Hi Guys,
I'm not a drummer, but I just bought my son a snare drum that sounded awful. So I watched a Bob Gatzen tuning video, but still couldn't really tell if the notes at the lugs were similar. Some hits sounded like La La La, some were more Da Da Da in my head, and it was tough to figure out the tone at first.
Like others have said, my guitar tuner didn't work because the burst of sound was too short, so I started to sing the sound I heard into my tuner. That made it super easy. The tuner didn't care if I sang La la la la laaaaaaaa, or da da da da daaaaaa. It got the pitch right no matter what. I used a torque key to get all the lugs close to the notes Gatzen used, but it was still way off. Then I used a normal key to get the head by each lug to within a few cents of the note I wanted.
The drum wasn't tuned at all when we received it, it was a couple of steps low and really loose, so my first attempt to tune two snare heads to pitch took a while. Almost 45 minutes. I did watch Gatzen's video a few times during those 45 minutes, and I wasted at least 20 minutes trying to tune without the guitar tuner, and just the torque key, so it probably wasn't that slow. I also don't know how long it takes to tune a drum the first time. Doing it this way would still take about 10-15 minutes for me now if the drum were way way off like this one was, or if I changed the heads. So maybe a bit slow, but the guitar tuner made it super easy, because I knew instantly which lugs were sharp, and which were flat.
When I brought the drum to the guitar center to buy a mount, I asked the guy in the drum section if he'd fix any tuning errors I made. He said it was dead on. Better than 99% of the guys who bring in their drums, or try to tune drums while in the store, so a guitar tuner can work.
I asked my son to sing the note the drum made, into the tuner, and the tuner gave the same note, C, when he did it, that it did when I sang. He has never tuned any instrument, and this is his first drum, so clearly it's not hard to sing the fundamental pitch if you tap tap tap while going la la la ....
I am sure, given the overtones, that beginners may not realize which sound they are hearing is the drum's fundamental pitch, until they sing with the drum. I play guitar and I couldn't tell what the drum was tuned to. It's also very difficult to tell if something is a few cents sharp versus a few cents flat. You know it's off, and can sing the different notes, but you can't easily say which is higher. That makes correcting it slow. The chromatic tuner solves those issues, so I think if you are willing to sing a little, and have a cheap guitar tuner around, this could be an easy way to tune your drums.
Todd
