How To Tune Your Toms Like A Professional - A Drum Lesson

all right let's get those drums in tune shall we uh what I'm gonna do first is explain the tools I'm using and we're going to change out a couple of tom heads and we're gonna hear what they sound like so without any further Ado here we go obviously we've got the drum we've got the drum we got the two heads that we're gonna swap off we have a microfiber cloth I would always go with a microfiber cloth but you'll see what I'm going to do with that in a moment drum key I use two of them uh this is the Remo drum key I use two of these when I'm tuning drum key in a drill you're probably going why do that actually most of you probably go oh I get that so you'll see why I'm going to use a drilling moment do you have to use a drill when you're tuning drums no not at all I went many years without using a drill this just helps to take drum heads off faster I never use this to tune and you're gonna see that in a minute a stick uh we want to tap the drum and make sure it's in tune so without any further Ado let's get this thing going I'm going to start with my floor tom I'm gonna start with my floor time 16 inch by 16 inch floor time and then I will be going to my 10 inch Tom you might think wow that's a big difference and the reason I did set that up that way is I was trying something new I saw Benny grub do it and I go does that actually his drums sound great is that a new thing that I might be into when it's turning into a new thing I might be into so that's the reason for the big difference so without any further Ado I like to start with floor toms first so that's what we're gonna do so let me take this top head off we're going to replace that head and again like I said I like to take it off with a drill because it's just faster boom [Music] now why do we switch out drum heads they start to lose their sound this one's kind of got a hopefully you can hear that trying to aim that at the microphone on the camera um that compared to a brand new one here how that one's got like deeper tone who's Ted it's just it's gone okay now before I put this head on I like to take a microfiber cloth and before I actually do that I'm going to check to make sure that there are no splinters on the bearing Edge right here now don't clamp your fingers on because you don't actually want to put a splinter in your finger that would suck but and then I take a microfiber cloth and wipe it down make sure that there's no gross stuff in the drum which there is not but I'm just double checking next I want to make sure that just things are are clamped down and not rattling and I know I had a rattle over here okay so outside of that all right looking pretty good in there next we're going to put the drum head on now to take especially on the floor times and I'll explain why it's different for me on Tom Toms but floor times I'm going to put put the brand logo whatever brand you use I use Remo I'm endorsed by them or I endorse them I like to put the Remo towards where the badge is and you can't see it in the film right now but the badge is right down here so I'm gonna put that on there make sure it's squared up with the badge all right looks like it is fantastic I'm gonna put the rim back on whatever you do don't lose your tension rods by the way these are not lugs these are called tension rods the lug is what the tension rod goes into just in case you were wondering so I know a lot of people will especially a lot of younger students of mine will be like oh yeah I took the log out and I'm like no you took the tension rod out so these are called tension rods they go inside the lug the lug is what's attached to the drum itself all right so at this point I got the room on and we're just going to put these in real easy I'm not screwing down all the way I'm just putting them in one by one just to make sure that they're screwed in that's it I'm not screwing them down at all yet just making sure they are in the tension rod they're not coming out okay so good excellent now here is where I want to use two drum Keys now you don't have to do this I like to do it this way I like to use two drum keys get these in and then I screw them down to finger to sort of finger tighten them just so that they've touched the rim so I started here now I'm not going to go to the very next one I'm gonna Skip One and go here so I started here I'm skipping these and going to those okay and I'm gonna do the same thing and again I'm not tightening down I'm just getting them so to where they they touch the drum head okay or they test the rim not the head now hey there we are so now where do we go from there oh we could skip but hey guess what we're gonna go to there gotta go to the next lugs over and I use two drum Keys just to make this faster that's all you don't have to I did it many years by just finger tightening the tension rods myself with my fingers six and one half a dozen of another I find this to be easier and for what I do the cost of an extra drum key buy two drum Keys you've already paid for it they last forever so there's no reason not to but hey if you want one drum key go for it now I've got these sort of screwed down okay notice there's not really a sound big sound coming out I'm just gonna tighten that just a little bit from every side and then we're going to talk about the bottom head I like to work with a bottom head make sure that it's in tune with itself I already know that it is [Music] okay I know that it's in tune by itself it's where I want it to be if uh if I was going to change this head out change both heads up I would definitely again start with the bottom head first and get it to that pitch that tone that you want it to be at start there I don't need to do anything with this right now it's already there so now what I'm going to do is flip the Drone back over and let's start talking about the top head now keys at this point and type things down a little harder by finger tightening okay you're gonna hear some cracking I use a coated Remo ambassador which has like a little bit of a paint job on it so you're going to hear cracking and that's difference between the paint job and the glue that's holding the mylar in place so we're not cracking anything here it's just holding it in place and I'm just making sure that we have finger tightened this all the way down to where it's almost impossible to go any farther all right so now we should have some sort of sound coming out of it [Music] okay we have a pitch coming out now it's a real wonky pitch but it's a pitch nonetheless and it's very high I don't do my floor tom this high and you'll you'll get that in a moment so now at this point what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to make sure that each one of these tension rods are the same sound all the way around the drum that's my goal now I set this on either the floor I've got it on a table right now or or like a blanket or something because I don't want to hear the bottom head when you do this I want to hear this head because check this out okay if I pick the drum up totally two different sounds because you've got totally two different heads working together okay so let's dive in let's try and get these now I'm going to find whatever and at this point the the tuning of the drum doesn't matter you just want all the lugs in in place so at this point I'm going to try and make find which one of these tension rods is the highest pitch so here we go now I'm going to place my finger it's in the middle of the head to kind of get rid of some overtones so that I get more of that top pitch [Music] hear that [Music] so [Music] I'm hearing so what I'm hearing is this these two and these two are lower pitched than these two in these two and I'm kind of hearing this and this one is the highest pitch for Myers so I'm going to start by taking these two and these two up just a little bit this is not like a clamp down this is just you know a little little snug tuning up that's it and again we're not trying to be perfect yet just trying to get them better [Music] much better okay much better now this is really high pitched at the moment and what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a little CPR I got that term from Mike Johnson got a hand it down for that but I've been using it ever since I saw him say that I don't know a few months back anyway so we want to stretch out the mylar because you don't want this thing to be pitched up get on the drum set start playing it and it's going doom doom doom doom and all of a sudden you get doom doom mylar will stretch okay especially fresh it's going to stretch pretty quick once you get it into that that sweet spot it hangs for quite a while you still got a toy with two and fine-tuning it but it hangs in that spot till it becomes that drum head okay so we just wanna press down and I'm pressing down around each lug each tension rod okay it is also quite possible you're going to hear more cracking there too totally fine nothing is breaking okay nothing is breaking at all let's see what we got tone wise now [Music] we're in pretty good shape so now what I want to do is I want to back this drum head off to kind of get it more in place with where I normally play it right now it's quite high for me so let's back this thing off and again I'm not gonna like take one tension rod and really unscrew it I'm going to take one tension rod and it's going to go in small increments like that to here and remember remember star patterns okay don't go to the lugs right next to each other cross the drum that's what we're wanting now I do that we want to make sure that it's in tune [Music] let's take it down some more okay now we're getting more of the ballpark let's see where we are oh hold on oh the top head is now lower [Music] so a lot of people and and I will admit this too A lot of people say if you do this you want your top head to be somewhere around a minor third lower than your than your bottom head um that's a great place to start to to get used to doing this what I say is I want it lower I know where my bottom head is this is now lower my job now it's in tune I need to play it and go is this where it's do I like that sound because let's be honest you can't sit there and go it's got to be a minor third lower than the bottom no it doesn't it's got to be where you want it and I just want to hear that pitch Bend and so that's why I tune the two heads at a different at a different pitch so let's see let's see what we got here wow um I like that I don't know how it's going to come out to you guys but standing in this room right next to it we're going with it we are definitely going to go with it all right so wow there's my four top let's see that again yeah okay cool all right let's move on to the top Tom and that one's a 10 inch so let's move ahead all right we're back 10 inch Tom Tom key back on the drill I've already tuned the bottom head like I said it was basically in tune I took it off the kit I just had one lug or one tension rod that I had to work with and that was it so I'm not going to touch that so let's take off this top head now again drill key quick quick uh uh yeah just makes this much quicker okay so again let's hear this here's a used kind of gross stuff was that didn't get in there no okay so I was like almost like a paper bag so that's what we want now for this drum we're gonna do the same thing where we have to take our micro fiber cloth we're gonna take our fingers and go hey is something wrong with the bearing Edge again don't push down you don't want to get the a splinter in your fingers if by some chance there are splinters you just want to know that they're there so you can fix it okay nothing let's take the microfiber cloth make sure it's nice and clean the inside even though there's nothing in there all right so there we go now remember on the floor time I said I like to have my my drum head logo lined up with the logo of the of the drum of the drum company on the top Toms because I go back and forth I have two different bass drums with my kit a 22 and an and a 20. the 22 is what's known as a virgin bass drum it doesn't have a it doesn't have a Tom mount on it so I need to have time mounts on my cymbal stains so what I tend to do if I go back and forth between those two bass drums whether I mount on the bass drum meaning the mount will be either here or if I mount this is for me from my vantage point the mount will be here or if I'm on a symbol if it's on a single stand the mount is here so so your your your logo is either going to be like this or like this okay it'll actually more like this or like this and that just drives me crazy so if I put the logo with the with the mounting that tends to no matter where I set my drums if it's on the if it's on the 20 inch bass drum or if it's on a cymbal stand it's always in a place I can go okay I can deal with that so that's just a little OCD in any case I'm going to put that right there next to the Mount and let's put the tension rods in here we go [Music] just like the other drum there's no difference you're gonna see me just screw them in a little bit no big deal so they're all in and we're gonna do the same thing take our two drum keys and get them down next to the next to the rim here now here we are in that place guess what time it is folks it's time for a little CPR on this drum also to stretch out that mylar no cracking good [Music] it's a little up [Music] good [Music] there we go that's better now I already know it's still too high let's just double check it against the bottom head though Just for kicks so bottom head on this side top head over here let's see we got [Music] foreign again not huge turns just little increments okay where are we here [Music] so the top head is now lower than the bottom let's take it let's take a look see what it sounds like [Music] like that sound I hope it's coming through again we don't have like a good microphone on here this is just the microphone on on my camera which is a decent enough microphone but it's not it's not one of those so all right I am totally good with that I'm totally good with the floor time too so I hope this helped you out we're gonna put it back in the kit we're gonna just do uh overhead and and see how we like it over there and yeah there we go you guys down in the comments section do you like to tune when you tuned do you tune both heads the same same pitch or do you tune one head higher or lower than the other like I said um I started doing this I don't know a while back and I'm digging that that pitch bend sound now as opposed to more of a pure sound I think if I was tuning Jazz I would might want my Toms to be the same top and bottom to have more of a pure tone but for what I play more rock music more Fusion prog rock that type of thing you want it down okay um that that's how I want I wanted this more thick sound with a with a pitch Bend all right so other than that there we are folks uh hit the Subscribe button hit the like button hit that Bell so you don't miss so you don't miss any content and until the next time I hope you have a fantastic week take care everybody [Music] thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: Kirk's Drum Room

Views: 12,977

Keywords: Kirk Rustman, Kirk Rustman Drums, Drum Instruction, how to tune your toms, how to tune toms, how to tune drums, tuning toms, tom tom tuning, tom tuning, tom tuning tips, how to tune tom drums, drum tuning tips, drum tuning 101, floor tom tuning, floor tom, tom drums tuning, drum tuning toms, how to tune drum toms, tune your toms, tuning your toms, drums sound bad, remo drumheads

Id: QFXfNhC7EF0

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023