Drum Tuning with tune-bot - @joecrabtree

I recently received an email from the makers of bot to ask me if I would endorse their product now I've owned a tune bot which you can see here for quite a while now I bought one from a drum shop on the recommendation of the guy running the drum shop and he said that it was a really great tool and you know I'd use it all the time I haven't used it all the time I've used it a little bit here and there but the reason I don't use it all the time is because I've not really sat down to figure out if I trust it so in this video what I'm going to do is see if I can really trust tune bot to do what I want it to do I have a 12-inch Tom here so no Tom and I've tuned this by ear and to get it sounding like I want it to sign in the kit and it sounds ok I'll just hit it for you so you can hear what it sounds like I've got a sm57 mic setup here so that's how that drum sounds at the moment what I'm going to do in this video is take a tune bot reading of the top and bottom heads and make a note of those and then I'm going to use a page on the tune bot website which gives you recommended settings for different resonances that you want from your drums and I'm going to do it I'm going to wear these headphones and listen to some Nik Kershaw I'm basically not going to use my ears to turn the drum I'm just going to use my eyes and tune bot and in theory that means that you don't really need a good ear in order to make your drum sound good you can just rely on the numbers and if this works then this might be my new way of tuning a drum so let's take a note of what these two heads are you'll notice if I tap in the middle of the drum we get reading here of 119 and that's the kind of fundamental pitch of the drum if I tap near a lug is picking up the harmonic of the head now if I mute the bottom head and just tap this head you can see that basically me hitting near the lug is given as the pitch of this head where it's hitting in the middle is giving us the overall pitch of the drum so what I'm going to do is make a note of 183 so let's tap around near the lugs unmute the bottom head to help they're all in the 183 184 range in the middle all right I have to let go of the bottom head to get the fundamental that's the pitch of the drum 119 so let's turn this drum over and I will make a reading of the other head so one eight three one eight four was the top head and the bottom head clip this on where you can see it the bottom head pitch two two three there let's go around the lugs now when you get readings that are big jumps out of the way that's picking up a different harmonic and there is a filter button on this that you can use to avoid that but I'm just going to tap it a few times and try and get the actual one that we want so there's the to-to-to so let me filter on that and now you do this look so so that's two to five so in the range between 2 to 2 and 2 to 6 so I could tune this and get it right and make it even but I'll just make a note of those two to begin with so now I have the reading of where this drum is and in theory I could take these heads off put new heads on and use the tune but to really quickly get them back up to pitch what I'm going to do is use some numbers straight off of tune BOTS website so there's a page a tuning calculator page and you can choose the size of your drum 16 14 12 and 10 is what I've got just going to look at the 12-inch and you can choose a resonance so maximum resonance and the pitch transpose all set to zero and you can choose whether you want top head tune lower than bottom head or top had tuned higher than bottom head so I am tuned the top head lower than the bottom head if they're not the same I used to do a minor third higher on the bottom head than on the top head so then you click on find my tuning and you get a little table at the bottom that shows you the fundamental pitch of the drum and what you should tune each head to so it says top lug pitch that's the same as when you're muting the other head so you can see that for maximum resonance it's suggesting that you tune both heads to 200 Hertz if I choose lower resonance you'll see that the top lug pitch is a lot lower than the bottom loop pitch the bottom lug is now higher top the top head is lower than the 200 Hertz and you're still saying a sharp 2nd octave so basically we're saying you can tune them both to a certain frequency and get a fundamental pitch of the drum and if you want less resonance you can tune the bottom head up from that frequency and the top head down from that frequency and get the same kind of fundamental note coming out but with less resonance so what I'm going to do in this video is I'll start off by doing the maximum resonance so that's going to be 200 Hertz top and bottom and then we'll just see what that sounds like so I'm going to listen to some Nik Kershaw I'm going to rush through this well I'm going to do this and I'll speed it up on the video so you don't have to sit through all the fine-tuning but basically what I'm looking for is a pitch of 200 Hertz on both heads okay this is driving bit crazy because it's saying 200 201 I'm going up and down let me just see what it sounds like to my ear see that sounds higher than that by quite a lot yeah that says 201 that says 202 so let me see what happens normally I would tune this one up that sounds definitely higher see if I put my finger in the middle to mute them with the harmonics now it's reading the other way so let me try that tune this this one down a bit and you'll see that I push in the middle when I tune down to stretch it they head out a bit so this still saying higher so go down a bit on that I can hear the head beating against itself you can hear that well well well well but I think this putting the finger in the middle while using tuned Bach might be a good little trick so let's tumour this is pretty close so let's see what it sounds like it's actually pretty good you got the 122 again for the fundamental pitch so if we hear the two heads you can hear that they're tuned to the same pitch and yeah that's actually really good and there's one thing if you tune the heads to different pictures then the drums tends to sound different depending on where your position now this one if I hit it like this and then if I rotate it so you're the microphone is picking up the side of the drum so now the mic is pointed here still sounds good turn it upside down here the bottom head Wow okay so I'm pretty impressed with that that's a good sign in Tom and you could go and get those closer if you spend a little bit more time but that yeah is kind of better than I was expected so that's basically ignoring my ear just using the tune bot to get a pitch yeah I'm very pleased with that okay maybe I will endorse tuned bot I'm going to do medium resonance so this is supposed to be an a sharp so median resonance find my tuning it says a sharp still now the bottom head is going to be 230 Hertz and the top head is going to be 175 Hertz so this is the top head so let's do the bottom head first I can do it without Nick this time so basically the my point is that I'm not using my ear to tune I'm just following the numbers so we're going to go for 230 Hertz on this head oops so it's around 205 so when I tune up I don't crank one lug until they get to 230 because then when I go to crank another look to bring that one up the whole picture the head will go up so the first one will be way out so basically you just go up a little bit at a time on each look and I'm I'm not really interested in the numbers until I get close so we're getting close now - 31 - 31 - 29 so I can hear what 230 sounds like so if I again put my finger in the middle I'm not pushing I'm just resting to kill that main harmonic so I can see this one's a little high so slacking it off a bit - 29 - 27 let's turn that one up a bit so you can see a couple of now gone above so in theory got a backbone stood us off a little tiny little bit and when I have other tuning videos which I go into details all this stuff but basically is the tiniest changes I'm making not like an eighth of a turn literally barely turns the tension rod okay so this is looking close enough up to 31 so we're within two Hertz either side and it sounds fairly in tune so then the top head i've got to do at 175 hertz so 175 so we're going down this time again it's going to be quite away so when i'm seeing the 258 i'm ignoring that because the no that's a high harmonic and now i'm in the region of 180 here so here we are in the region so now i'm going to meet the middle just a little bit i'm looking for the highest one so bring that down a touch that's pretty much there so let's see what the drum sounds like with this tuning this is supposed to be a medium resonance so now to compare I'll put the two video clips next to each other but this is the drum in two different tunings okay so again from here now let's see what that sounds like sideways so the mic hearing the side of the drum and then the mic here in the bottom head again all in all from where I'm sitting that sounds like a pretty nice nicely tuned drum so the interval between those two heads is done it's like a bus a major third I'm going to do the low resonance just for comparison so if I say I want a low resonance at that pitch then it's saying I should have 259 and 155 so the tuning calculator page is telling me that this should be an a sharp fundamental pitch so let's just check on my iPhone I have an a-sharp here and the drum that spot-on really is this is pretty impressive stuff okay so I'm going to do the low resonance and you don't see the GoPro anymore because the batteries just run out but I'm going to do that and there and then I'll play the results of that so for this one the top head should be 155 so I'm going down again okay so I've got the top heads between 154 and 156 I'm really I'm getting more and more impressed with this the more time I spend with it I'm kind of wishing I dare really made the most of this when we were tracking the album because these disc drum is sounding really good so and I consider myself to be pretty good at tuning drums but I always went for a certain thing I always went for the minor third relationship or more recently I started trying to tune the two heads to a similar pitch or the same pitch and they've always sounded okay but I haven't branched outside that very much so this is interesting for me seeing how the the different head combinations work so on the bottom head I'm going for 259 so that's 20 Hertz higher than this that's 259 on the bottom head so again in theory tune BOTS calculator is telling me that this should sound like an a sharp let's have another listen to the iPhone this is a sharp on a keyboard let's hear the drum alright I mean I'm really sold on this tune bot has become my method of tuning drums I'm just basically going to use tune bot to get the notes that I want out of a drum this is literally the most impressed I've been buy something for tuning drums ever I think I started this video not knowing whether it would work out or not I kind of part of me thought I probably always going to rely on my ears which I am because I'm going to check that it sounds good but I'm basically convinced that I could be deaf and get a drum to sound good and know what pitch it would be just by using this little device here so I guess you can call me an official supporter of the tune bot I hope you find this video useful I'm going to watch this back when I edit it and decide according to the mic whether I prefer the maximum resonance or the medium or the low resonance and then I'm going to tune all my drums using this I've had this for a year and this is the first time that I've really tested it out and basically yeah I now trust it so thanks for watching if you want to see more videos drum lesons and check out some software for the iPhone and for the computer that will help you in your practice sessions then visit my website Joe Crabtree calm thanks for watching I'll see you next time you

Channel: Joe Crabtree's Drum Lessons

Views: 110,848

Keywords: drum tuning, tune bot, tune-bot, tunebot, tuning, drums, tom, toms, drum heads, sonor, evans, technique, techniques, Drum, Drumming, Drums (Musical Instrument), joe crabtree

Id: t74U4O1Mn64

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 06 2014