How to tune your drums for jazz drumming
by Tim Lake
Tuning drums for jazz drumming. It is hard and highly subjective. Some players prefer drums tuned closer to a low-end rock sound, and others prefer drums tuned higher for that classic be-bop sound. An important point is that the playing situation and venue both mean that we need to adjust our drum tuning to match the overall sound and the space. In short, we, jazz drummers, need to learn how to tune our drums.
The YouTube channel “Sounds Like A Drum” is an amazing resource for tonnes of material on drum tunings. The quality of their production and the breadth of their knowledge of drums and drum sounds is so good that it is hard to believe it is free!
I wanted to share two videos on how to tune your drums for jazz drumming. The drum sound discussed is a traditional be-bop small kit tuning - 12 and 14-inch toms and an 18-inch bass drum. This is a fantastic place to start if you are just getting started, or need a refresher (like me!), and are playing small group combo jazz - trios, quartets, with a singer etc.
The first video is on tom tuning. The main takeaways are:
1.) The idea of using high tones for smaller groups and lower tones for larger ensembles.
2.) Tuning the batter head high and the resonant bottom head low. There is an anecdote about Tony Williams’s bottom heads being tuned so low, the heads fell off in transport!
The second video is on bass drum tuning. The key points here are:
1.) Considering how the bass drum tone blends in with the double bass. Basically, you don’t want it to be too low and overpowering.
2.) The video also talks a lot about controlling overtones and a nice trick is to put a towel between the pedal leg and the batter head.
As always, use this as a starting point for your own tuning experiments. There are two points to this. First, experiment to find a sound that you like, and second, you need to be able to adjust the drum kit to get a sound you are comfortable with no matter the playing situation.
Have fun. Make music.
Photo by Alena Darmel: https://www.pexels.com/photo/drumsticks-on-a-drum-7715644/