Tune-Bot your method

Thanks again, I worked on the drums a bit but I am overwhelmed.. Tuning gives me anxiety, the anxiety of seeing time pass without reaching any significant results, not so far, and me returning at the job again on Monday, I feel like I am already there it's still Friday night.

it's getting better but slowly.

Seriously I feel the distress inside of me right now.

I am starting to understand the relation between the resonant head and the batter head, I am just starting to see the close relation between the 2..

I am going to meditate right now.. need it
You will get there - it takes a while to get to know how to use the tune bot. BTW - I visited old Quebec last November. Beautiful city.
 
I ran the tune bot for a bit, swore at it VERY LOUDLY, put it back in it's box and got my drum dial the next day.
I think I'm better now.
Then I went to the fridge and had a nice cold one (V8).
Excellent technique (I prefer low-sodium V8).

I had a drum dial and found it doesn’t give consistent readings, and it’s worse with heads such as the Pinstripe and EC2. I had such little faith in its accuracy I gave it away. The Tunebot doesn’t make me question the sound of my drum.
 
You will get there - it takes a while to get to know how to use the tune bot. BTW - I visited old Quebec last November. Beautiful city.

Yes it's a nice city, I also liked it, the old buildings and the architecture. But I am far away from there, 3 hours of car maybe, I am 20 minutes away from Montréal but never go there either, the roads are literally like third world country.
 
Using the Tune-Bot is like any other skill - it takes (just) a little bit of time to get the hang of it. It's an order of magnitude better than the drum dial.

Like, seriously better.

Hang in there, guys. Nothing worth doing comes easily.

I will persevere with this because I know there is a reward at the end. Just like the torque wrench in mechanics. I bought a big one and a small one to replace parts of my car, I had to use one to understand torque. For many people they think it's a waste of money for common, simple repairs and not required.

I had to learn about torque so I bought a torque wrench.

It's the same thing with the tune-bot, I want to learn about tension, frequency, notes. so I bought a measuring tool for educational purpose minimally. I strongly thinl I'll use that tool even after the end of the educational process.

Tuning with or without it and tweaking things "out" of book perfect too if required.

I'll continue my tuning experimentation today.
 
I use my tune bot to fine tune the tuning I do by ear. Here is my method:
1. Listen to several Motown tunes. Pay attention to the toms
2. Tune toms to match Mowtown tunes tone.
3. Use tunebot to finely tune frequencies to match.
4. Listen to more Motown tunes.
 
I use my tune bot to fine tune the tuning I do by ear. Here is my method:
1. Listen to several Motown tunes. Pay attention to the toms
2. Tune toms to match Mowtown tunes tone.
3. Use tunebot to finely tune frequencies to match.
4. Listen to more Motown tunes.

That's my next move, I have an example I want to copy.

My knowledge about Motown music is very limited currently, I think about the Jackson 5 and James Jamerson on the bass. If you want, feel free to share an example, I would be glad to listen to it and to expand my knowledge about the great Motown music and their drummers.
 
I started to tune with the lugfrequencies long before I had a tunebot using an app for the iPad. And I remember I had to learn some elementary facts about the physics of a drum that I did not know for the 35 years of drumming before. This is the concept of the DRUM- fundamental and the HEAD lug frequency.

Lets define we talk two headed drums here - if you use concert toms this might only apply in parts...

What is the fundamental note or frequency of a drum? It is the deepest frequency the drum can resonate at (given its actual tuning of the heads). It is also the pitch you hear when the drum is played with a stick. This ist what you aim for when you want to establish intervals between e.g. your toms.

Now this is important: there is one fundamental note/frequency for the drum - it is the same for the batter and reso head! There is no such thing that the batter can resonate higher or lower than the reso - they are on the same fundamental note! This does not mean, that it is not possible to tune batter and reso different - we do this all the time to manipulate the resulting properties of the drum! But whatever you do to your batter and reso - the drum has only one fundamental note that is equal for batter and reso!

If you think about this statement you can come to the following conclusions: If the fundamental is the same for both heads the tunebot has to use other frequencies than the fundamental of the drum to make it's job. Of course you can measure the fundemental note of the drum with the tunebot (and we do this when we want to get to defined note values for single drums). But to equalize the head within itself we can not use the fundamental because it doesn't change from lug to lug. This is why we use the lug frequencies for the tuning process.
Another aspect of this common fundamental note of the heads is that this is the key to influence the sustain of a drum: If you tune both heads to the exact same pitch both heads will resonate very easy on the given frequency -there is not much loss. The result is a long sustain of the drum. This is why the sustain is the longest when both heads are tuned exactly the same - no loss to resonate on the common frequency. Now think what happens if you tune one head higher than the other: both heads have to find a common frequency to resonate at, but one wants to go faster and the other one wants to go slower. They will find the middle frequency where they resonate, but not as freely as before. This means the sustain of the drum will get shorter. It will go more shorter the bigger the difference between the heads is. This concept is used by the apps (e.g. tunebot app) when they calculate lug frequencies for long or short sustain.

Whats the deal now with the lug frequencies? How do we get them? This is how we not get them: the drum is hanging on its tom mount and both heads are free to resonate - then we get the fundamental note of the drum. So we have to mute one head to get the lug pitches - this for practical reasons is the one head you don't want to tune at that time :) Make the opposite head dead with whatever means you have, but make it dead! First important step to make full use of a system like a tunebot or the respective apps. You can put your drum on your throne with a t-shirt or small towel between the head and the throne or take a piece of foam and fix it with a rubberband under the drum or whatever you can think of, but the head not tuned at the moment has to be dead.
When you now hit the to be tuned head near the lugs you will get the lug frequency which is roughly 1.5x the fundamental frequency of the HEAD. Wait - didn't he said this does not exist? It does of course, but you will not hear it on a two headed drum because the two heads always resonate together. You can hear it if you remove the other head. Now the deal is: as the lug-frequency is the fundamental of the HEAD times a constant factor (around 1.5 depending on drum and head) you can use it to tune the head without interference from the other head. And you can not only bring the head to the desired pitch - you can also equalise the tuning from one lug to the other to the point where they are all the same. Bingo! And you can apply different tension to the batter and the reso to influence the sustain of the drum by dialing in different lug pitches! The more span you have in the lug pitches of the batter and the reso the shorter the sustain will be!

Out of this theoretical aspects the concept to tune a drum with a device like the tunebot is as follows:

Select a note or value you want to bring your drum to - the boundaries are the tuning range of the drum. Say you want to have your 10" tom at the note C in the 3rd octave. This equals roughly 131 Hz. This is the fundamental the drum needs to resonate to as a whole system of both heads and the shell. You could use the rough formula to come to the lug frequency by multiplying with 1.5 - this would be lug pitch 196 Hz. In the real world the lug pitch for a fundamental of 131 Hz will be higher depending on the size and material of the shell - say it will be 220 Hz.

Now you take your drum, mute one side and tune the other side to equal lug pitch of 220 Hz on every lug. Then you turn your drum around and do the same for the other head while totally muffling the other side. Then you remove muffling and hit the drum and read out the fundamental note of the drum which will be around the 131 Hz or C3. Because both heads are tuned to the same frequency, the drum resonates long. If you want it to be shorter, you have to change the ratio from 1:1 to say 0.8 : 1.2. The resulting fundamental (in theory) will stay the same, but the heads will not resonate freely together and therefore the sustain will be shorter. Applying the above would give you 176 Hz for one head and 264 Hz for the other. Tune the drum to these lug pitches while muting the opposite head and you will get the same fundamental note of the drum, but shorter sustain. It's up to you to decide if you want the batter to be higher than the reso or vice versa. I prefer higher reso than batter, but doing this exercises with a tunebot gives you the chance to decide what fits your ears most. Once a head is in tune with itself it is quite easy to bring it down or up to other frequencies by turning the tuning rods all the same amount up or down in small steps (101 of tuning applies here, a factor that people sometimes forget that you need to know the basics of drumtuning even if you use a tunebot).

Of course you can use other ratios then 0.8 to 1.2, your drum will set the limits for you! If you tune the reso on a tom 3 times higher than the batter you get a super narrow tuning range of the drum and probably a shitty sound :) Everything between 1:1 and 0.7 : 1.3 will work on most drums (toms to be precise, snaredrums are other animals).

If you want to start easy go to the app store of your choice and install the tunebot app even if you are not using it. You can select your drumsizes there and select what sustain you want (short or long) and it will calculate you the appropriate lug pitches you can use as starting point. If the app says it should result in C3 with XYZ lug pitches and it does not with your drum: welcome to the real life! Shell material, size and heads and other magic ingredients influence the individual results, but you can rely on that the factor will be a constant for your drum with these heads. If you land too low then raise your lug pitches a little bit until you are at your desired C3 or whatever your desired pitch is. Dont forget to write you values down (lug pitches batter and reso and the resulting fundamental of the drum) - you can use this as later reference!

And the best part of it comes now: once you have crunched all this theoretical concepts and used the tunebot or an app for some time you can apply your knowledge to your manual tuning: if you want to equalise the lugs mute the other head and listen to the lug pitches. If these are the same all around, your head is in tune with itself. You can get roughly the same effect by putting the finger of one hand in the middle of the head without pressing on the head - this mutes the fundamental and brings up the lug frequencies.

One practical experience for working with the tunebot: You get better results if you don't clamp it to the rim but move the mic of it to the lug where you hit.
 
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Listen to the Temptations, Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder et all. Lots and lots of examples. Generally, the toms were tuned high. The snare sound is easy to get with an Acrolite or Supraphonic. I use "Here Comes the Bride" for tom spacing but when I do Motown I never use more than two toms. I'm sure others can chime in here to help you out. It's my favorite music...I guess that's whey I'm in a Motown band. One added bonus...there's not a lot of cymbal crashing in most Motown stuff so it helps you build the discipline to not overuse the crash cymbals.
 
Anybody...were The Commodores considered Motown? Earth, Wind and Fire? Like the guitar and bass guitar in Taste of honey - Boogie Oogie Oogie. Hot chicks jammin' is always...Well, hot chicks jammin'...Cool

When someone says Motown to me, I think of the following:

Motown - The label
Motown - The geography of most of Detroit
Motown - The Era (~60-72)
Motown - The Genre... Like Hall and Oats, a heavily inspired facsimile of Motown

I've always thought of EWF as Chicago R&B, or rather, Post-Mowtown R&B.

I love the genre and subgenres Motown inspired though....
 
I started to tune with the lugfrequencies long before I had a tunebot using an app for the iPad. And I remember I had to learn some elementary facts about the physics of a drum that I did not know for the 35 years of drumming before. This is the concept of the DRUM- fundamental and the HEAD lug frequency.

Lets define we talk two headed drums here - if you use concert toms this might only apply in parts...

What is the fundamental note or frequency of a drum? It is the deepest frequency the drum can resonate at (given its actual tuning of the heads). It is also the pitch you hear when the drum is played with a stick. This ist what you aim for when you want to establish intervals between e.g. your toms.

Now this is important: there is one fundamental note/frequency for the drum - it is the same for the batter and reso head! There is no such thing that the batter can resonate higher or lower than the reso - they are on the same fundamental note! This does not mean, that it is not possible to tune batter and reso different - we do this all the time to manipulate the resulting properties of the drum! But whatever you do to your batter and reso - the drum has only one fundamental note that is equal for batter and reso!

If you think about this statement you can come to the following conclusions: If the fundamental is the same for both heads the tunebot has to use other frequencies than the fundamental of the drum to make it's job. Of course you can measure the fundemental note of the drum with the tunebot (and we do this when we want to get to defined note values for single drums). But to equalize the head within itself we can not use the fundamental because it doesn't change from lug to lug. This is why we use the lug frequencies for the tuning process.
Another aspect of this common fundamental note of the heads is that this is the key to influence the sustain of a drum: If you tune both heads to the exact same pitch both heads will resonate very easy on the given frequency -there is not much loss. The result is a long sustain of the drum. This is why the sustain is the longest when both heads are tuned exactly the same - no loss to resonate on the common frequency. Now think what happens if you tune one head higher than the other: both heads have to find a common frequency to resonate at, but one wants to go faster and the other one wants to go slower. They will find the middle frequency where they resonate, but not as freely as before. This means the sustain of the drum will get shorter. It will go more shorter the bigger the difference between the heads is. This concept is used by the apps (e.g. tunebot app) when they calculate lug frequencies for long or short sustain.

Whats the deal now with the lug frequencies? How do we get them? This is how we not get them: the drum is hanging on its tom mount and both heads are free to resonate - then we get the fundamental note of the drum. So we have to mute one head to get the lug pitches - this for practical reasons is the one head you don't want to tune at that time :) Make the opposite head dead with whatever means you have, but make it dead! First important step to make full use of a system like a tunebot or the respective apps. You can put your drum on your throne with a t-shirt or small towel between the head and the throne or take a piece of foam and fix it with a rubberband under the drum or whatever you can think of, but the head not tuned at the moment has to be dead.
When you now hit the to be tuned head near the lugs you will get the lug frequency which is roughly 1.5x the fundamental frequency of the HEAD. Wait - didn't he said this does not exist? It does of course, but you will not hear it on a two headed drum because the two heads always resonate together. You can hear it if you remove the other head. Now the deal is: as the lug-frequency is the fundamental of the HEAD times a constant factor (around 1.5 depending on drum and head) you can use it to tune the head without interference from the other head. And you can not only bring the head to the desired pitch - you can also equalise the tuning from one lug to the other to the point where they are all the same. Bingo! And you can apply different tension to the batter and the reso to influence the sustain of the drum by dialing in different lug pitches! The more span you have in the lug pitches of the batter and the reso the shorter the sustain will be!

Out of this theoretical aspects the concept to tune a drum with a device like the tunebot is as follows:

Select a note or value you want to bring your drum to - the boundaries are the tuning range of the drum. Say you want to have your 10" tom at the note C in the 3rd octave. This equals roughly 131 Hz. This is the fundamental the drum needs to resonate to as a whole system of both heads and the shell. You could use the rough formula to come to the lug frequency by multiplying with 1.5 - this would be lug pitch 196 Hz. In the real world the lug pitch for a fundamental of 131 Hz will be higher depending on the size and material of the shell - say it will be 220 Hz.

Now you take your drum, mute one side and tune the other side to equal lug pitch of 220 Hz on every lug. Then you turn your drum around and do the same for the other head while totally muffling the other side. Then you remove muffling and hit the drum and read out the fundamental note of the drum which will be around the 131 Hz or C3. Because both heads are tuned to the same frequency, the drum resonates long. If you want it to be shorter, you have to change the ratio from 1:1 to say 0.8 : 1.2. The resulting fundamental (in theory) will stay the same, but the heads will not resonate freely together and therefore the sustain will be shorter. Applying the above would give you 176 Hz for one head and 264 Hz for the other. Tune the drum to these lug pitches while muting the opposite head and you will get the same fundamental note of the drum, but shorter sustain. It's up to you to decide if you want the batter to be higher than the reso or vice versa. I prefer higher reso than batter, but doing this exercises with a tunebot gives you the chance to decide what fits your ears most. Once a head is in tune with itself it is quite easy to bring it down or up to other frequencies by turning the tuning rods all the same amount up or down in small steps (101 of tuning applies here, a factor that people sometimes forget that you need to know the basics of drumtuning even if you use a tunebot).

Of course you can use other ratios then 0.8 to 1.2, your drum will set the limits for you! If you tune the reso on a tom 3 times higher than the batter you get a super narrow tuning range of the drum and probably a shitty sound :) Everything between 1:1 and 0.5 : 2 will work on most drums (toms to be precise, snaredrums are other animals).

If you want to start easy go to the app store of your choice and install the tunebot app even if you are not using it. You can select your drumsizes there and select what sustain you want (short or long) and it will calculate you the appropriate lug pitches you can use as starting point. If the app says it should result in C3 with XYZ lug pitches and it does not with your drum: welcome to the real life! Shell material, size and heads and other magic ingredients influence the individual results, but you can rely on that the factor will be a constant for your drum with these heads. If you land too low then raise your lug pitches a little bit until you are at your desired C3 or whatever your desired pitch is. Dont forget to write you values down (lug pitches batter and reso and the resulting fundamental of the drum) - you can use this as later reference!

And the best part of it comes now: once you have crunched all this theoretical concepts and used the tunebot or an app for some time you can apply your knowledge to your manual tuning: if you want to equalise the lugs mute the other head and listen to the lug pitches. If these are the same all around, your head is in tune with itself. You can get roughly the same effect by putting the finger of one hand in the middle of the head without pressing on the head - this mutes the fundamental and brings up the lug frequencies.

One practical experience for working with the tunebot: You get better results if you don't clamp it to the rim but move the mic of it to the lug where you hit.

I read 1/3 of your text so far and it already filled some blanks for me, I'll be back studying what you tell me a bit later today, very interesting.

Thanks
 
When someone says Motown to me, I think of the following:

Motown - The label
Motown - The geography of most of Detroit
Motown - The Era (~60-72)
Motown - The Genre... Like Hall and Oats, a heavily inspired facsimile of Motown

I've always thought of EWF as Chicago R&B, or rather, Post-Mowtown R&B.

I love the genre and subgenres Motown inspired though....

All right the Motown is playing now. At the same time, I am going to start reading OSDrums's publication.

Thanks
 
I started to tune with the lugfrequencies long before I had a tunebot using an app for the iPad. And I remember I had to learn some elementary facts about the physics of a drum that I did not know for the 35 years of drumming before. This is the concept of the DRUM- fundamental and the HEAD lug frequency.

Lets define we talk two headed drums here - if you use concert toms this might only apply in parts...

What is the fundamental note or frequency of a drum? It is the deepest frequency the drum can resonate at (given its actual tuning of the heads). It is also the pitch you hear when the drum is played with a stick. This ist what you aim for when you want to establish intervals between e.g. your toms.

Now this is important: there is one fundamental note/frequency for the drum - it is the same for the batter and reso head! There is no such thing that the batter can resonate higher or lower than the reso - they are on the same fundamental note! This does not mean, that it is not possible to tune batter and reso different - we do this all the time to manipulate the resulting properties of the drum! But whatever you do to your batter and reso - the drum has only one fundamental note that is equal for batter and reso!

If you think about this statement you can come to the following conclusions: If the fundamental is the same for both heads the tunebot has to use other frequencies than the fundamental of the drum to make it's job. Of course you can measure the fundemental note of the drum with the tunebot (and we do this when we want to get to defined note values for single drums). But to equalize the head within itself we can not use the fundamental because it doesn't change from lug to lug. This is why we use the lug frequencies for the tuning process.
Another aspect of this common fundamental note of the heads is that this is the key to influence the sustain of a drum: If you tune both heads to the exact same pitch both heads will resonate very easy on the given frequency -there is not much loss. The result is a long sustain of the drum. This is why the sustain is the longest when both heads are tuned exactly the same - no loss to resonate on the common frequency. Now think what happens if you tune one head higher than the other: both heads have to find a common frequency to resonate at, but one wants to go faster and the other one wants to go slower. They will find the middle frequency where they resonate, but not as freely as before. This means the sustain of the drum will get shorter. It will go more shorter the bigger the difference between the heads is. This concept is used by the apps (e.g. tunebot app) when they calculate lug frequencies for long or short sustain.

Whats the deal now with the lug frequencies? How do we get them? This is how we not get them: the drum is hanging on its tom mount and both heads are free to resonate - then we get the fundamental note of the drum. So we have to mute one head to get the lug pitches - this for practical reasons is the one head you don't want to tune at that time :) Make the opposite head dead with whatever means you have, but make it dead! First important step to make full use of a system like a tunebot or the respective apps. You can put your drum on your throne with a t-shirt or small towel between the head and the throne or take a piece of foam and fix it with a rubberband under the drum or whatever you can think of, but the head not tuned at the moment has to be dead.
When you now hit the to be tuned head near the lugs you will get the lug frequency which is roughly 1.5x the fundamental frequency of the HEAD. Wait - didn't he said this does not exist? It does of course, but you will not hear it on a two headed drum because the two heads always resonate together. You can hear it if you remove the other head. Now the deal is: as the lug-frequency is the fundamental of the HEAD times a constant factor (around 1.5 depending on drum and head) you can use it to tune the head without interference from the other head. And you can not only bring the head to the desired pitch - you can also equalise the tuning from one lug to the other to the point where they are all the same. Bingo! And you can apply different tension to the batter and the reso to influence the sustain of the drum by dialing in different lug pitches! The more span you have in the lug pitches of the batter and the reso the shorter the sustain will be!

Out of this theoretical aspects the concept to tune a drum with a device like the tunebot is as follows:

Select a note or value you want to bring your drum to - the boundaries are the tuning range of the drum. Say you want to have your 10" tom at the note C in the 3rd octave. This equals roughly 131 Hz. This is the fundamental the drum needs to resonate to as a whole system of both heads and the shell. You could use the rough formula to come to the lug frequency by multiplying with 1.5 - this would be lug pitch 196 Hz. In the real world the lug pitch for a fundamental of 131 Hz will be higher depending on the size and material of the shell - say it will be 220 Hz.

Now you take your drum, mute one side and tune the other side to equal lug pitch of 220 Hz on every lug. Then you turn your drum around and do the same for the other head while totally muffling the other side. Then you remove muffling and hit the drum and read out the fundamental note of the drum which will be around the 131 Hz or C3. Because both heads are tuned to the same frequency, the drum resonates long. Relevant information. If you want it to be shorter, you have to change the ratio from 1:1 to say 0.8 : 1.2. The resulting fundamental (in theory) will stay the same, but the heads will not resonate freely together and therefore the sustain will be shorter. Applying the above would give you 176 Hz for one head and 264 Hz for the other. Tune the drum to these lug pitches while muting the opposite head and you will get the same fundamental note of the drum, but shorter sustain. It's up to you to decide if you want the batter to be higher than the reso or vice versa. I prefer higher reso than batter, but doing this exercises with a tunebot gives you the chance to decide what fits your ears most. Once a head is in tune with itself it is quite easy to bring it down or up to other frequencies by turning the tuning rods all the same amount up or down in small steps (101 of tuning applies here, a factor that people sometimes forget that you need to know the basics of drumtuning even if you use a tunebot).


Of course you can use other ratios then 0.8 to 1.2, your drum will set the limits for you! If you tune the reso on a tom 3 times higher than the batter you get a super narrow tuning range of the drum and probably a shitty sound :) Everything between 1:1 and 0.7 : 1.3 will work on most drums (toms to be precise, snaredrums are other animals).

If you want to start easy go to the app store of your choice and install the tunebot app even if you are not using it. You can select your drumsizes there and select what sustain you want (short or long) and it will calculate you the appropriate lug pitches you can use as starting point. If the app says it should result in C3 with XYZ lug pitches and it does not with your drum: welcome to the real life! Yeah, I suspect it's not going to work already. Shell material, size and heads and other magic ingredients influence the individual results, but you can rely on that the factor will be a constant for your drum with these heads. If you land too low then raise your lug pitches a little bit until you are at your desired C3 or whatever your desired pitch is. Dont forget to write you values down (lug pitches batter and reso and the resulting fundamental of the drum) - you can use this as later reference!

And the best part of it comes now: once you have crunched all this theoretical concepts and used the tunebot or an app for some time you can apply your knowledge to your manual tuning: if you want to equalise the lugs mute the other head and listen to the lug pitches. If these are the same all around, your head is in tune with itself. You can get roughly the same effect by putting the finger of one hand in the middle of the head without pressing on the head - this mutes the fundamental and brings up the lug frequencies.

I don't use a cellphone, is this the same application for the browser?

One practical experience for working with the tunebot: You get better results if you don't clamp it to the rim but move the mic of it to the lug where you hit. Ok I saw that


There is a lot of theory now but I have new things to try following your explanation, I'll start with that right now.
 
@OSDrums

Ok I read your procedure twice, actually I think I spent 1 hour on it, it's not fully understood but it helped, I tried something.

I went to the website calculator and entered the following criteria.

Drum size?: 12" and 14" (I suppose it's for the toms only)
Tuning preferences?: I said low to get more attack and less sustain.
Choose your pitch adjustment: +3
Calculate head tuning style?: Batter head = higher

This is the result of the calculation:
XDKKmLm.png


***
After I did this exactly with my 12" tom:

- Install tune-bot on the resonant side, tap the center with the mallet and adjusting approx. up to 156, without muffling.
- Put the tom on the pillow and equalizing the reso lugs.
- Tried tapping the center of the reso with the mallet without muffling, I have156hz D#
- Turned to the batter head and did the same thing, basically the head was at 156hz without doing nothing.. I guess it was already close.. or the reso head dictates the note as I read previously?
- I have a D3# 156hz on both sides if I tap the drum without muffling, with the mallet, in the center.

In theory both heads should be equal.
1kEweXg.jpg


???:

If I install the reso on the pillow and tap the center of the batter with the mallet, I get 232hz A3#
If I install the batter on the pillow and tap the center of the reso with the mallet, I get 306hz D4#

Similar to the reso and batter pitch.. but I don't know.. I don't understand what are these.
 
Oufff I tuned both of my toms now:

Hi-Tom = D3# 156hz
Floor Tom = A2 = 110hz

The notes are ok, the Tune-Bot chart gave me a D# and a G# but I didn't liked these 2 notes, I prefer D3# and A2. The only way I was able to do it is like that:

- Without muffling, with the tune bot and the mallet, by hitting the center of the drum, reaching 156hz for the resonant head
- Equalizing the resonant head lugs while they were muffled.
- Testing unmuffled = 156hz
- Without muffling, with the tune bot and the mallet, by hitting the center of the drum, reaching 156hz for the batter head
- Equalizing the batter head lugs while they were muffled.
- Testing unmuffled = 156hz

- At the end by hitting the center of the drum unmuffled with either the mallet or the wooden drum stick, I get D3# 156hz

But I think both heads are not equal, I don't know how to prove it.

I am calling this a day.
 
@Auspicious see my remarks in red bold below!

This is the result of the calculation:
XDKKmLm.png


You did this right - this is the same tool as the calculator app available for iOS or Android!

***
After I did this exactly with my 12" tom:

- Install tune-bot on the resonant side, tap the center with the mallet and adjusting approx. up to 156, without muffling.
- Put the tom on the pillow and equalizing the reso lugs.
- Tried tapping the center of the reso with the mallet without muffling, I have156hz D#
- Turned to the batter head and did the same thing, basically the head was at 156hz without doing nothing.. I guess it was already close.. or the reso head dictates the note as I read previously? Now here you have proven what I wrote in my post: only one fundamental for the drum. You tuned your drum without damping the other side to 156 Hz - when you turn your drum around, you get.... the same! :)
- I have a D3# 156hz on both sides if I tap the drum without muffling, with the mallet, in the center.

In theory both heads should be equal. No, probably not! You tuned the fundamental of your drum, but you don't know where you started on each head. This is why we don't use the fundamental when using the tunebot to achieve a defined tuning.


???:

If I install the reso on the pillow and tap the center of the batter with the mallet, I get 232hz A3#
If I install the batter on the pillow and tap the center of the reso with the mallet, I get 306hz D4#

Now these values are the pitches for the lugs of the batter and reso and you are right: you only get these when you dampen the other side! What you can read here is that your heads are not tuned to the same values. This result was received by coincidence because you didn't use the lug pitches to tune. But you are not far away from what the tunebot calculator suggested to dial in: if you want to reproduce the calculated example from the app above you have to do the following steps:

  1. put the reso on the pillow and tap the center of the batter with mallet - you should get your 232 Hz.
  2. Tune the batter up until you get 245 Hz on all lugs (and also in the center)
  3. turn your drum around (the batter now muffled) and hit the drum with mallet - you should get your 306 Hz from the previous tuning
  4. Tune the reso down until you get 292 Hz on all lugs (and in the center).
Hit your drum unmuffled and check the resulting fundamental note - if it not 156 Hz D# you need to tweak one or both heads a little up or down to get to your fundamental exactly!

Similar to the reso and batter pitch.. but I don't know.. I don't understand what are these.
 
see remarks below:

Oufff I tuned both of my toms now:

Hi-Tom = D3# 156hz
Floor Tom = A2 = 110hz

The notes are ok, the Tune-Bot chart gave me a D# and a G# but I didn't liked these 2 notes, I prefer D3# and A2. The only way I was able to do it is like that:

- Without muffling, with the tune bot and the mallet, by hitting the center of the drum, reaching 156hz for the resonant head
- Equalizing the resonant head lugs while they were muffled.
- Testing unmuffled = 156hz
- Without muffling, with the tune bot and the mallet, by hitting the center of the drum, reaching 156hz for the batter head
- Equalizing the batter head lugs while they were muffled.
- Testing unmuffled = 156hz

You drive the road in the wrong direction: Use the calculated pitches from the app to dial in your batter and reso. For this you need to muffle the opposite head and dial in the pitch value calculated for the drum by the app. Don't care for the fundamental at this time. Do the same for the other head (calculated pitch frequency from app, muffled opposite head). After you did both heads you can check for the fundamental of the drum and finetune if necessary.


- At the end by hitting the center of the drum unmuffled with either the mallet or the wooden drum stick, I get D3# 156hz

But I think both heads are not equal, I don't know how to prove it. If you want to measure one head muffle the other one and hit the head with a mallet - you get the pitch frequency of this head (which is used to do the tuning of one head). You can't measure the fundamental of each head directly when 2 heads are mounted on a drum because they always resonate with the same fundamental.

I am calling this a day.
 
I use the Evans torque key and installed both reso and batter heads, new, on my drums and had them tuned in 30 minutes. All of this verbiage and instruction, and set up time are the best reasons not to use the Tune-Bot. And all of the settings have to change with new heads since heads vary by some degree. Get a pillow, get a towel.......learn to tune by ear and go play your drums. I know people love the Bot...but you can buy a whole set of batters for the price of the device. My humble opinion of course.
 
Agreed. Me thinks some people use the Bot to tune a drum like one tunes a guitar. Never gonna happen.
In a way its similar. You tune a guitar by ear using harmonics. Fifth fret low E = A (open second string). If you do the same thing at each lug it works. The problem is there is no note, so it is harder to find, and you have to find it 6, 8, or 10 times.
 
Hello, even with the tune-bot, I am learning by ear at the same time and practicing various setups on the drum, I want to continue the experimentation using the bot, It's going to work soon.

Now I understand better the concept of the fundemantal note, I can somewhat adjust both heads to a note by listening to it and by tapping the drum to get that note.

There was an evolution.

@OSDrums I will try to tune by dampening and by searching a lug pitch today but I have a bigger problem then reaching a fundamental by adjusting the lugs with the bot on a muffled drum.

I am having trouble finding a good interval for my drums (High for jazz). I want my snare to blend, my toms are tuned so high right now that it's not possible reach a note high enough (B3) for the snare, it's chocking the heads and it's totally not what I want even if it's working on the piano. The setup is way too high.

In the tune-bot charts, they don't include the snare into the varous intervals so I picked the toms interval from a youtube video and the app, it turned out too high for anything I can reach with the snare. There was no precise guide line for that.

I learned that I need to keep the snare around lower then E in the 3rd octave yesterday. From my exercice with the piano, I was trying to reach a B3 with the snare to get Sn-B3, Hi-D3# and Floor-A2, I thought it was a nice interval for the 3 drums using the piano, but it's real shit.

Now I need to lower my overall "interval" and start from scratch where I'll tune the snare first to the highest pitch possible and where I like the feel of the sticking and adjust the toms lower, following the snare. The toms will be lower and the resonance probably way better too.

***
I will work with a spread sheet, the keyboard AND the app this morning to select a lower interval I like first.. then try it on the drum after.

--> Without a tune-bot I would be in the exact same position, being clueless about picking the right interval (or an interval I like) for Snare, High and Floor.
 
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