When tuning your toms try this technique. Deaden the head your not tuning by setting the drum on a towel or heavy carpet. Now when you strike the head you will hear the overtones produced by the head you are tuning only. Tap the head by each lug with a stick and listen to the tone it produces. Try raising or lowering the tension of that lug until you achieve a pure overtone with no wavering. You will have to do this with all lugs remembering that when you change the tension on one lug it will affect the overtones of all the other lugs. I know it sounds difficult but if your patient you eventually achieve a pure even tone no matter where you tap the head. Next turn the drum over and do the same thing to the other head. The idea is to reach a consistant tension on all of the lugs. When your finished with the second side take notice of the pitch of the overtone that you settled on and reverse the drum again and see if the first side overtone pitch matches the second side. If not try to raise or lower the pitch of one side verses the other so that both sides are the same pitch. This whole process may take some time especially the first time you do it but if your persistant and are able to match equally the pitch of both sides you will be rewarded with a tom that produces a loud pure tone that will ring true and not sound choked when you hit it.
This technique works well on toms but when it comes to the snare drum you need to approach things a little differently. You'll find when tuning a snare drum that it works better if you tune the bottom (snare side) to a higher pitch and tune the top head (batter side) to a tension that best suites the response you want for your playing style. If the bottom head is too loose the result will be a very sloppy rattle sound instead of a nice tight snare sound that you hear on most recordings.
The bass drum is not as critical and should be tuned to give you the pitch you want and also the response you want from the beater.
In tuning all of your drums experimentation is the key. Eventually you will achieve the desired tuning that you want and the more you do it the easier it will be to get that perfect drum sound that you want. <back to top>
If your going to the studio to record do yourself a favor and replace all your worn heads a couple of days before hand. Of course I'm sure you will spend the appropriate amount of time tuning them. (See tuning tip above) The reason you want to replace your heads a couple of days in advance is to give them time to settle in so your not spending all of your recording time adusting the tuning of your drums. Another thing to consider when thinking about your drums settling in is the temperature of the studio. A drastic change in temperature can really mess with your tuning. The best thing is if you can bring your drums to the studio early and let them sit for an hour or so before you have to start recording. If that's not possible try to store your drums in an environment that is similar to the studios before you go there. In other words don't keep your drums in the back of your vehicle if your experiencing extreme temperatures outside just before heading to the studio.
Once your there and set up ready to go double check your tuning one last time and then make good friends with the engineer, he's the one that holds the fate of your drum sound in his hands. By no means be forceful or demanding. This usually results in an engineer trying to hurry up and get the project over with. Instead be friendly and helpful during the setup phase and be ready to go when he wants to start getting levels. Remember during the level check proceedure is not the time to practice your solo or to do rudiment excercises, he wants to hear consistant hard quarter notes on each drum that he designates. During this time you might ask if he has any suggestions on the tuning of your drums, after all if he's an experienced engineer he probably knows what will sound good or bad so if he makes a suggestion that makes sense, use it!
One common problem when recording drums is when the toms ring on too long after each hit. If this is your problem try tuning one lug on each tom a half turn down. This should keep the tom from resonating freely without totally distroying the tone that you spent hours! (maybe) trying to achieve.
Eventually you should be able to achieve the sound that you want that also works well in the recording. <back to top>
Hardware is the most abused part of your drumset. It has to hold up the weight of your drums and cymbals while you beat the living you know what out of them. If that's not enough after the gig they get folded up as quickly as possible and literally thrown into a trap case with no consideration that it needs to work at the next gig to. After a while your hardware starts to get chipped and dinged and then it starts to rust. If you've ever pinched your hand when trying to close a stubborn cymbal stand then you know what it means to have dinged up and rusty hardware. Before this happens try waxing your hardware with car paste wax. Any place that the stand mechanism slides along the tube buff in some paste wax and this should allow the mechanism to operate smoothly. Besides operating smoothly the wax will also help pevent rust from forming in the first place. Not only will your stands work great they will look great to. <back to top>
Microphone placement on toms and the snare drum are generally the same the mic needs to be placed just over the edge of the rim and should be pointed toward the center of the head. Sometimes engineers will place a microphone on the bottom of the snare drum to pick up more of the sound from the snares themselves. When micing a bass drum the best results are achieved by placing the mic inside of the drum. Depending on how much attack you want from the beater hit place the mic on a line from the point where the beater hits the head to the front edge of the drum. The closer the mic is to the beater the more beater attack you'll get and the further away from the beater the more you will get the acoustic sound of the bass drum over all. (see diagram)
Cymbals are normally covered by one or two overhead mics to catch the ride and crash cymbals and then most of the time a seperate mic is used on the hi-hat positioned to pick up the point of impact.
Cymbal microphones are normally condenser mics due to there extended frequency response. (They're better at picking up high frequencies) All other mics are usually Dynamic mics due to their rugged nature. I always recommend buying the best mics you can afford, you will be rewarded with a great sounding kit without spending hours of tweeking the channel EQ's. <back to top>