Drums Need to be Tuned to C ???

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mmulcahy1

mmulcahy1

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Today at rehearsal, our fearless leader (also our guitar player) asked me how if I tune my drums and how I tune them. I told him how I tune them - and I am pretty damned good at it - and he told me that since I don't have perfect pitch (huh!?) that I should tune all my drums to the note of C. He said that C is the most common note found in music and my drums will fit better with all music if tuned to C.

Has anybody else ever heard of this? I sure haven't, and I've been complemented several times form other musicians on how nice my drums sound.
 
Your fearless leader is fearlessly full of sh!t.

The full, resolved tone of a double-headed drum is of indeterminate pitch, generally speaking. I can determine what pitch a head is tuned to (if in fact it is evenly tuned and set to a specific note), but the drum as a whole will fit with music in any key.
 
Never heard of it. I don't get it anyway. If all your drums were all tuned to the same note, um, they would kinda all have the same pitch, pretty boring.
Ask him back, does he tune all his guitar strings to C?

Maybe he is pulling your leg? A lot of that going around today.
 
Drums don't make a true "note" when played. There all sorts of harmonics, overtones, undertones, and strange pitch bends mixed in with the fundamental to make a smorgasbord of a "note". I don't know how many toms you have on your kit, but if its more than 3 you wont be able to tune your drums to "C" equally an octave apart. Drums really only fit in to the second and third octave of a scale. You may be able to squeeze in to the bottom portion of the 4th octave on an 8" tom, or with some really high jazz tuning on a 10", but it will sound like a timbale. I don't think that's what your "fearless leader" wants out of your drums.

Honestly, I would think a G chord is more common than any other chord in rock and blues music. You may be able to tune your toms (or get the pitches close) to the various notes in a G major chord.

Hit play in the link below to hear the 3 notes that make up the G Major chord:
http://www.8notes.com/piano_chord_chart/g.asp
 
Instruct your fearless leader to check all youtube vids for drumsets tuned to C and to come back to you when he's found a few good examples.

That should keep him busy for a few hundred years.
 
mmulcahy1 said:
... He said that C is the most common note found in music and my drums will fit better with all music if tuned to C...
Click to expand...

We-are-laughing-GIF.gif
 
I'm sure what your bandmate meant was for you to tune to the scale of C (probably C major).

In any case it's nonsense. And frankly if my toms are tuned so that they sound like a musical scale it just sounds wrong and annoys the hell out of me.
 
You tune to C and he sets his guitar to 100 bpm and together you will be able to play 99% of the great rock songs out there.
 
It must be a joke. If not, inform him that you are the drummer, you will get on with your job and he should get on with his.

Funny, but the last band I was in the vocalist was fond of telling all the other musicians what they should be doing, how they should be playing, where they should be playing it, and he was the least accomplished at his job than the rest of us. Why does that always seem to be the case?
 
Along with my smarta$$ remark, I will have to say that drums can be tuned to certain notes and intervals. I've often heard that people that play a 2 up 1 down configuration tune to "three blind mice." When I play a 1 up 1 down configuration, I tune to George of the Jungle. If there were no notes or tones there, this would be impossible.

Even still, while I understand what your band leader is trying to do, it's a little silly.
 
Your guitarist is one big C.

Personally I'd tune to D minor as it's the saddest of all keys :)
 
He sounds pretty cool IMO. I don't think it is unreasonable to at least consider the frequencies the drums produce.

Maybe you could trade some notes with the bass or guitar to see how they fit in. My 12" rings a true A110, probably the best place to start. My snare is a about a half step higher, but its not as easy to hear. My bass is actually somewhere in the middle of a string basses range, possibly a G.
 
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