How To Tune Your Drums

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hi I’m Jared Falk and today I’m going to show you how I tune my snare drum now I say show you how I tune my snares on rather than say teach you how to tune a snare drum because I believe what we do

here the sound that we get out of our drum it’s so subjective some people will love the sound of my snare some people will hate the sound of my snare just look at all the YouTube

comments you know some people love the sound of my drum some people say they don’t sound very good at all and that’s fine everyone has a different palate everyone has a different sound in their

mind and they think things should sound a certain way and that’s totally cool that’s how we should be as drummers so with that said I’m just gonna basically change my batter head on my snare drum

and so show you exactly how I do that alright so I start obviously with a drum key I’m just gonna put these sticks down on the ground here and I’m going to take off the top head alright and so what I

do is I don’t necessarily crank all these all the way loose all the tension rods all the way loose I just go around the drum and do like a half or quarter turn on each one I just don’t want to

loosen it all the way here and then warp the rim or do anything to damage the drum very expensive drum so I’m just gonna go ahead and continue to loosen these until they become I loose enough

that I can actually just continue to loosen them with my fingers all right now that they are all loose enough with the drum key I’m just going to put this down and I’m going to

continue to take them the tension rods right out of the lug cases completely alright not actually going to pull out the tension runs I’m going to leave them sitting in there alright now that all

the tension rods are off I’m just gonna remove the rim from the drum okay grandma’s gonna put this down here try and leave the tension rods in there you might as well and you got the old head

right here I’m just going to take off the muffling that I did have on it I’m actually putting on a different type of drum head alright and then I want to just going to chuck this out of the way

I’m just going to quickly wipe the shell the drum sometimes I have a cloth when I do it but I just want to make sure that there’s no debris or dust on the edge of the drum there now that I got my head

select my head I’m just going to go ahead and place it on the drum now I’m always a little OCD I like the Evans at the top right in the middle in between the snare strainer okay and I like to

keep it as even as possible okay put the head on there grab my rim now you can doing this it’s always a good time to polish your drums and stuff too

just for the sake of time I’m not going to sit here and polish my drums I just want to quickly show you guys how I do this then what I do is you got the tension rods I just put them all in a

little bit alright okay so now what I do is I’m just going to put these all finger tight okay so basically what I mean by is as tight as I can go with my with just turning the attention aligns

with my fingers okay all right now that I’ve done that what I’m going to do is I’m going to do something that they call seating the drumhead and that is where I just take

my fist I put it in the middle of the drum head and I just press down now you I could probably put all my weight on this okay I’m not just gonna stab to it and now I’m doing this on my snare stand

you may want to take it off your snare stand just put it on the floor and we’re basically just stretching it out just like a guitar player would stretch out their guitar strings we’re going to

stretch out the drum head okay and then I’m going to turn them again with my hands try and tighten them up a little more alright now that we got that done what I’m going to do is I’m going to

start to tighten with my drum key and I’m just going to turn like half or quarter turn and I’m going to go across okay so I’m going to start here and then go across then I move over here turn

there okay so normally I I tune up my drum a little bit more I don’t like to have a really low flat sounding drum although some of you guys might want that you

don’t have to even go as tight as I’m going here okay so once I’ve got that I’ve got all the tension rods tight and I’ve been trying to keep it as even as possible then what I’m going to do is

I’m just going to tap beside each tension rod and I’m going to listen to the the tone and then I’m going to try and match them all a match all the tensions now there are things that you

can use to do this there’s something called a tama tension watch and it’s it’s a little thing where you actually put by a tension rod and it measures the tension of the drum head right here and

so then you can put it by this tension rod tighten this and make them all even just kind of like a tire pressure gauge on your car something like that I prefer to not use that tool I just like to if

it sounds good then it’s it’s great I don’t necessarily want to use a tool like that although if you guys really really want to go ahead because you can probably get something that’s more

consistent if you find a sound you really really like you can always go back to that tension there’s also other torque keys available that will only you know as soon as the you turn it and it

becomes a certain it’s a more difficult to turn it’ll actually stop you and it’ll say okay that’s as tight as you want to go because that’s how how you’ve set the torque II but I’m old school I

just go with this and it always works for me so now I’m just gonna like I said listen to the tone beside each tension rod okay so I’m hearing that this one is a

little bit lower I’m just going to bring it up a little bit okay now I’m gonna do this one over here go across those sounds pretty good to me and if I if you always do it the same way I did it you

know hand tightening then quarter half turn each one it’s going to be pretty even and it’s not going to take you that long to change the snare head okay so I’m hearing this one is a little bit

lower we go ahead and turn it up still hearing this a little bit lower okay sounds better but I’m going to come back to it because I want to make sure these around here are similar tensions as well

this up a little bit okay now we’re getting closer so now what I like to do is like to put it in and actually just the whole way around the drum just do like a half of turn so

that for me I’m going to just going to hear how it sounds with the snare wires okay I think that sounds really good for starters I’m actually going to go a little bit tighter though I’m just going

to go all the way around again now that they’re all tuned pretty tight it’s not gonna affect the drum in a bad way just to you know not do the star pattern or anything like that

so you’re out it sounds okay now what I’m going to do is I’m going to turn it over and I’m going to show you guys kind of tension I tuned the reso side to okay now generally you get a snare side head

with evans is called a hazy head this is called a snare side 300 hazy now I don’t change this one near as much as I do the the batter side I change it maybe once or twice a year and that’s about it I

don’t find it has a huge effect on the sound some people might disagree with me and that’s totally cool so I just don’t change that often so what I do here is actually a tip I learned from Mike

calico he puts his stick under there so then we can properly adjust the tension on each tension rod okay so let’s throw a stick under the wires neat little trick of the trade and then

just go around I don’t find it because you’re not hitting it and hitting the rim it doesn’t actually go to tune a lot and DW makes such great drums so I actually

don’t need to do a lot but now let’s talk about the relation in between the the rezo’s or the batter side and the reso side all right now again for me this is something that I just do by ear

I don’t necessarily say the Rezo side always needs to be higher or the Reza side always needs to be lower or anything like that it’s all just to do with does the snare drums sound good do

I like the way it sounds and in this case I like what it sounds what I’m hearing is this could go a little bit higher for me especially because I felt when I hit this the batter side of drum

it’s not a great but I’d like to just play around with it and see how big of a difference it makes if I actually turn this up a little bit just going to go around the drum

all right so there we go that’s what I do they’re not a lot you guys are probably thinking wow I thought there is more to it but not for me there is it not so now let’s hear how it sounds I

think it sounds amazing it has that the perfect amount of snare wires kind of buzzing afterwards it has the perfect tone for me it’s not too high it’s it’s not too low I think it’s great tension

feels good and yeah again that’s one thing I liked about this these drum heads is that they just tuned so easily it’s actually really really hard to tune them badly and make my drum sound

horrible so I hope that helps you guys if you have any questions on this topic please just leave them below all right I’m always checking the questions and I might film a follow-up

video or I might just go in the comments and answer your question so if you do have any questions please don’t be shot I’m here I’m pretty much on behind everyday so I’m more than happy to help

you I love to talk drums so thanks so much for watching this video and I’ll see you guys in the next one Oh