How to Make Your Drums Sound Great: Turbocharged Toms

[Music] foreign [Music] greetings everybody Nick D virgilio here and this video series is called how to make your drums sound great and we're going to concentrate on the toms the toms are such an important part of your drum kit you play them for fills you play them for grooves they add a lot of weight to all kinds of music and you want to do the best you can to make them sound as good as they can so your head combinations how you tune the drums what you hit them with all comes together in giving you a great sound we're going to take one of the toms here go to the table I'm going to show you how I tune a Tom and then I'll give you some dampening options and we'll just talk about some other ways to make the drums sound great this video is meant for the beginner or the intermediate player but even if you're an advanced player I've been playing a long time hopefully you'll find something useful in this video the drum kit I'm sitting behind is great for this kind of video because it's a great intermediate drum kit it's the Ludwig element Evolution drum kit it's an all-in-one drum solution you get everything in the boxes the two boxes all the way down to a pair of sticks great shells you get nice heads great symbols really good Hardware all in all a great and fun playing experience and if you're a new player looking to step up it's a great option to check out so with all that said I'm going to grab the second rack Tom I have a 10 12 and 16. I'm going to grab the 12. let's go to the table when you buy an intermediate kit like this one the drums all come nested together without any of the heads on so what I want to do is detune these heads and make it sound like the drums are just coming out of the box played for the very first time okay there's no tension on any of the tuning rods they're all very loose first thing I want to do is use my fingers and just get them to where they're snug not tight but snug all the way around just takes a couple of seconds and then you'll be at the same starting point for each lug now there's all kinds of ways to tune drums every drummer has their own tips and tricks the way I like to do it is pretty simple not too scientific see all those wrinkles in the head my goal is just to get rid of those wrinkles and once you do that your drum will be pretty close to being in Pitch so I take one lug quarter half turn maybe a full turn to start with go in a diagonal pattern and start getting rid of the wrinkles okay that was about a full turn on each lug pressing down in the middle there's a few wrinkles left not a ton but I see some on my left side over here so let me get rid of those um still a couple there as you get going you're gonna have to tweak and do little turns here and there just to dial in but that's good all the wrinkles are out let me just play the drum very lightly and see what kind of pitch I have [Music] not bad [Music] now I just want to have the tone of each lug as close to the same as you can possibly get that's all I need to do let's do the same with the batter side pressing down see all the wrinkles I just want to get rid of the wrinkles now since this drum has that sort of Rim style system this is for the Resonance of the drum you can't grab the tension rod with your finger so just do it from the top get it as close as you can those are snug there if you need your key to kind of just get it in the ballpark you could totally do that there you go now I can start from there let's get rid of these wrinkles that was a full turn there you go next one over getting close from my vantage point the lights in this video Studio make it very easy for me to see the wrinkles hopefully you can see them as well but as I push down here I'll lift the drum up for you all the wrinkles are gone this drum is going to be close to being in tune just like that now that's not perfect yet but it's really close there's a nice tune there's no bomb dropping sort of sound where it goes or anything like that it's very close and all I did was take the wrinkles out of the head now once I get it on the drum set itself you'll hear the rest of the drums resonating along with whatever drum you're tuning that helps in the sound and helps your ears and then once we're there if we want to take it up in Pitch down in Pitch wherever we want we can totally go anywhere once we're in the ballpark okay I'm back on the drum kit now I haven't touched the tuning since I walked back here from the table let's see what the drum sounds like [Music] that's pretty good actually the snare wires are off so you're not hearing any buzz in the background let's compare it with the 10 inch Tom and the 16 inch Tom here we go [Music] that's really close and all I did was take the wrinkles out sometimes people think of tuning the drum and they make it harder than it actually is that's a really simple way to do it but now I hear a few things listen I've been playing drums for a really long time I can get much more Tweaky about the sound it's a little bit dive bombing more than I want so I'm just going to kind of go up a little bit on the top head that was maybe a quarter turn and Tiny turns will make a big difference [Music] that's nice wide open you hear the Resonance of the shell it's ringing in a very musical way and it feels good in the hand it's not too soft and gushy it's not too bright and bouncy sort of like right in the middle and that took me about a minute to do now let's talk about heads with this kit right out of the box you get the Remo UT heads different head combinations will totally change the sound of your drum if you put on a Remo single-ply coated Ambassador or an emperor you grab an Evans dry head or an aquarium anything like that you're going to get a totally different sound but the tuning the way you tune the drum will be exactly the same get rid of the wrinkles and start from there and then you're off to the races different heads will dry up the sound of the drum maybe even open it up more definitely if you get an intermediate kit like this play the heads use them up but then when you change heads you'll really I the light bulb will go off in your head and you'll find the exact sounds you want now let's talk about a little bit of dampening I really like using these snare weight dampeners because they don't there's nothing sticky you put on your head but Moon gel Gaff tape other things like that will totally do the trick for dampening the drum is ringing nicely I like how musically it's ringing right now but say you want it a little bit better the stairway M1 is a good option for that just connect it to the rim of the drum the little leather strap lays on the head let's see what it sounds like oh took away a tiny bit of the attack and a little bit of the sustain let's take it back off there's also bigger versions so let's try an M80 which has longer leather straps this will really deaden it up let's check it out now depending on the music you're playing that dead sound might be perfect or if you want it wide open just take it right back off another thing we need to talk about in making your drum sound great is how you strike the drums how you hit them with your stick it really goes into it so if you're going to hit it really hard sounds like this [Music] if you hit soft and light with a little depth touch the drum is going to be a lot more open you can go soft and loud in volume [Music] use your Toms like an instrument they are an instrument just like your snare drum and your symbols are an instrument you can manipulate the drum in so many ways just by how you strike it [Music] I also used the shoulder of the stick and the rim to get a different sound [Music] so right there with a little bit of dampening some tuning and how I'm striking the drum gives me a bunch of different sounds out of one drum one other trick I'd like to mention here it's definitely worth it I'm not going to show it but it's worth mentioning when you buy drums here from Sweetwater sometimes the edges are so perfect the drums resonate for a really long time the sustain just goes on and on and on that's not a bad thing but if you want to take away that sustain but not take away any of the attack of the drum like you would when you put a snare weight or some dampening on the top head grab a couple cotton balls spread them apart like a little pancake and put them on the inside of the drum what that does is the Cotton lays on the bottom head once you strike the drum the cotton bounces up from the bottom head then goes back on the bottom head and just takes away the sustain but none of the attack that's a little trick I learned a long time ago from Benny greb and it works all the time it's a great tip one more thing I want to try here before we end this video is to drastically change the tuning of this Tom say you're a jazz player you know Jazz tunings for drums are usually very high the drums it's a very bright sounding and you get a lot of rebound right now I have the drums tuned and then sort of that rock sound bigger thuddier and deeper but let's go up it's going to be a little bit harder tuning this from the drum kit but you can do it so just go under start from the bottom head first I'm going to do about a full turn on each lug [Music] now I'm going to do the same with the top head you can hear the pitch coming up on the drum already let's just see what it sounds like [Music] that's not too bad at all let's turn the snare wires on and hear the buzz in the background [Music] that's a nice sounding drum [Music] so tuning as you can tell goes a long way and you can really manipulate your drums from low and thuddy to big and bright and Jazzy with a few turns of your drum key and there you go everybody tuning dampening a little cotton inside the drum if you want to do that all these little tips and tricks go a long way to making your drums sound great just depends on the style of music you're playing and the vibe you want to get from the player's perspective because sitting behind the drums You Want To Be Inspired when you play and if your drums sound great you'll totally be inspired you want to make music all day long thanks so much for hanging out with me everybody I'm Nick D virgilio [Music] thank you [Music] [Music]

Channel: Sweetwater

Views: 134,332

Keywords: Sweetwater, Drums, Guide, Nick D’Virgilio

Id: kL3S4bX_DN0

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023