By: Connor

The other week I helped my youngest brother tune his drum set. Curious about the process, I asked him what specifically he was doing – “following the advice of a guy on YouTube” was the response. This basically amounted to evenly tensioning the drum heads, which is a decent start but only part of the picture. However, rejoice : Ian Shepherd at Production Advice has written an article about tuning drums, complete with video! (embedded below)

Firstly, I should say – I’m not an expert on this ! I’ve never tuned a drum from scratch in my life. Even so, knowing the basics of tuning, and in particular how to spot when a drum needs tuning, is a hugely valuable skill in the studio.

Some drummers tune their kit every session, some don’t. Some are taught the skill from day one, others aren’t. Some tune their kits to sound good to them, or to sound great in a live context. Neither of these necessarily guarantee the drums will record well.

I’ve been lucky to record and mix some outstanding drummers over the years, and in the process I learnt the harsh truth – if the drums sound bad in the room, they’ll never sound great recorded or mixed.

And the secret of getting a drum to sound great – regardless of how expensive – is to tune it well. Strictly speaking this is the drummer’s job, but in the real world it’s incredibly useful if you can spot a poorly tuned kit and tweak it to sound better – or gently suggest that the drummer does ; )

Read more at Production Advice
or the Wikipedia Article on Drum Tuning

Technorati Tags: Drum Sound, Drum Tuning, Drums Recording, ian shepherd, Production Advice

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 12:11 am and is filed under Music Production, Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.