Ep. 46 Tuning to the Drum Shell

hey everybody welcome back to sounds like a drum cadence independent media to one of our investigative reporting segments we're gonna talk today about the resonant pitch of a drum shell and we're gonna find out if it actually affects the sound of the drum or not so some drum companies namely DW they test the pitches of their shells and then they stamp the pitch the resonant pitch of the shell on the inside just in an effort to indicate what the pitch of the actual shell by itself is I have been curious about this I don't own any DW drums but I do know that it is a resonating body so it should have a pitch and we were just feeling a little curious about whether or not this actually has anything to do with how you should tune that drum a few people have commented on it and a few people have actually commented that they are actually concerned with hitting certain pitches with their drums based on this sort of philosophy which it's safe to say I've never done I've tuned Tom's to specific pitches on purpose for recording sessions and stuff but it was never because the drum itself had a note that I was going for so what we did today is we took apart one of Ben's drums one of his pearl masters and we actually went a little further and took all the hardware off to because we are also curious about if adding the hardware makes a difference because it should if it's a matter of the note of the drum and its capacity to resonate that's a lot of stuff on there that's gonna muffle resonance and dead in the shell um even just the lugs so we're gonna figure out what's going on with this drum and start by playing its pitch for you we took a tuner to this a few minutes ago and discovered that the shells pitch is pretty much exactly 30 cents sharp of C sharp [Music] so I'm betting that if this was getting marked in the in the factory they would probably stamp it with a c-sharp because that's what it's closest to so the next step is we're gonna put all the hardware on and hit it again and see if the pitch changes it's a feel like you're probably gonna alright we got all the hardware back on and we actually test it halfway through with just half of the lugs on but we'll get to the notes at the end so let's hear how this sounds with all the hardware on it's gonna be a little ratalie cuz the these little lug bits are in there they're gonna shake around but hopefully the pitch will will carry for your ears alright so we did a little tutoring and discovered that the initial pitch of the shell was pretty much dead on c-sharp plus about 30 cents with half the lugs on it shifted to a C flat by 20 cents and when we got all the lugs on we're now at a b-flat 35 - 35 cents so that's a big jump from the naked shell to just the lugs on no hoops yet no heads and I'm not sure frankly like which pitch to go for at this point because we changed the pitch of the shell by adding mass to it when we put the hoops on they're not touching the shell but they're adding mass to the overall resonating body what do we even aim for well what we can do is sort of follow the the methodology that the idea behind this implies which is that we're going to tune the heads to the pitch that we think the shell is so if I bought this drum I took all this stuff off but I left the lugs on and I hit it we're going to start with that pitch according to videos that we've seen the intent behind the pitch of the shell is to tune the resonant head to that pitch because it's the resonating head and then adjust the batter according to taste so that's what we're gonna do we went ahead and tuned the Rezo to the pitch that the shell was with all the hardware on it and it was it was challenging to get it right in there but I got it within about three cents of the pitch of the shell again with the hardware and then we muffled this head and checked out the pitch of the shell and it actually went up to almost a perfect C was like 10 cents flat on a see that does also call into mind the importance of the range that's usable for tuning a head of a certain size drum and have it not be too floppy or have it kind of choke out if you're headed for a pitch that your shell is with your resonant head and it's way on the outside of the spectrum of what that size of drum will do comfortably that could be tricky and this is pretty high for a 12 to me for like a modern tuning it's it's quite high so all that to say because when I put the batter on and see what we got alright we made it a lot of fussy tuning and a lot of goofing around and we have both of the heads within a few cents of both each other the pitch of the shell when it only had the hardware and the first thing I noticed is it's tuned real high to get a B or or a see any of the notes that the shell presented as earlier you have to go pretty high because to go an octave lower is not feasible on the on the drum so let's see what it sounds like for starters I'm just gonna hold it up by the rim and hit it because this drum is normally fitted with an isolation mount which is more mass to add and also there might be some weird interactions with the pitches since it amounts to the lugs so here is this drum with both heads tuned to the pitch of the shell with the hardware on I mean it's almost timbale country we have we have a one plan on the bottom and a to fly on the top standard Tom heads g1 g2 and yeah I don't really know what to say I mean it sounds like a Tom for sure it sounds like I pitched up pretty high 12 really but as far as it being more resonant than some other tuning it's hard to say we we did see that one of the things that goes along with this scheme is to pitch the batter head a little bit higher for a little bit of modern pitch Bend my normal move is to pitch the reso high and the batter low for pitch Bend so I'm gonna bump the batter up a little bit just to see what that does and hit it one more time just as another little physics and acoustics aside about this with both of the heads tuned to kind of flat B's the perceived pitch when you actually hit the drum is not a B it's actually almost a D and that comes from some phase cancellation the interaction between the two heads it also speaks to that old thing that people say where you can't really tune a two-headed drum to a definite pitch because you've got two pitches interacting and even if you tuned the heads to the same pitch the ultimate sound that comes out is not the pitch you tuned them to it's actually something else so I raised the batter up about a whole step from a flat B to a flat C sharp now the tuner to this drum struck all together is reading a flat E flat instead of solid D so I mean it's super loud it's pretty articulate it feels tight um it feels boppy to me more than than rocky for sure and so I guess what I want to do now is let go of all of this measurements and everything and start from scratch and just tune it the way that I would tune it if I was gonna use this drum for a sort of modern pop scenario and figure out what those pitches are things just got weird so I I just tuned the drum the way that I would use it and I check the pitches and it turned out that I tuned the batter to an f-sharp and the reso to an A and I was like this sounds great and Ben said this sounds great and then he said what does the tuner say the drum is at if you just hit the drum and it's a flat B which is what the shell was with the hardware on before we put the heads on so tuning the heads to the pitch that we thought the shell was didn't sound good but then I tuned the drum for resonance to my ear got notes neither of which were the pitch of the shell and then it made the pitch of the shell within about 10 cents yeah that's weird well here's what that sounds like anyways [Music] now before you go down the rabbit hole and freak out about the pitch of your shells of your kit I can't stress it enough this drum sounds great add lots of different tunings we've used it for a lot of different things we've used it in a lot of videos here with different heads different intervals it's not important to that degree to worry about the pitch of your shells it's just super weird that that happened to be where this little experiment landed it's also important to remember that when we took the drum all the way apart the shell had one pitch with no hardware a different pitch with half the hardware and a third pitch with all the hardware on and as far as we know when this pitch stamping process happens we believe that it's done with no hardware and possibly no drilling but I believe no hardware just because of the rattle like it it's it sounds clearer without it but putting the hardware on changes it so yeah I guess to recap it's been an interesting experiment to see what was gonna happen with this into something that that we've been talking about here for a while doing and I hope you enjoyed it and at the very least found it as weird and interesting as we did and please as usual like comment and subscribe and if you have any experience with this phenomenon or if you factor it into your tuning let us know we're definitely curious this is the first time that I've ever dubbed into this at all and it was definitely super interesting

Channel: Sounds Like A Drum

Views: 55,479

Keywords: Sounds Like A Drum, Cadence Independent Media, Drums, Percussion, Drum Tech, How to tune a drum, Drum Education, John Good Tuning, DW Drums Tuning, Pearl Masters Maple, Drum Pitch Tuning, Cody Rahn

Id: Hs9FM-IuMiE

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/BOS519]

To be clear, one of the conclusions of this experiment was that tuning the reso head to the resonant pitch of the shell doesn't really benefit you (we ended up with a wildly over-tensioned drum with this approach) unless you're going for more of a bebop tuning scheme. One of the biggest issues with tuning to the pitch of the shell is that the pitch of the shell no longer really matters once you've added the hardware, thus altering the resonant pitch of the drum itself. Tuning to the final pitch (or within the overtone series) of the drum once it's loaded up? That could be a thing, but we were able to get plenty of excellent sounds out of this drum with various fundament pitches.

[u/John_Locke_1632]

I tune till my drum sounds it's best. I'm not even sure what that is. I start with the biggest tom and work my way up to the smallest. Here come the bride comes to mind.

I want my Tom's to sing. It seems to me when tuning, the sweet note happens by ear naturally.

Drum heads are the spice to the note. Thicker, thinner,single ply,two ply, coated, clear. All these ad flavor. But in the end, each shell has a sweet spot. I don't know the technical number or key. What I know is what I here.

These guys at sound like a drum are the best. They take things we as drummer always think about and apply it with no nonsense details we can understand. Personally my favorite.

I said I want my drums to sing. Yet. As of right now. I have Remo Vintage Coated Ambassador heads on my drums. Basically a thin coated two ply head. I tune till the drum is at it's best. But with these heads. I have a controlled sustain and minimal overtones. What note are they tuned? Don't have a clue. They are tuned where they sound the best. For me. That's basically close to a studio sound. But plays well live with a band.

Whenever I try to tune away from the sweet spot. I find a few things happen. Tuned high. I start to choke the drum. The overtones ruin the note . Volume decreases Or if it's low, it sounds like shit. They are tuned so low it has no volume. Or it's so low it sounds flappy.

My opinion. Which is meaningless. Is that the heads you choose have the biggest impact on sound.

The shell is the base. The heads are the broth. The hoops and how you tune are the spices.

It's probably the worst and best thing about drums. A great drummer can make the shittiest drums sound great.

[u/nastdrummer]

Personally, I tune to the shell without hardware. My thinking is I want the most wood tone possible, so tuning to the frequency of the wood just makes sense.

My toms tune A, D, G#, C#/D, A (8,10,12,14,16). I tune the heads evenly. Bringing them to tension together until I achieve the pitch as read with a spectrum analyzer from across the room. My DrumDial keeps me close enough I only have to do fine tuning for each room.

Thoughts?