Why Does My Floor Tom Sound BAD?

floor toms are often the most guilty of not sounding good whether it's a head issue or a tuning issue it often lacks the depth body and low-end that we desire and it can also just be straight-up hard to tune today I'm gonna give you eight possible causes of a lousy floor toms sound and I'll give you some possible solutions they don't demonstrate how I tune my floor tom and will talk about head types awesome we'll finish with the real reason why I think your floor tom might be frustrating you so let's get started hey if you're watching this and you're new to the channel I want you to know this channel is for you if you want to get better at drums we're all about growing as drummers getting better at the drums doing whatever we can every little thing to improve at our craft so if you haven't subscribed I hope you will so I'm gonna move through these reasons pretty fast because I've got to save time for giving you some demonstrations at the end when we're gonna talk about how I tune my floor tom and talk about some different heads because that also plays an interesting factor in this reason number one is simply that you've got lousy heads on your floor tom maybe they're the stock heads that came with it maybe it's say a pearl kit and the heads say pearl and there's nothing on them about remo or evans or Aquarian or any respectable drum company it's probably safe to say that their stock heads if that's what came on it and that would definitely explain why they don't sound very good obviously the simple solution to that is replacing that head by any decent head by Remo Aquarian Evan's etc and it's gonna sound a lot better than that stock head or maybe you've been playing this kit for a long time maybe it's had good heads on it but those heads are just worn out when a head gets very worn out it's gonna lose a lot of that warmth and resonance and it could lose some of that low-end body we're talking about a floor tom so if your heads are looking like these here in this shot then it's probably safe to say that they're worn out and you just need to replace the head and that could make a world of difference calls number three the resonant head isn't tuned well the overall resonance and body of the drum really comes from that resonant head you can tune the top head really low but you've got to have that resonant head at the right tension to really bring about sustain in that drum so it's not just a low studied dead sound unless that's what you want now the tuning of the resonant head pins on the head we've got on the top which is what we're gonna talk about later so we're gonna go ahead move past this point knowing that we're gonna come back to it we're gonna talk more about resonant head tuning just know that the resonant head has to be tuned a certain way probably based on that top head and what kind of head that is or where you've got it tuned cause number four either head isn't in tune with itself so one of the basic rules of drum tuning 101 is just making sure that each lug is in tune with itself an easy way to do that is to finger tighten until you can't tighten it anymore with your fingers in that case you've at least got each screw to the same tension and so that really gets you off to a solid start for making sure that each part of the head is resonating the same pitch if you tap it but yeah if you don't have either head in tune with itself you're gonna get some weird humming some weird overtones that maybe you don't want you almost always want as much resonance and fullness out of a Tom as possible cause of a bad floor toms sound number five you've got too much muffling on it it's very possible that you've gotten into the habit of maybe putting a few moon gels on it or putting a lot of tape on it or even some other kind of like moleskin or fabric or something you got taped to it again this could be a sound you're going for a really muffled sound but I always want as much resonance as possible so I've never put any kind of muffling on my floor Tom I've played on some Tom's on house kits that have a little bit of muffling and I feel like it damages the overall sound quality potential of that drum cause number six the batter head isn't actually tuned low enough to create the body that you're wanting the reason that can happen is because sometimes our for tuning that batter had really low so we've got a nice loose buddy kind of feel that we like but because the resonant head is in tune where it's supposed to we end up correcting the lack of resonance by tuning the batter head up and then by tuning the batter head up we started get some weird ringing and we start to lose low end and our floor time just begins to sound like a messed up rack Tom which you'll see and understand a little more when I show you some stuff in a minute if we want low in we've got to be able to tune the batter head low which will determine how we're going to tune that resonant head also calls number seven and this one seems pretty obvious but you might actually have to really pay attention to your playing to see whether or not you're doing this make sure that you're hitting the drum in the center if your not hitting your Tom's in the dead center you're not gonna get the maximum body and fullness fullness is the word I like to use for this if you're hitting near the edge then your toms sound could be less than ideal even if you've got good heads that are tuned well you've got to make sure you're hitting it right and reason number eight which leads us into this next portion of the video maybe you've got the wrong type of head on the drum for the sound and style of music that you're going for maybe you've got a head that's too thin for the punchy rock sound you want or maybe you've got a head that's too thick with too much attack for the more resonant and mellow jazz sound that you want I think this can be the real reason behind a lot of floor Tom tuning frustration because maybe you're trying to get a sound out of the heads that you've got that that head isn't capable of producing I've definitely experienced this and you'll see this as I'm tuning on my floor tom so let's jump over to this first I'm gonna start off by putting a Remo coated ambassador on my floor Tom this is a one ply coated head and I think it's a great jazz head but I'm not a huge fan of it for rock and you'll see why I'm gonna end up switching it out with an Evans clear ec2 which is a two ply head [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so guys as always thanks for watching subscribers thank you for watching my videos and if you haven't subscribed I hope you will I hope you found this video helpful and I hope you find a lot of my other videos helpful also I'm all about helping you become a better drummer if that's something you're interested in doing join this community and we'll all grouse drummers together I always love hearing from you guys in the comments so tell me which head in this video you liked more whether you liked the Remo ambassador or the Evans EC to tell me what your favorite head is how you liked it tune your floor tom let me know if this helped you out or feel free to give some extra advice you've got for maybe somebody else in the comments who is looking to improve their floor tom tuning let's try to get a conversation started that would be awesome thanks everyone for watching and I will see you on the next video [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Stephen Clark

Views: 207,269

Keywords: drums, drumming, music, play, learn, lessons, practice, tips & tricks, drumming tips and tricks, tom, floor, floor tom, tuning, bad, sounds bad, floor tom sounds bad, resonance, sustain, low end, lacks, needs, thin, cheap, stephen, clark, stephen clark, how to tune drums, how to tune, how to, doesn't have, remo ambassador, evans ec2, coated, clear, 1 ply, 2 ply, vs, versus, single, double, batter, resonant, reso, shell

Id: 0AmHu418gew

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/surprised-duncan]

As someone who still has stock clear heads on, if I was trying to get rid of the "boing" sound that it's producing right now, would you recommend putting on a clear or coated head?

I'm thinking about a coated powerstroke 3, because I love it on my snare and bass.

[u/Slow_kenda]

Sometimes, it doesn't matter what kind of head you use. It just won't be enough. Everyone has to use dampening to a certain degree at some point, and from most of what I have seen that is what everyone avoids. Yet they want to tune their drums as low as possible. Sometimes you have to use a combination of tuning, and dampening to get the desired pitch. Powerstroke heads are great, but a set of pinstripes is my go to on any of my toms. Every set is different and requires different thinking when it comes to tuning. You might be limited because of the type of shells your kit uses. It could be that a mount, or worn runner foot on your floor tom leg is causing extra vibrations. I have spent days, and at some points weeks, just tuning before a big show, or an important recording session.