Using The Concepts Of Fundamental Pitch And Overtones To Make Your Drums Sound Better
Drum tuning is not a difficult to understand concept as many drummers think it is, and only requires a well trained ear, and a little bit of basic knowledge about how pitches work. I can promise you, that if you will take the time to understand a little bit about how drum tuning works, and apply the concepts that you learn, that your drum sound will be much, much better off than it was before. Also, it is important to keep your drums fairly well in tune for the simple fact that doing so will help your drum heads to last longer.
The first thing that you should know about how drums work, with regards to pitch, is the fact that every drum has a fundamental pitch to it, which is often difficult to hear if your drum is not in tune, and overtones. Some of these overtones are what we would call “harmonic, meaning that they fall within the overtone series of the fundamental tone, and some are non-harmonic, meaning they were produced incidentally by the contact of the stick or other medium with the head of the drum. Both harmonic and non-harmonic overtones are very important to the sound of the drum, and it is any others besides these two types that we would want to avoid when thinking about how the drum should sound. Therefore, the goal of tuning drums is always to rid the drum of any unpleasant overtones and keep the pleasant ones. How you do this is simply a matter of using your drum key and your ears, and really taking the time to listen to how the overall sound of the drum changes with even just a quarter turn of the drum key. You also want to listen to how the drum sounds about an inch or so out from each drum lug, in order to determine what the pitch is by that drum lug and get it in to tune with the rest of the lugs.
Drum tuning is not hard to do, but it just takes patience and persistence to achieve the best results. If you start learning how to tune your drums when you are a beginning drummer, you will benefit greatly in the long run, and the sound of your drums will improve right alongside the development of your skills, which will lead to your being respected as not only a great drummer, but as a great musician.
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