flamateurhour
Active Member
That is intuitively the place that I've been at lately. My default for rock-ish stuff has always been tune the batter with itself, get the reso either a 3rd or a 4th above (depending on what my gut that given day tells me what sounds better) but as I've begun to play around with reso higher style tuning, I've found that I can't seem to systematize it. I've ended up tuning the tom while it's on the stand and keeping my head away from it, or at least even with the shell and then adjusting tensions until I feel the drum "speak". After that I even up the lugs with each other to fine tune the interval I'm at, check it on the stand again, and then call it good. But man, it's jarring to i sit at the kit and hear a sound that is unequivocally not what it sounded like away from the drums because I'm hearing the "near me" top head tone lol.
I also recognize that this is grossly inefficient and not how I intend to do this forever, it's just kind of a interaction and experimentation to hear the connection between far and near me tone.
Also, seems to me like when I tune with the batter lower, the resonant head seems to control the sustain of the resultant tone of the drum as a unit more, whereas when I tune top head high it seems like the resonant head controls the pitch way more. Not sure if thats actually the case though, I'm very in limbo with answering these questions for myself. It is genuinely fun and fascinating though.
