Week 2.
Monday worked on 13″ tom, moving it up through pitches trying to find out best sound of the drum. Very difficult to get a clear note, gonna experiment with floor and drum dial gauges tomorrow.
Tuesday worked through floor and toms, sounding ok, starting to see a pattern, where by all the drums seems to be tightest across 2 opposite lugs, have been told by previous owner that drumtech’s had a really problem getting this kit (starclassic maple) in tune, and it staying there for any length of time. Also tweaked snare drum, gigged it and sounded great, maybe a little tight but nice and juicy.
Wednesday was bass drum day, spent a long time trying to tune the batter side, much much more difficult to hear pitches at the lugs, than on the toms/snare, bass drum still sounds too tight, front head sounds amazing, batter less so, weird tempted to switch it up!
Thursday I took the batter side on the bass drum right down, to get a deeper sound, which at home was sounding great.
Friday I gigged my kit, and it all sounded really great, espicially the bass drum, great news as last friday after a week of tuning it sounded awful and this week its starting to sound improved. Saturday gig her again didn’t sound as great, highlighting the fact you need to retune every time the drums are taken out of cases. Next week need to concentrate on floor tom, as sounded the worst then try tuning the whole kit accordingly. January is completely free of gigs, so is gonna be spent tuning, plus I will have my new kit and will experiment on her!
Drum “civilian” here, but it’s good to know that even proper musicians need to train their ears – when I was trying to learn the guitar at school every time I attempted to tune my guitar after about 3 minutes I literally couldn’t tell which string sounded higher or lower (probably never should have graduated from the recorder lessons)! I could only play Amazing Grace and English Country Garden and both sounded like the macabre theme tunes to the descent to Hell after I tuned my guitar. Can’t even imagine trying to hear the pitch of drums! Glad it’s going well, good luck with tuning the new kit.
its a nightmare yes trying to hear different pitches, at least guitarists can buy a tuner and always know there in tune, while us drummers have to guess and train out ears to hear pitches while hearing thousands of overtones from the drum, arrrrgh!