How To Tune Your Drums

Tuning Your Toms – Drum Lesson (DRUMEO)

hi I’m Jared ball and today I’m going to teach you how to tune the Tom’s on your drum set and I don’t necessarily say teach but I want to show you guys how I tune my toms now I get countless

comments countless emails from drummers saying your drums sound unbelievable specifically the Tom’s exactly what do you do to get that sound alright now I first want to say it starts with good

drums okay I’m using maple she’ll DW exotic drums and this was my dream drum set I know I always get Colin saying can I have your drum set no you can’t have my drum set this is my dream drum set I

saved up for like over ten years to buy it it’s just exactly what I’ve always wanted I don’t think I’m ever gonna sell okay so it starts at that the next important thing is good drum hits now

I’ve been so fortunate enough to be endorsed by Evans drumheads who don’t really make great drums but are also just amazing people working with Jim and Larry has just been outstanding and I

couldn’t ask for a better partnership and I’ve chosen of all the drum hits they’ve offered I’ve chosen a g2 coded which is basically a 2 pi 7 mil thick okay each ply is 7 mil and that sets a

14 mil head with a coating on top of it ok so first thing I’m gonna do and for the sake of keeping this video relatively short I’m gonna kind of tell you what I’m gonna do and I’m gonna

quickly do it we’re gonna shut off the cams where we’ll speed them up and then we can get to the actual tuning process ok because I’m actually changing the heads here today too

so what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna start to remove the drum heads and I’m just gonna loosen these all just move around the drum okay I don’t want to loosen the whole tune in every single

tuning peg at once because it might warp the rim or just screw something up with that so just slowly move around the drum doing like a half a quarter turn and then from there you’ll just take your

fingers and turn the tension rods and just remove the rim completely so I’m going to do that on all the drums now ok guys so it’s going to start speeding up right

now so we’ve let the rims up very quickly there hey so now what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna take the 10-inch head off I’m gonna do this one first okay now

this is always a good time to polish your drums okay I’m not gonna do that now just for the sake of time here I got my drum head okay and now what I do is I just first set the head on and I like to

line up the logo along with the Tom mount you guys can do whatever you want some people don’t care they just throw it where they don’t mind if they’re upside down

so annual with this kind of stuff so I like to have it perfect alright so we got that then I put the rim back on and I just gonna hand tighten all of these okay and then the

tuning process will start so we’re going to do that with all the drum heads now okay we’re going to put on the head tighten these tension rods as tight as we can just with our fingers then I’m

gonna show you what I do to actually tweak the drums using a drum key alright so here we go [Music] now that I have all the drum heads on

and all the tension rods are hand tight now I’m gonna get my drum key and I’m gonna slowly start to tweak so I’m just gonna go around a half a turn around the drums to start that was actually a

little bit looser than I was and you might find that because they’re not even though they’re hand tight some of the lugs are a little bit they don’t have enough grease in them and so the tension

rods are actually really hard to get and tight or as tight as the other ones so sometimes you’ll have to tweak it with a drum key as well yeah and another thing I want to say is a lot of drummers will

seat their Tom heads as well which what I mean by that is they’ll put the head on then they’ll put their fist in the middle and actually stretch the drum heads and you’ll hear it crack there a

little bit honestly I normally don’t do that and I know some haters are gonna be hating on me saying why don’t you see it your drum heads why are you telling people not to see it you’re jealous they

just sound amazing when I just put the head on and screw it tight and they hold their tune like unbelievably and so I don’t find I don’t find that as hugely necessary and so that’s why I don’t

always do it you know if you want to do it go ahead okay this is my way this is what I do to get the drum sound that I have on these drums so take from it what you want and use it and disregard what

you don’t want alright so now that I’ve kind of just tuned it up a little bit I’m just gonna hit it and hear how it sounds [Music]

okay so you’re gonna here have a while Wow Wow I don’t like that I like to hear just a doo-doo-doo okay and with the reso head I actually didn’t make any adjustments nor and I changing

the resident but I’m gonna talk a little bit about what I want to do there first I know that this needs to come up a little bit higher so I’m just gonna go around one more time okay now what I’m

going to do is I’m going to actually just check the pitch by each tension rod so I’m going to tap here and tap over here you hear the difference [Music]

[Laughter] so this one up here is a little bit lower so I’m just gonna turn that up a little bit now I’m gonna do this one now this one feels a little bit low for me I

hope this is coming through the mics fine for you guys you guys might know the other ones low but this is how I’m hearing it from this side of the drum set okay now let’s do this other one and

this one over here seems a little bit low so I’m gonna bring that up alright now I’m gonna hit the drum again hear how it sounds okay that sounds really really good and

I’m surprised I actually didn’t think those gonna be that easy normally it’s not but it just was and that’s what I absolutely love about these drum heads as I put them on and there’s a sound

really really good I don’t I don’t know what the deal is I remember when I was like 15 16 playing drums of 29 now so almost 15 years ago I remember just struggling with Tom sounds I could not

get my drums or my toms to sound the way I wanted them to sound so it takes time you know to figure it out to get a knack for you know exactly what you need to do when you get your drum heads and so just

try stuff take off your heads put them back on and work with the sound work with the Rezo head you know try different batter heads every time you you change your heads alright now I want

to talk about is the the tension of the top head the batter head in relation to the resonant head now a lot of people say the the tone should be the same so if I hit the tenth the the 10-inch Reza

or batter head you’re here dude and and and and I want that same tension on the bottom now I usually like to tune it a little bit lower than the top head okay some drummers will say tune them so

they’re exactly the same and that’s totally cool because it’s whatever sound you’re trying to achieve so let’s listen to the bottom so the Rezo head is actually almost

exactly the same tone from where I’m sitting it almost sounds exactly the same but you guys the drum sounds really good so if I was struggling to find the sound

or figure out what’s wrong with the sound why am I getting these overtones and stuff like that I would probably tweak the resonant head first because I’ve evened up the top head and I’ve got

that sounding and feeling really good so if there was an issue with this drum when we might find that over here if there was an issue I would go to the resonant head okay and I would just go

by each tuning peg make sure they’re even and then you know do a quarter turn each to tune it up or a quarter turn and tune it down then hit the drum again and listen to it and hear how it sounds okay

so now my 10-inch tom is done now let’s move on to the 12-inch talk okay the ten o’clock generally is the easiest I find the smaller the Tom the easier it is to tune so now let’s try this one so again

we’re just gonna tune them up start to put some tension on the head you can go ahead and seat the drum head if you want just in there okay so I’ve got it tuned up a little bit now let’s hit it and

hear how it sounds [Music] so it’s a pretty long sustained and a little bit too low for me now before I go up any more I’m just gonna check the

tone beside each tension rod now why do you’ll probably ask about the tension watch stuff or like that they’re little meters you can get that you can put on beside each tension rod to measure the

tension I don’t use any of that I’m old-school I just like to just do it by ear if it sounds good it sounds good even if this one is way lower even if this tension rod is way lower but I

still like the sound I’m just gonna leave it cuz I think it sounds good and that’s where it all starts is with the sound so you can go ahead and try out if you want and that’s just kind of like a

tire pressure gauge for your drums it’s gonna measure the tension so this one is a certain tension you can make this one exactly the same and this one exactly the same stuff like that there’s also

something called a torque key and that is where it’ll measure the tension at which you’re turning the tensioner on and it’ll only let you put it assert put a certain amount of tension on it and

then I guess we’ll start clicking or something like that never tried it but also a great tool if you guys are really having trouble tuning your toms and you want to kind of work some of that stuff

out and get some of those that’s totally fine personally I just don’t use it I prefer to just you know go by ear if it sounds good let’s just do it so let me just

check the tone here [Music] go up a little bit here sounds good so you might find it hard to hear if there’s a little bit of a difference and

that’s fine just take your time you know you don’t have to learn how to tune your drums overnight and it’s not as simple as you know is a good like for guitarist is this turn too and they have a pedal

they plug their guitar into it it tells them go up go down and then they know 100% whether or not it’s in tune drumming isn’t like that unless you’re tuning to specific notes and that’s not

something I do I’ve never really tuned my drums to notes if you look at a guy like Terry Bozzio who plays like this massive drum set and he plays a lot of orchestral pieces and like almost

melodic pieces on the drums he would probably I know he Tunes his his drums to know it’s in the stuff like that what’s totally cool if that’s what you need and that’s what you want to do

personally I’ve never really done it never found a need for it all the studio situations I’ve been in have never no one’s ever asked me to to my drums to the key of C or to the key of A or

anything like that not to say you won’t ever encounter it but it’s just never happened to me okay so now that I’ve kind of made some adjustments let me get this in here it sounds

so I’m getting a tiny bit of overtone so I’m gonna test it and hit the the resonant head [Music] so I’m thinking I’m gonna come up a

little bit more on the top and then I might actually turn the drum over and tighten the reso head a tiny bit seems a little bit low for me right now [Music]

let’s turn it over now I don’t want to do is I’m going to tune it up a little bit and then I’m gonna check the potential rods and make sure that they’re all nice even tension that’s

pretty good [Music] all right so now that I’ve tuned at the bottom I’m feeling like I need to just bring this down a little bit and this is

what I do guys I’m not like there’s not like some massive method to any of this it’s just how does it sound here does it sound good does it feel good that’s what I judge it by it sounds really good to

me and you guys might some of you might be sailing like it doesn’t sound good to you at all and that’s fine you know tune your drums differently I’m just trying to give you guys an idea of how I go

about it and how I tune it in relation like the ten to the twelve you know obviously this is gonna be higher tune higher and it’s good and it’s all in my head how on sound I want to hear doo doo

doo doo right that’s right that’s what I hear doo doo doo doo sounds really really stupid when I do it like yeah but but you guys know what I mean right okay so

now that the twelve is done let’s move down to the fourteenth again just gonna go all the way around now these are all finger tight so far so we have already put the head on again I’m not gonna seat

the head not something I do now these floor toms are actually mounted Tom’s case so there’s not they’re not actually floor toms or their I would I guess so not technically but they’re held off on

a stand so that’s why you’ll see them wiggling here like that and I find that when the Tom’s like this they offer a little bit more resonance a little bit more tone rather than when they’re right

on the floor sometimes you don’t get it as much of as long as a note or they’re just a little bit more flat I find just me personally [Music]

so right now it seems it doesn’t sound good at all so I think I need to come up a little bit more and then I’m gonna figure out the tension the tension runs a little bit more okay now it’s tweaked

[Music] this one seems too high [Music] that one seems too low that sounds really really good to me a

lot of you guys who your 14-inch tom is maybe your lowest Tom you probably want to tune it a little bit lower than that and then that would involve you know cranking the top down a little bit and

also cranking the reso head down a little bit for me because I have this sixteen over here I still like to have a little bit tighter of a 14-inch Tom okay it’s now the last one again just gonna

go around oh that’s still a little bit loose let’s hit it here it sounds okay so it’s still a little bit low you hear that that Rumble or the roar after I hit it

up a little bit this one this 16 inch tom is never giving me a problem it’s so easy to tune okay so the sixteen in relation to these other ones is still a little bit low so I’m just gonna crank

it up a little bit more just a tiny bit like an eighth of a turn hardly hardly adjusting it and then what I’m going to do is I’m just going to figure out the tension a little bit high

[Music] good hi and it might like I said it might be hard for you guys to hear that right away or out when you’re starting out

tune in and that’s fine just take your time you know we get to play drums our whole life so don’t don’t rush it you know just have fun let’s hear it sounds through the bottom yeah it sounds really

good now what I’m finding after doing this is that the the resident head and the batter head they’re more similar in tone than I thought it would be normally I would actually make the resident hat a

little bit lower but in this case the drums are sounding really really good when they’re tuned exactly the same okay so now that I got my floor tom close to I wanna I’m just gonna see how all these

drums sound together and like I said I’m looking for the doo doo doo doo right the lower [Music] [Applause]

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

so there you have it that is exactly how I tune my tongues I know I’m not overly picky and you know my drums just sound good I start out with really really good drums I put on really really good drum

heads and and then I I tune them up I check the tensions and that’s pretty much it you’re gonna have to do tweaking over time so I might also find that that the 10-inch is got a little bit of a

growl at the end of it so I’m gonna I’ll do is I’ll just turn it up a little bit because that means the head has probably started to cede itself and it’s loss of attention so I’ll just quickly tune it

up simple as that but that’s it there’s that’s the method to my madness or whatever you want to call it I hope you guys enjoyed this video okay if you do have any questions

if I didn’t answer any of them within this video please just leave your questions below I’m I’m here all the time I’d love to help you guys get your drum sounding the way you want them to

sound I love to help you try and find your specific sound whether it be with Evans drumheads DW drums whatever it is you know I’m there I can answer questions we can chat drum heads chat

drums it’s up to you guys okay so leave me your questions comments below and I’ll see you in the next video [Music]

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