Tuning for Jazz

bksdrums

Junior Member
Hey, I'm getting into jazz pretty heavy and I am saving up to get a real jazz kit but I have no idea where to even start on tuning drums for jazz. If anyone could help me i would really appreciate it.
 
If you've been 'getting heavy into jazz', that's a really good place to start.

What have you been listening to? Check out what the drummers on those tracks sound like, try and figure out what equipment they might be using.
 
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.

I've never ever read a more beautiful, articulate, and entertaining description of drum tuning. J, you should write a book.
 
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.

A superb post!

I would only add that with the toms, tune the batters higher than you would for other types of music (while staying in the drum's most resonant zone), and tune the resos significantly higher.
 
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.

Yeah, that really is a great post...very clear yet detailed. I know I'll get some use out of this!
 
Wow I was going to contribute what little I know about jazz tuning but looks like wavelength once again has all the bases covered. I would quote his post but looks like that's been covered too..
 
I almost forgot one of the most important points. The tuning I described should be a starting point for your search for your preferred sound. Be eager to experiment with different pitches and pitch relations between your drums: Go ridiculously high or tune the bass drum's pitch between your toms. Go for very large intervals between the drums or tune them to a particular chord. Different tunings will inspire you to play differently. Which is nice.

Ps. Aydee, If I were to take my time to write a book, I'd have very little time to spend on the forum. That isn't really an option, now is it.
 
I had always wondered why jazz drummers tuned their drums (especially the toms) to higher pitches than rock players, but then I got an 18 inch bass drum and discovered that if you tune it up a bit, the toms have to be tuned higher to compensate. I play rock 90% of the time, but every once in awhile it's really liberating to bring out the small bass drum, crank up the toms, take off thee muffling and let 'em sing!
 
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?
 
Well I play jazz but I'm not the world's foremost authority. What I do is crank everything up, up. I like my drums to be high-pitched. I've been doing it that way for so long that I don't even think about it anymore, I just turn the old key until I like what I hear and how the drum feels under my sticks. Very unscientific.
 
Wavelength, that was a beautiful post, with which I have only one issue: The lowest possible tuning part.

Yeah, every jazz cats' drum kit I've played on had the drums tuned way high. My modification to Wavelength's post would be to tune the drums up to the point where they juuuuust start to choke, then give each lug another half turn up. I've heard the oldest of the older cats say, "Can't have all of that resonance messing with the tone of the drum."

When I play drums, I like the drums to sing, so I play smaller drums to get higher pitches when I'm recording jazz. When I play live, though, I tune up the drums just a hair above the low rock tuning so I get a "doom" rather than a "dome". I've never had complaints about how my set is tuned. It's all subjective. That's the nice thing about it.

To the original poster, what kind of jazz drums are you looking at getting?
 
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?

According to my experience, there's a vast difference between the lowest pitch possible and the lowest clean pitch. If you want to achieve a non-rumbling, non-wavering pitch, you need to crank the heads higher than you normally would, but you don't have to go all the way to the choked-up land in order to have your drums sound "jazzy". In my opinion, tone and ultimately, touch, defines "jazziness", and you can vary the pitch to fit your own tastes and needs. Check out Mark Ferber on Jonathan Kreisberg's records -- the floor tom is clearly below the 'bop range, but it sounds fairly decent, doesn't it.
 
I was looking at getting the Gretsch Catalina drums. The shells are mahogany. There is not a whole lot of demand for jazz groups in my area, but I am interested in learning and want a kit to practice on that has the sound I have trouble getting on my rock kit.
 
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?
 
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?

A perfect fourth is an interval. In a C scale, F is the fourth note, so C to an F is a perfect fourth. Or Eb to Ab, F to Bb, etc. Think of "Here Comes the Bride".
To keep the snare wires away from the head, push a stick underneath them while they are turned off, and lay the stick across the rim so they are held off of the head. You might have to loosen the wires a bit, but it works really well.
 
I like the drums to sing.

I tune batter and reso to the same pitch. I like the interval of a perfect fourth between my toms.

For the snare, I usually pitch the reso to an A and the batter to a C or C#, regardless of the other drums.

I tune the bass to whatever note is pleasing to my ear; single play coated heads on batter and reso, both tuned fairly high. No muffling and no port.
 
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