<strong>Drum</strong> Tuning BibleYou can isolate the ability to hear whether a drum head is in tune with itself or not by placing it upon a softsurface, such as carpet. When tapped very lightly with even pressure and at the exact same distancetowards center away from the hoop (about 1” inside of each lug), it allows you to hear whether the drumhead is in tune with itself or not. When repeated at each lug, again and in keeping with a uniform pressureand distance, each tone should be identical. Note I said the tone should be identical, this does not alwayscorrespond to even tension as felt by the <strong>tuning</strong> key. When they are all even in tone and the phaserelationship between heads is correct, the overall tone you get becomes clear. This is all explained morefully step by step under “How To Tune”. When you do this with the drum held up in the air, or mounted,hearing these subtle tones become more difficult.Head Construction and ConceptsCoated heads are considered "warm" or "mellow" sounding meaning generally void of the real brightovertone associated with the "clear" version of equal brand and specification. Clear heads are considered"bright" or "clear" sounding meaning they bring out as much of the high-pitched tones of the stick attackand resonance of the drum. In between the coated and clear heads in tonal quality is the "ebony" series ofheads and is often described as being a "thicker" or "darker" sound than that of a clear head of equalspecification. Ebony colored heads, while usually chosen due to aesthetics, have the virtue of being bothwarm in the overtone area, yet bright in the stick attack. Kevlar heads and Aramid fiber heads (popularamong heavy hitters for snare drum) are designed to be extremely durable under a wide range ofconsiderations. They are marching drum heads and take extreme abuse. They are known for their inherentdry staccato sound and can be cranked up extremely tight. So much so that often, a normal snare drumwill not take the amount of tension possible without stripping lugs or deforming shells/hoops.The most resonance is heard by placing a head of identical specifications on both the batter and resonantside because polymers of equal thickness vibrate reasonably equal to each other when the tension is equal.It is a common misconception that if you have a heavily muffled head on the batter side and place athinner head on the resonant side, that the resulting sound will be more warm, or bass heavy and moreresonant. Actually, the thinner resonant head makes the high frequency tone, that most seek to eliminatecome back out of the drum and the bass frequency produced lasts for less of a duration (a goodcombination for those who like the single ply sound but hit really hard). On the contrary, thicker heads,such as coated heads or thin two ply heads have more mass, and mass once set in motion is harder to stopthan a thin head with less mass. For this reason, the thicker resonant head is actually more resonant inthe lower frequencies whereas the thinner heads produce the more hollow or upper midrange resonance forless of a duration. High carbon content is required to make the ebony heads. This too adds mass whilemaking the head just a hair more brittle. The resulting sound is a little more focused and slightly void ofhigher pitched overtones. Pure white, rather than coated white, goes the same direction as ebony heads.As you add a glass component to the polymer, it becomes both heavier in specific gravity and more brittle.So when considering the snare drum sound, it’s actual “snare” sound is more a reflection of the resonantside than it is the batter side. With the snare, you care about issues like sensitivity (how easy it is to excitethe snare) and how bright versus how warm the tones are? For this reason all snare side heads are thinnerthan batter side counterparts. A thin head is easy to excite. It produces the bright tones, overtones, or inthe case of glass content, a dryer but more bright and focused tone. Small air holes have become popularwith some manufacturers and can be seen on the snare drum heads as well as some bass drum heads.These would appear as very small holes ranging from a little less than 1/16 th (1.5mm) to ½” (12.5mm) indiameter. These are not to be confused with the larger holes in kick drums which are discussed belowunder “Hole In Your Head”. These smaller holes relieve pressure very quickly and the resulting sound is avery dry tone because the resonant side is not easily excited. When you combine these elements andproperties, you can begin to understand what the resulting sound of a given head will be even before youmount it to the drum.As you tune the drum with one side either higher or lower, you go through "zones" producing one of clearpitch, phase cancellation, no sound or a Doppler effect. "Doppler" is where the drum when hit, descends inpitch from the point of initial attack to a lower pitch. This also becomes more pronounced when the head isof a different specification (weight/thickness) and the batter head is higher/lower in pitch than the bottomhead. If the drum is tuned wrong or "seated" incorrectly the first time a head is mounted, you will likelyruin the head beyond its use or it will never sound its best. This is described in great detail under “How ToTune”. Seating wrong does not always mean uneven <strong>tuning</strong>, such as one side tighter than the other. A poorseating can also be the result of using bent, twisted or distorted hoops and/or poor bearing edges. Eventhough the drum has been equally tensioned (such as that of using tension devises which measure lugtorque or head tension), inferior hardware and shell problems cause unequal stretch of the head polymerand/or force the head out of round.Well, if you made it this far, you really haven’t been instructed on how to do anything. But you now have afoundation to understand the concepts and information that follows. You are also much better equipped tosound better than that lazy person who skipped all this stuff. The rest is designed to give you theknowledge required to exploit, purchase and make a drum sound at its best, which is how “you” want it tosound.http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/ (4 of 5)1/22/2005 4:10:56 PM
<strong>Drum</strong> Tuning BibleAll rights reserved - J. Scott Johnson, Indianapois - "c" 1999http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/ (5 of 5)1/22/2005 4:10:56 PM
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