - 20 minutes)

Exciting isn't it? The times indicate roughly how long it will take to do each step. Expect to see the higher times if you are new to this. Keep practising though and try to do it as fast as possible. When you are recording in the studio then you will be tuning in between each take. So you can see why you need to get fast at this.

Tips

Put your drum on a carpet to muffle the sound from the other drum head.
If your drum is on a stand then use your hand to muffle it.
Make sure you are tapping the same distance away from each lug.
When tuning your bottom heads, tap lightly. These thin heads are prone to breaking.
There's no shortcut to figuring out which pitch is lower. Keep listening, keep practising and you'll get it.
It's annoying if someone is playing when you are trying to tune so when someone else is tuning you need to be quiet.
If you want your drums in tune, don't want to do the work and have a spare $60-$90; you may want to try the Drum Dial