How To Tune Your Drums

Muffling Your Drums – Drum Lesson (DRUMEO)

all right I’m Jared ball and in today’s lesson we’re going to talk about how to muffle your drums now once you have them all tuned up you might find that certain drums are still ringing or resonating

too long so I’m just going to give you a couple tips that I use either in the studio or live shows where I need to muffle my drums all right now you might see a roll of toilet paper

I don’t worry I’m not going to go to the bathroom or anything but this is one thing I’ll use I’m going to show you exactly I do with that also I use something else called drum gum okay and

this thing is basically sticky on this side it’s not sticky over here drum gum isn’t widely available anymore but there is another product that they’re called moon gel that’s very very

similar and has that kind of the same effect I really liked drum gum because it wasn’t sticky on top Moonville sticky on both sides alright so before we get started let’s just talk about the snare

drum okay now I get a lot of complaints from people saying when they hit their 10-inch tom or when they hit their 12-inch Tom their snare drum rattles like crazy buzzes with the wires

underneath and so what I want to talk to guys about is how to kind of stop that rattle or lessen it okay now on the bottom of your snare drum you’ll notice these there’s has wires and these are

the wires that are even when I talk you can think the wires rattling right um but you can’t complete you can’t always completely stop the rattle but one thing I learned from one of our instructors is

a gap Schroeder is he would say tighten the pegs on each side of the snare wires okay so tighten these tension rods in to create kind of a bed so you actually notice the hoop somewhat dipping a tiny

tiny bit don’t do it too much you don’t want to wreck anything and you know be careful when you’re doing it this isn’t something I do all the time I’ll do it with some of my drums it’s if it’s

really a big problem normally that doesn’t stop the buzz but it kind of lessons it okay so next I want to talk about is the snare ring now a lot of you will be getting snaring or extra

residents for that matter and so the first thing I recommend you look at get in is some sort of dampening system or dampening product actually designed for dampening

drums okay and that’s just because it’s it always it’s designed to work with drums it’s not going to leave any residue all over the drums it’s not going to pull any of

the the chrome or pit in the Year Chrome or do anything like that you don’t want it to pull paint off and stuff like that so now this is a larger piece I could actually cut this down and I could

choose if I want to do if I just need a tiny tiny bit of dampening or if I want to do a lot of damage okay and then what I’ll do is I’ll just put it on the edge of the drum just like

that and same with the toms if I’m finding the toms are arranging too much if they’re if they’re just ringing a little bit too much what I would do is I would cut this in half and put it right

on the edge okay this is too big obviously but and same with all these other toms you might find that the the 16 if you have a 16 inch tom or fourteen or if you have an 18 inch tom that these

like to resonate especially when you’re in the studio and so some a lot of guys would like those to be choked just a little bit more on the next thing I’m going to talk to you guys about for

dampening and this is some people might watch this video and be like don’t ever do that to drums so you can choose whether or not you want to do it that the tape I’m going to be using is called

gaff tape and it’s a tape designed for working with in video situations so it doesn’t leave any residue not like duct tape where you’ll find if you tape that on to drums that’s going to leave a

little bit of residue so what I do is I take a piece of toilet paper and I just fold it up this is still a little too big so I’m just going to tear that in half it’s like arts and crafts time yeah

so I pulled this up into a square okay then I’m going to grab this gaff tape now you can use duct tape just don’t put it on the shell or on the Chrome put it only on the head okay otherwise you

might leave some residue and the drums that you can’t get off then just take a piece of tape well let’s get to see how weak I am tape and then I put this right inside

there so there’s space around around there and then what I do is I’ll just set it down I’ll put it right here set it on the snare drum and then push it down okay this is gonna make up a big

difference at the time of this snare dome it doesn’t need any dampening so I’m actually not going to leave it on but if I found it was ringing too much and I couldn’t control otherwise or the

engineer just wanted it to ring less or they want it to be drier this is something I would do I put it right there and you might have seen this in some of my older videos and stuff like

that okay this thing can also this sort of system will also work on like the bottom of your floor toms the top here four times because it adds a little bit more damping than the drum gum

okay the drum gum at times can be a little bit light especially if the engineer or someone wants the drums very very dry then this system would work better and when you can do is it’s very

easy to take off afterwards especially with this called gaff tape okay so you know that’s like a great thing to have in your stick bag or in your hardware case or something where you can muffle

the drums that way okay so that’s some tips on Tom’s as far as muffling goes we know when to D muffle when it’s too much ring when it’s too little ring it’s kind of up to you to decide what you need

what you want and it’s kind of like if the engineer or someone you’re working with says they want your drums to sound a little more dry a little bit more dead not as much resonance then you’ll want

to look at doing some sort of muffled technique okay but you don’t want to always muffle like if your drums are sounding horrible or they’re not tuned properly they’re completely tuned you

don’t want to just muffle them to try and fix that okay so you don’t want it you don’t want it to muffle to mask poor tuning you only want to muffle to enhance the sound of your drums and to

kind of give the people that are listening to music better sounding drums and then better sound and use it okay so now I’m just going to actually go down to the front of the bass drum and we’re

going to discuss exactly what I do in there to muffle my bass drum so now we’re down here at the base I want to show you guys exactly what I do to get the bass one sound that I do

and I’m not actually going to pull everything else do you guys can see exactly what’s in there hey so I have a light white sheet and can be black or whatever it’s not it’s

not very heavy it’s very very light and then I have a black sheet as well one one good thing about having a hole in the bass drum obviously is that you can easily put stuff and put some inside of

it left lit more or you can take stuff out of it so if you want more of an open sound okay this again is another light sheet this was bought it just at a fabric store like you can see through I

don’t know if you guys can see that but you can see through the black sheet there and so then it’s just rolled up like that okay that’s what I have and then I also have this paddle leave you

always only be very careful important stuff in another Evans hat actually has a reinforcement ring here but still you want to be careful they have an eq pad okay and now this eq pad just velcro’s

to the bottom of the drum I just put some adhesive strips in there and this sits on it this basically sits on the ball of the drum and then it sits against the head

okay so every time I hit the bass drum this might move off a little bit to kind of give it more of that open sound but this is what I put in there first okay that’s I’m just going to liam offal it

for you guys so you can see exactly what i do okay so that’s sitting on the back of the head or on the on the front of the head next thing I do is I put this thing in okay now the way I want to do

is I’m actually I would actually once it’s inside I’ll fold in half actually I can probably do it like this now and then this is going to rest if those on the the batter side that

it’s going to rest in the drum like this so normally I’ll try and make sure I never muffle above where the beater is hitting the batter head okay so this just sits on the inside and kind of arcs

like that and it kind of just dead ends the ring of the bass drum the overall sound because I want more of a thump and I want more a lot of bottom n but I don’t want a ton

of resonance okay just a little bit so what I’m gonna do is going to put this back in and then position now normally I would do this with this back head off but I wanted to show you guys what I do

on the Rezo head as well because I think that’s important okay so now that’s sitting on the batter head there now this one this is a smaller sheet and now that I do the same thing but I put this

on the reso head right here okay so on the inside it’s going to sit like that and again it’s just going to dampen it and help kill some of the Rin but still give me enough resonance and sustain

that you get a nice kind of throaty bass drum sound so that once it’s all the way it’s all the way up to here comes all the way over to there cool so that is how I muffle my drums

that’s how I’m up on my bass drum I hope that helps you guys I hope that gave you a few tips and insight to help you guys next time you’re trying to get that perfect sound as your drum set alright

I’ll see you guys in the next video ah is that most I read doesn’t mean no it’s gone that’s Matt shanks fault for sending me now later candy oh I started to feel sick now

I ate almost a whole pack in like ten minutes Steve’s gonna be smacking a few gums in the back

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