First, buy a set of coated Ambassador batters and clear Ambassador resonants for your toms and your snare, and fit coated Ambassadors on both sides of your bass drum -- and no holes on either side! Start by tuning the bass drum's batter head to its lowest clean, non-rumbling tone and tune the resonant side to the same pitch. If you find the drum's sound too resonant, use a felt strip to muffle the resonant head (or both). Repeat the process for the toms, but keep any muffling off the drums. Your aim is a round, warm tone with a steady decay which stays in pitch. Onomatopoetically, the drums should lean towards a "dome" instead of a more rock oriented "baoum" (or "splat" if you're still in the 70's...)
The snare drum batter should be at a medium-high tension, and the resonant head's pitch should be around a perfect fourth above the batter head's pitch. You'll want a crisp and an articulate sound with a nice stick response. If the drum feels way out of control, muffle it just a bit, but don't deprive the instrument from its sound's glorious beauty. A properly tuned snare drum should have a wide range of different sounds and colors available, and it's up to the player to coax those sounds out at will.
Now that your kit is nicely tuned up, spend some time getting used to the new, almost obnoxiously different sound. Learn to love the abundance of resonance and overtones! Develop your dynamic balance and touch in order to get the best out of your newborn instrument. Playing a "jazz" kit is vastly different from playing a "rock" kit. It requires a different approach and a different state of mind.
First, buy a set of coated Ambassador batters and clear Ambassador resonants for your toms and your snare, and fit coated Ambassadors on both sides of your bass drum -- and no holes on either side! Start by tuning the bass drum's batter head to its lowest clean, non-rumbling tone and tune the resonant side to the same pitch. If you find the drum's sound too resonant, use a felt strip to muffle the resonant head (or both). Repeat the process for the toms, but keep any muffling off the drums. Your aim is a round, warm tone with a steady decay which stays in pitch. Onomatopoetically, the drums should lean towards a "dome" instead of a more rock oriented "baoum" (or "splat" if you're still in the 70's...)
The snare drum batter should be at a medium-high tension, and the resonant head's pitch should be around a perfect fourth above the batter head's pitch. You'll want a crisp and an articulate sound with a nice stick response. If the drum feels way out of control, muffle it just a bit, but don't deprive the instrument from its sound's glorious beauty. A properly tuned snare drum should have a wide range of different sounds and colors available, and it's up to the player to coax those sounds out at will.
Now that your kit is nicely tuned up, spend some time getting used to the new, almost obnoxiously different sound. Learn to love the abundance of resonance and overtones! Develop your dynamic balance and touch in order to get the best out of your newborn instrument. Playing a "jazz" kit is vastly different from playing a "rock" kit. It requires a different approach and a different state of mind.
First, buy a set of coated Ambassador batters and clear Ambassador resonants for your toms and your snare, and fit coated Ambassadors on both sides of your bass drum -- and no holes on either side! Start by tuning the bass drum's batter head to its lowest clean, non-rumbling tone and tune the resonant side to the same pitch. If you find the drum's sound too resonant, use a felt strip to muffle the resonant head (or both). Repeat the process for the toms, but keep any muffling off the drums. Your aim is a round, warm tone with a steady decay which stays in pitch. Onomatopoetically, the drums should lean towards a "dome" instead of a more rock oriented "baoum" (or "splat" if you're still in the 70's...)
The snare drum batter should be at a medium-high tension, and the resonant head's pitch should be around a perfect fourth above the batter head's pitch. You'll want a crisp and an articulate sound with a nice stick response. If the drum feels way out of control, muffle it just a bit, but don't deprive the instrument from its sound's glorious beauty. A properly tuned snare drum should have a wide range of different sounds and colors available, and it's up to the player to coax those sounds out at will.
Now that your kit is nicely tuned up, spend some time getting used to the new, almost obnoxiously different sound. Learn to love the abundance of resonance and overtones! Develop your dynamic balance and touch in order to get the best out of your newborn instrument. Playing a "jazz" kit is vastly different from playing a "rock" kit. It requires a different approach and a different state of mind.
Wavelength, that was a beautiful post, with which I have only one issue: The lowest possible tuning part.
Wavelength, that was a beautiful post, with which I have only one issue: The lowest possible tuning part. In my (admittedly limited) experience with jazz, I've found that the drums tend to be tuned higher than most drums in genres such as rock, etc. But by tuning them as low as possible, you're liable to end up with a muddier kind of sound. By tuning higher, you're more able to create more melodic lines and such.
Did you have an explanation for your method, and how does tuning low work for you?
The snare drum batter should be at a medium-high tension, and the resonant head's pitch should be around a perfect fourth above the batter head's pitch.
This is an interesting post, but I'm not sure I understand what you mean by a perfect fourth or how to obtain it. Tuning the reso is the hardest part for me - getting those darn snares out of the way, getting them back on with proper tension, etc. Is there a way to tune it without removing the snares? And how do you determine whether it's a perfect fourth above? Do you need a tuner?