Help Tuning Drums(Snares, Hi Hats & etc..)

ProdlemBeatz

ProdlemBeatz

New member
Sup yall.. im having a hard time tuning my drums, so if u people could help me with some tips, i would appreciate it!

I use a tuner most of the time(because i cant do it by ear).. but sometimes the tuner doesn't even show the note..
do u all usually tune all the drums to the root note?

by the way, i use Logic.
 
Usually I will only tune my kick drum. That matters the most because that will have a strong bassy presence. In general its best to have this at the root note, but if it sounds fine before you go to tune it, you prob don't need to change it.

In regards to drums in general, think about the effect of using a chorus. It widens etc, but it also detunes the pitch of the thing its applied to. Detuning (therefore, a wider range of pitches) helps to fatten the sound up, and this is something very important in creating drum sounds. I'm not saying use a chorus plugin on your individual drum sounds, as this often makes them sound less focused, but having lots of different drum sounds based around lots of different pitches and frequencies can give a fatter and also a more natural sound.

Remember, percussive sounds don't have to match the key/notes of the music because they are so short, and there is less effect from the pitch. If you want to use percussion more musically (i.e. as a melodic element), then it's up to you to pick your notes.

So that's why I rarely tune any of my drums. I'll just leave a few tips of what I find sounds good when I do tune my drums:

KICK: Root note, obv.

SNARE(S): For a snare sound with a ring focused around a single definite note, the 4th degree of the scale sounds good to me (regardless of whatever musical material is going on). For a fatter snare sound, you'd obv want to layer snares/claps etc and spread the sound over a wider range of freqs. While you've got all your extra bits going on, a trick I found for the core sample is to double it and lower the doubled bit by 400 cents. This just sounds amazing to me.

HATS: Dissonance is less noticeable in higher registers, so really you can just do whatever you want here. If you're using any of those lower pitched disco-y hats, then it sounds nice tuned to the 3rd or 6th degree of the scale.

TOMS: Apart from the kick, the toms are the drums I tune most often (when I use them). I like the interval of a whole-tone (200 cents) between each one.

I hope I've given you some stuff to think about, and if I've been unclear about anything then just ask and I'll be happy to clarify.
 
It depends entirely on what you are trying to achieve. There's an old rock rule of thumb that says tune the toms in 3rds and at least a 5th above the kick for the floor tom.

Snare should be as snappy or loose as you want.

If it's tuning kicks to be in key, then I would offer the following:

Tune the kick to the tonic of your key unless you are going to use it as a pseudo-bass line, in which case you need to tune indivdividually to the tonic (naming note) of each chord.

then tune the toms so that they are an octave a 5th and a 3rd above the kick (tune them to chord tones or at least the tonic chord of your key).

Snares as tight or loose as you like....
 
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