Snare Drum Head Change & Precision Tuning with Tune Bot

hey drummers welcome to a brand new lesson my name is Jason Leach from day one drummer and today we're going to be changing our snare drum head and we're going to use this cool little device called the toombot now there's a couple little things that we'll need besides our toombot to change our drum head the first thing is a drum key next you'll need a little towel or a rag and finally you'll need your brand new head so my head of choice is an Evans G1 coated uh it's 14 inches I really like the sound and feel of this head so I'm just swapping out an old used G1 it's worn out for this brand new one so our first step to changing our drum head is we have to get this old drum head off and to do that we're going to take our key and we're just going to loosen our tension rods and pull our hoop off of the drum so I'm just going to go around the drum I already pre-loosen these a bit so I'm just going in a circle undoing all the tension rods here when they become free you can just do them as fast as you want this key is nice because you can spin it at the top great now all of our tension rods are loose you're just going to pull your head straight off or your hoop straight off of the drum you can place that to the side don't lose anything and your old head will come right off the drum you can see it's worn a little bit in the center um it's not totally gone but what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this on the student kit replace they're really beat up head so I'm going to set that aside I'm next you're going to want to take your towel and you're just going to clean the bearing edge of the drum try to remove any dirt and debris that might be in there and kind of turn it over and Shake It Out as you know when you're practicing and hitting all the time you can cause a lot of sawdust and shavings and it finds its way into the drum and it gets between the head and the bearing Edge and it can affect the sound so I'm also going around my Hardware here and just cleaning off some excess grease from the last time I lubed up my tension rods so once that's clean and you put your rag aside and take your new head I just place that right on the drum if you want you can line up the head with the badge so my badge is right there it's a porthole and go like that now grab my hoop and just clean this off really quick okay and then you're going to place your hoop back onto the head onto the drum try to make sure everything's lined up get those tension rods in there correct slot okay now that my tension rods are in the correct space and the heads on I'm going to take my key and I'm going to make everything what they call finger tight and I'm just going to turn my key until I feel it catch the threads and I'll use my hand the rest of the way and this is just to make sure that we're starting with an even tension at each tension rod so we can bring up the head evenly to get a nice tone foreign if you have an older drum some of the tension rods might not go in as smoothly as others it could just need some lubrication which is a good idea you can look at online to find something you can use on your drums um just about there so I'm going to go with my fingers now make sure everything's finger tight this one has a little bit more to go foreign [Music] so now that our head is on it is time to break out our tune bot and the two bucks a cool little device it reads frequencies so it's going to help help us pitch match each of these tension rods so that we have an even tuning around the whole drum um what I want to do now you should take your drum off of the stand when you tune it so that you can mute the bottom head by setting it on something great so I have my head on my throne and I'm just going to clip the toon bot to the hoop over tension rods are finger tight we're going to start to bring up the drum in little increments when you have a brand new head you can do what's called seating the head where you put some pressure in crack some of the glue which is fine and you are making sure that your head is sealed to your bearing Edge it stretches the head a little bit as well you'll notice sometimes when you tune a drum with a brand new head if you don't stretch it you'll play for a few minutes and it lowers the tuning a lot because it's stretching out as you go so let's see where we're at I don't know if the camera will pick this up but 108 [Music] 109. 9 111 111 110. 109. 9 109. 10 11. 112. [Music] okay they're pretty close so now I'm going to bring up the head just a little bit at a time in a star pattern so I'm going to one two three four five six seven eight nine ten I try to remember that as I go it's not always easy to keep track of your pattern especially when you're talking to the camera so I'm doing probably just a quarter turn half or a half turn to start [Music] okay I brought everything up as evenly as I could now I'm going to go around the drum again and see where we're at we need to get to 266. [Music] it's 231 231 225 it says let's see okay you can hear a bit of a difference I don't know if the camera will pick that up but basically if you do this by ear you're going to find the pitch you like and bring all the tension rods up to that pitch your toombot is going to tell you and this is great for people like me who might not have the best ear at hearing those slight differences when they get very close so 225 is our low one right now 223 [Music] 26. 31. 29 26 23. so you notice this one 23 and 23. they're across from each other tension rods across from each other are going to affect each other a lot now when I bring this up they're all going to come up but I'm going to do this one just a little bit and we'll go to this one and see what it does so it's probably an eighth of a turn if not maybe a quarter maybe up to a quarter I mean so they're both 229 now let's see what we got any lower ones 233 29. 32 34. 34 32 so I'm gonna go over here and bring this side up a little bit 34. 34 so 38 38 35 34. 36 38 38 36 34 34 36. bring this one up just a little bit more [Music] 41. 42 42 42 42 40 42 43 42 and 42. now did you see what's happening here I've been sticking with just pretty much these two tension rods the whole time because they were the lowest tension rods and I'm trying to bring up the tension on those slightly to even things out but you see as I brought these up they came up everything else came up a little bit but those numbers are getting closer together so it's not such a wide Gap anymore so I'm going to bring this side up a little bit 45 [Music] 45 45 [Music] and 45 so let's bring this one up 47 47. 47 47. [Music] false reading we're getting a 364 and that's not right all right we'll come back to that one 47 47 47 46. and 46. and 47 again okay I'm going to bring this one up a little bit because it's my lowest one 48. 47. 47 47 47 47. still that false reading over here [Music] 47 47 47 47 47 . 46. okay so we're pretty even they're all hitting 247. so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to do the star pattern and bring each one up like an eighth turn and this is probably going to get us pretty close to our 266. I don't want to overshoot it I want to maybe get right under it if I can so one two three four five six seven eight nine and ten and you probably can't hear this on the camera but when I bring up those tension rods you can hear the pitch coming up all right 267. 267. 268. 69 foreign [Music] 67. 67 . 68 69. and 67. so they're 68. [Music] I'm going to bring that down just a little bit 68 68 67. [Music] okay [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] we're sitting pretty good for the most part we're hitting 266 we have a couple that are 267. but it's really close so at this point what you can do is put your drum back on the stand give it a play put your snares back on and adjust your snare tension to see if you like that and see what the drum sounds like don't forget your bottom head will play a big role in how your drum sounds I haven't touched my bottom head for this scenario so let's see here put this back on the stand [Music] foreign [Music] I think it sounds pretty cool it's a little bit a little bit crooked right now not probably not sitting in my basket quite right so what I would do now is just mess with my spring tension or my snare tension and then for any of those overtones you can use something like a moon gel or another product to kind of dampen some of the harsh overtones if you don't like the way they sound that's totally up to you my old head I'm going to put on my student kit if you have an old head you can trash it or save it in case you might break ahead and you need a backup other than that that's tuning a snare drum using the tombot it's a cool little device I really like it like I said I don't have a great ear for hearing pitches um winter clothes and Pitch matching so having a visual really helps me out the key I use is this Remo key it's nice it's big it has a little rubber grip so it makes it easy to turn as far as your bottom head goes pretty much whenever a student brings in a snare drum that they say my snare at home sounds like crap I need help with it nine times out of ten the bottom head is not tight enough so go in that star pattern and crank that bottom head up so it's nice and a lot of tension like a table top on there don't overdo it you don't want to break your drum but you don't want it to be slacked it makes a huge difference in your sound so drummers I hope you found this video helpful I look forward to seeing you again in another lesson and if you get a chance check out day onedrummer.com where we have live lessons and pre-recorded lessons new content Con coming all the time so thank you for watching I'll see you soon bye bye

Channel: DayOne Drummer

Views: 5,451

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Id: NFDl5MhBVnM

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023