How To Tune Your Toms Like a Pro | Easy Drum Tuning Part 2 of 3

hi everyone I'm Rick Beato welcome to part two of how to tune your drums like a pro in this episode we're going to learn how to tune your toms coming up next here we have a 13-inch Ludwig rack Tom first thing we're going to do is we are going to put the bottom head on okay the resonant head now there's a couple things I want to talk about that most people don't tell you there are two different types of hoops these are triple flange tubes and which are typically found on Ludwig drums you can also have diecast tubes that you find on Gretsch drums there's also single flange hoops but you don't find those as much now there's two different types of hoops there's the 2.3 millimeter hoops which are commonly found in drums today that have been around since the 80s or so and there's the 1.6 millimeter hoops that are found on vintage drums this is a two point three that was originally on this drum when I started getting into vintage drums I realized that all vintage drums have much lighter hoops on them so I did some investigating and realized that up until I don't know the 80s or so they used much lighter hoops with lighter hoops comes a completely different sound so the first thing I did was I bought a set of them for this kit I put them on and instantly the drum sounded way better there's not as much weight on there the drums are more resonant because it literally weighs I don't know probably a quarter of a pound less so it's putting less tension on the rims and you can actually hear the difference alright so the first thing I'm going to do is seat the head that I just had on seat the head on there place it on and I start just finger tightening the drums the reason that your finger tighten them is that it makes it easier to tune when you start with the drum that's our even finger tightened you can get very even tension on the head right from the start before you do anything okay it's a lot more accurate than even using some type of a gauge so a finger tighten all the lugs here as tight as I can go with my hands here that's pretty much as tight as I can go first thing I do is that for in the head like this okay that once again brings up that glue it makes the head sit better on the bearing edge okay I go back and I retighten it then I go around and I use my just pressure of the my palm I take my palm I press down on a log and I finger tighten it again with some pressure on it and I put about the same amount of pressure on each lug to start okay you can do it with either hand doesn't really matter I'm going to go back again to press on it make sure that I hear a little bit of snapping still I'm doing the same thing again and I'm going to go through and finger tighten everything by pressing down on it now I've already got a great starting point for tuning the head right now just my finger tightening and putting on pressure also by the amount of pressure that I'm pushing down on the rim at the points where the lug meets the meets the hoop it's seating the head nicely and it's creating very even tension around the head without me taking a if I took the drum can I started doing it you're going to get one that's a little bit more tight than another you know by doing it with this method it gets a nice even sound to start I've already got the drum almost up to pitch to a pitch that I can work with so I'm going to go around it one more time go like this I'm still getting a little bit more movement out of it and one more there we go that's a great start now we're going to do it with the other head okay next we're going to put on the batter head the batter head is the one that you actually hit with a stick I have a Remo Emperor which is a two ply head thicker than an ambassador okay and the reason I'm using an emperor is because John Bonham used it actually that's not really reason with an ambassador head you can tune it much closer to a pitch than you can with an emperor for rock I like Emperor's and if I'm doing metal I would typically use a clear head because really want that attack to cut through but this is much more of an all-purpose drum head so I'm going to go through I'm gonna break the blue when we've done the other one let's just save you the time I'm having to tune it when your drummer comes instead of bashing on right okay so I got it broken up a seat hit on the head I checked the the I check the bearing edge to make sure that it was clean I've got my head on there one point six millimeter oops and I put it down like this so those are the same motion I get them finger tightened I tell you if you're a really good drum tuner you can put on coated ambassadors clear ambassadors and you can tune them right to the pitch of the song and I will do a video of that because I do that a lot you know when you hear the tones at the end of stairway to heaven and bottoms got them tuned perfectly to the key of the song when they're doing that da da da da da that's because he had a great year for tuning drums once again finger tightening them same thing that's good that's good that's good that's as tight as I can get them right there with so just my finger tightening them I already know that the head all the lugs are fairly even because you can tell it's much better than using a key a key you don't have a sense of feel for it and a lot of times the lugs will get hung up a little bit you'll end up over tightening one of them which will stretch the head in an unnatural way and then it'll make it very difficult to get the head and tuned later if one of the lugs has been stretched one part of that has been stretched more than another I'm going to go through the palm of my hand press down see how they all become loose when I do this that pressure on the rim makes them go slack and you can tighten them even more I'm pressing down pretty good too you can put these on the floor and use your body weight and get into it okay and you can almost get it up to pitch that's it right there that's goes tight as I can get without getting a key okay tuning with a key I'm going to start out with the bottom head the resonant head I'm going to take my key I'm gonna put it the lug the furthest way for me I'm going to point it straight towards my body but the furthest away I'm going to move in a star pattern this happens to be a 6 lug drum you'll have snares that are six lug you love snares are eight snares that are ten but generally 13 inch times are going to have six lugs I'm going to go in a star pattern here then here then here then here then here then here and that's so that you get the tuning even around the head I'm going to start by doing about a half turn okay so I went there there I'm going to move up to here half a turn to here okay so after doing a quarter turn around the head I'm going to go check the tuning real fast okay it's a little bit low that's a pretty good start for tuning okay now I'm going to go back to the battery okay I'm going to do the same thing with the batter head I'm going to go line it up go in the star pattern okay and give it about a quarter turn again one two go over here next three four over here five six now generally on coded heads you'll hear create a creaking sound you don't really hear it because I already broke the glue joints with my thumbs when I went around the head before I put it on okay that's the benefit of doing that it's just like stretching your strings if you're playing guitar and you're changing your tar strings you just stretch them out so that once they're on there they seat nicely in the nut and in the saddle same thing here you want the head to be a stretch out as it can be before you before you start tuning it up so I'm going to go around and check my Simon five I have two lugs that are down a little low and they happen to be opposite from one another so I'm gonna give it a notable great perfect start now we're going to start fine-tuning it okay before we go on I want to show you a vintage drum this is a sixty slingerland Tom okay triple flange hoops give you a longer sustain than diecast tubes that you would find on a Gretsch drum set so I just want to show you one thing here like this typically these old drums will have a muffler that will in many cases they're broken I usually will sometimes if they don't work I just would put some tape on them to keep them from resonating and making a sound but what you have here is a maple reinforcement hoop around here now because of that it gives the bearing edge a very different sound it makes the drums really have more tone I think having it having a vintage drum kit like this and just so you know when you're if you're out looking for vintage drums typically most of the drum manufacturers and the higher-end drums whether it's Rogers Ludwig slick slingerland lady whatever they were back then would typically have a three ply shell maple poplar maple okay so would be a 16 inch ply of maple eighth inch of poplar and 16 inch of maple and these are maple reinforcement hoops and what they did is make sure that the drum stayed round okay it also created that really warm sound that you loved in vintage drums for point of reference this is a Gretsch drum and it has diecast tubes you can see it does not have that triple flange which looks like this it's got a straight it has a straight edge around it okay and these give less sustain the more I don't want to say focus sound but you'll generally will not have as much ring on the drum Gretsch drums always come with diecast tubes let's talk about the tuning of the drum there's a few different methods that you can use when tuning a drum whether it's a Tom bass drum snare drum doesn't matter what you want to do is you want to tune through the responsiveness of the head you also want to tune for the relationship between the drums for example on the Tom's I might want to have them related by thirds and pitch or by fourths in pitch or sometimes you want to have the heads tuned really loose and den them completely for a real retro sound but I want to show you how to tune the time so that you don't need any deadening material at all okay so we can do a couple things here we can tune both the bottom and the top head to the same pitch now when you have a two ply head on the top and a one ply hat on the bottom the bottom head is actually going to be higher in pitch if you think about it this head is thicker than this said this is I think 14 mils and this is 10 millimetres thick so because of the difference in thickness this head at the same tension you're actually tuning tuning them to the same tension on both sides but the bottom head is going to be higher in pitch when that's the case okay so the bottom head is going to really control the pitch of the drum and it's going to control the length of the decay okay now that we have the drum tuned fairly close both heads after finger tightening it and then going around with a half turn or so I'm going to go check the pitch of the top pad so because that this head is a thicker head this is 14 millimetres okay because it's a two ply coated Emperor and the resonant head is a single ply clear ambassador it's a much thinner head so that's going to need to be tuned slightly higher by about a third about a minor third to have the same tension on both heads which will give you a nice even sound and a beautiful decay so so if this is now I'm dampening the bottom head um that is an e so the resonant head I'm going to want to have tuned to a a G if I have that minor third relationship and that works out because of the difference in thickness between the heads you can't tune a two ply head up as high as you can tune a one ply head okay to have it have the same tension okay I'm going to tune the resonant head I'm going to tune it around a G the batter head because it doesn't have a clear as clear of a pitch because it's two ply and it's coated it's not going to be quite as accurate as the single ply is if I have a single ply coated Ambassador on the top or a clear ambassador I can tune them perfectly in pitch to one another and it have a beautiful beautiful tone now that third relationship between the top and bottom heads I'm going to do the same thing with a floor tom I'm going to do them with the bottom head the clear emperor is going to be a minor third above the top head okay the floor tom is going to work the same way I'm going to remove the heads the old heads clean the bearing edge off break in the heads and we head it right okay I'm going to repeat the same thing I put the bottom hat on the resin head now I'm going to take the batter head I'm gonna stretch it I've got a finger tight now and I'm going to go back around to each lug in my star pattern so once I get it to where I'm putting equal pressure all around the drum about it's a good starting point I wouldn't do it another stretch you can hear it creaking there okay that's going to help seat the head on the bearing edge a little bit better okay the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to go around the drum like I did with the rectum I'm going to give it just a little bit of a turn like just a little quarter turn in my star pattern something went here then I hear then I get here I'll go around this way one two three four five six seven eight lugs on this drum because it's a larger size now just by doing that I'm going to be pretty close to my target pitch now we're going to do some fine-tuning okay after I go around once with my quarter turn I'm going to repeat that one more time around them each lug another quarter turn I do it in increments so that the head doesn't get stretched unevenly okay so you're just gradually bringing that up okay we're going to now fine-tune the head I'm going to go around to each log I'm going to hold down I'm just going to hold down the bottom head and that's a little bit low that lug remember you have to keep the bottom head from resonating to get a good clear tone be in the bottom be on the top and with the rack Tom jump lay here I had the G and E on that so the end the bottom head the end the top head D D D and B so listen to the two of them together you can hear them now you should be able to go around the head and not hear any kind of paper I'm about an inch away from the edge of the lug I just want to make sure that I am that none of them have D tune there's any paper e sound and one of the lugs is too loose one of the things that can happen if you have a loose lug is that you may have an out of round hoop or you might have a your bearing edge might not be clean you might have to have it recut so you can't get a proper tune on the head if your bearing edges off or your rim has been warped nice pitches for these for rock these this is a real great starting point if I wanted to go a little bit lower I'll bring the bottom head down just a little bit if I want to tune because remember that really controls your pitch so just to recap on this part the bottom had because it's thinner it's a 10 mil embed clear ambassador okay it's going to be a higher pitch than a two ply head though you can't tune them to the same pitch otherwise because of the thickness it's going to sound strange to get them to to the same tympanic pressure on both they have to be about a minor third apart same on both and once those are both a minor third with the bottom heads a minor third above the top head this is only with coated two plies okay if these were single ply ambassadors ah either clear or coated then you tune them to the same pitch now once they're played a little bit these are fresh ends you're going to have to go back around retune them once so I usually will have the drummer sit on them and play for about 10 minutes or so then I will go back retune them again and I'll look for the same pitch difference between the two that's all for now please stay tuned for part three of our series how to tune your drums like a pro I'm Rick Beato

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 850,989

Keywords: drum tuning, studio drum tuning, tom tom tuning, drum pitched, easy drum tuning, drum tuning for the studio, Rick Beato, Everything Music

Id: txSxNhEVzmg

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 27 2016