Drum Tuning - Big Floor Toms (16" and 18")

so as promised that i have some requests about this as well i wanted to talk to you and give you some tips on how to tune big floor toms in particular 16 inch and 18 inch toms i'm also going to talk about my other tom that i hear i have here a 13 inch um but there's uh some a lot of little tips and tidbits that i've learned over my career that i think are beneficial should help you out with uh if you're having some problems tuning them you're probably thinking to yourself why should i listen to this guy about drum tuning well i am a certified drum tuning fanatic i've been playing drums for almost 50 years i've had a very successful career in you know playing in cover bands and original bands i'm also a session player i played uh did a lot of session work in my hometown area as well as uh in nashville i've talked to a lot of professional drummers picked their brains guys like gavin harrison brian tishy bobby rondinelli anton fake just to name a few have a lot of information that i've gotten from them over the years and have applied to my own drum set so i think the information i'm going to share with you is pretty valuable and i just want to get to that right now so the first area i want to talk about is a 16 inch floor tom and an 18 inch floor tom if you have a 16 inch floor tom you probably if it's the biggest tom in your set you probably have it tuned down pretty low and if you add an 18 inch drum to that you'll notice and probably the problem that you've you're noticing if you do have a 16 and 18 is floor tom is they can sound very similar they kind of live in the same sonic neighborhood so you have to kind of adjust one or the other to make it so that you can hear the pitch differentiation between the two of them and there's really not much that you can do other than you're gonna have to raise the pitch of the 16 inch a little bit more than maybe what you're accustomed to while keeping the 18 inch drum relatively low but still have the uh the feel and the character of the drum without without it sounding too floppy so um i just want to show you what i do with mine and give you some examples and some recordings that i've done here i'm going to add some little snippets here in a little bit to show you what they sound like and just show you uh what i've learned and some of the things that i do so i think it's best to start with the biggest floor tom the 18 inch floor tom because that's as low as you're going to go and it just seems to work out better that way and just to let you know i tune my drums and the guys that i that i talk with um 99 of them tune their drums by ear first um i think that's very important they don't rely on any gadgets or anything like that they tune them by ear to get them to sound you know good to their ear first and then after that is when they kind of fine-tune things and and tweak it a little bit to make it a little bit more pleasing or a little bit more desirable so um that's what i'm going to do first here is start with the 18 inch drum so with the 18 inch drum and with all of the drums 90 of the guys that i talked to have the bottom head of the drum a little bit tighter than the top head and i'll tell you why here in a second but with this particular drum with the 18 inch floor tom it's a big drum so you can't tune it too low because it's going to sound floppy and it's not going to have the right kind of feel and it's just not going to project and that's a problem that a lot of drummers have i think is they're tuning their drums too low and there's they're losing character and they're losing volume they're losing the projection that the drum can have so it has to have a little bit of tension on it for it to sound good and sound pleasing so with this particular drum this drum um by ear was tuned to pretty close to where uh a g note the reason that i know that is because once i get it in tune one of the main things that everybody pretty much knows is you want to make sure that each lug is the same pitch so with this particular drum it's tuned to a g on the top that's pretty much where it was when i when i uh first tuned it by ear but when i fine-tuned it i found that it was really close to that so that's what i made it at so how do i do that well there's different ways you can do it you can do it through a sound source like a pitch pipe or a keyboard note i use this drum tune pro app like i said i really tuned by ear first and foremost but to fine-tune things and to find out where things are at for recording purposes and other things i use this app called a drum tune pro which is right here and when you open it it has a lot of different features there's a tuning feature which is right there but it also has a frequency chart which shows you what frequency that um that the notes are and it also gives you a note so that uses a reference point so this particular drum is tuned to a g and the g that i use is in the second octave i don't know if you can hear that [Music] it's pretty close [Music] so what i'll do is just go around to make sure that that particular drum is tuned to a g so i'll tap on the log [Music] it's 99.5 so that's a little bit sharp so i would just go down and make sure that that tune that to it's a 98 right there and then i can target that zero in on it and then i go around and make sure that all the drums the lugs are the same and then once i do that that particular head is tuned to a g note that doesn't mean that when i play it it's going to be a g but that's what the the uh the top head note is tuned to so after that then i'll turn the drum over and i like to go with my toms i noticed that it just seems to sound the best the the most lively sound the most projection what's recorded best is when the bottom head is a little bit tighter how much is a little bit well it can either go from a half step to a minor third which is three steps i usually go a step or a minor third higher on the bottom head than i do on the top head so this particular head is 109 which is almost an a so a g what the pop head was a g the bottom one is an a so that's about a full step so i usually do about that at least a full step sometimes a minor third between the top and bottom head that seems to give a really nice full tone it cuts down a little bit on the resonance sustain so the drum doesn't ring too long but it still gives you a nice full tone and from all the guys that i talked to over the years and the drummers whose brains i picked and things like that and things i've read about they all pretty much do the same thing is just you know have the the bottom head a little bit tighter usually half step full step minor third major third right around in that area seems to work really well so with the 16 inch tom normally like i was saying earlier if you have a tune super low and it's the it's the lowest biggest drum on your kid and it's the lowest tom a lot of guys i've sat in sometimes and played drama drummers kits and their floor tom has tuned really really really low and it works you know into each zone and whatever there is no right or wrong but if you have an 18 inch drum along with your 16 you really probably have no choice but to raise it up a little bit in order to get enough pitch separation between the two so what i do is i try to go to at least a third between the top the two top heads so if that 18 inch head was at a g then the 16 inch head should be g sharp a a sharp b should be about a b a third is four notes so if i go in to my app and if i saw that the g was 98 i go up to the b which is 123.47 so let's go 123.5 and that's where my 16 inch floor tom should be tuned to so if i go to the tuning setting [Music] there it is 123.5 it's perfect so all those lugs are at 123.5 which will give me a b on the top and that's a g so that's a third between the top and bottom head and with the same concept on the bottom head tuning with a full step or a minor third on the bottom when you strike the actual drum the fundamental frequency the frequency that the drum is going to give off there should be a third between the the 16 and the 18 inch tom which is a pretty good pitch interval thirds and fourths are common but at least the third if you go less than a third between the two big floor toms it's really hard to distinguish the pitch so a third is the lowest frequency separation that i would go and you go a third or a fourth but a third seems to work and i'll show you what that sounds like now so here's the 16. [Music] here's the 18. [Music] so remember this drum was tuned to a b on top so this is what it is when you're actually striking [Music] it which is a d sharp and then this one [Music] is a b so it's a third between the two like i was telling you so that's those two drums they sound good they're not really resonating too long and there's there's not giving me any weird frequencies everything you know the the fact that all the lugs are tuned to the same pitch really makes a a big difference in keeping the weird overtones and frequencies out of the drums so when you play them um they sound good all by themselves lastly this is a 13 by nine ish tom a lot of guys i've read in posts and things that they have trouble turning a 13 inch by nine inch tone which i don't really understand because a drum is a drum you know there's two there's two heads on bottom and top of the cylinder and it just just it has an area where it sounds good and that's where you find it at so with this drama as well i tuned it by ear first and then it was right around an e so this particular top drum the top tom is tuned to an e and the frequency of that would be 164.8 so i tuned it to 165 just to make sure that all the lugs are the same and that's where that one's at and then i actually went a minor third three notes higher on the bottom on this drum to make it it just sounds a little bit more um livelier a little bit more powerful with a minor third on the bottom and and the resonance is just perfect and that's a fourth between the top head on this drum and the top head on the 16 inch tom is a fourth five five notes between the two but because this one is a little bit higher on the bottom a minor third as opposed to a full step on the bottom of this one um it's a little bit bigger than a major fourth interval it's almost a fifth um but it just sounds good um as you will see here i think the toms sound pretty good in these little snippets i'm going to give you but anyway to wrap everything up just make sure that all the lugs on the top and bottom of the of the heads they're all the same pitch um i find it most beneficial to have the bottom head a little bit tighter especially if your top head is a two ply and your bottom head is a one ply like these are um but you know and then once once you find where they sound good by ear then try to find out what pitch the each head is and then maybe you know tune them to thirds or force to see if that makes it a little bit more of a pleasing interval um and eliminate some of the dissonant frequencies and weird overtones that you may get if they're a little bit out of whack that way sometimes if you tune them into uh the notes like thirds and fourths and things like that you eliminate some of those weird overtones and get nice full sounding drums that sound good as a whole too so i hope that was beneficial um check out these little snippets and i'll talk to you in the next video thanks [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh yeah [Music]

Channel: CC drums

Views: 13,062

Keywords: floor toms, tuning tips, guide, how to, tutorial, app, kit, drum heads

Id: hPMPyBVuZEs

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 05 2022