Tuning your kit by pitch:

[StereoAtLast]

I worked on a session a few months back with a guy that wrote, performed and recorded all of his material, and he had his drums tuned to the same key as the guitar and bass..

it was just a mix session so i didnt really have time to go into depth about it but I was wondering, how exactly is this done?

what are some of the advantages and disadvantages?

[warhead]

To me there is nothing but an advantage, unless out of scale tones potentially pulling things out temporarily is an advantage! If a bass line is bopping on an F# and the floor tom pumping on F...yuck.

You can learn a lot here: Drum Tuning Bible

It takes practice to learn to tune drums, and like anything else you "practice", you learn something new every time you do it. What you're asking is the why and when, which really would be decided by the producer (or the band) and within context of a song.

I prefer toms tuned quite low, but it's not always appropriate for a song.

I try to stick with general tunings that work well in most common keys used in pop and rock production. Snare ends up "D" a lot, 12" tom tends to fall near "B", 14" tom tends to fall near "G", floor tom around "E". So if we're just cookin' through a day of drum takes and the songs are in A, G, D, C then these tunings tend to work every time.

Hope this helps, that drum tuning bible really is good stuff.

War

[chrisso]

A bunch of drummers do this, a bunch of drummers don't.
It's certainly not a gimmick, but not essential either.
Worth exploring IMO.

[jimcroisdale]

Not really to do with tuning to the key of a song, but this video is a great explaination of general tuning:

Vic Firth's Percussion 101: Drumset

There are some great videos and articles on the Vic Firth website!!

Jim

[TheArchitect]

I prefer to have the toms within the kit tuned to musical intervals. I don't generally concern myself with the key of the song. The rare exception would be if there is a major tom part that is contributing melodically it may need to be looked at but in general its not necessary

[joeq]

I think a fundamental difference in the approach to a drum sound when you are going for a note. It's not so much a matter of advantage or disadvantage, but of what you are going for: taste and maybe philosophy.


I like my drums to have an indefinite pitch. This does not mean "it has a pitch, but I don't know what that pitch is" but rather, "the sound of this drum has many pitches happening at once and can not be expressed as predominately one pitch or another". It's the difference between an orchestral bass drum and a tympani.

Instruments with indefinite pitch can still be clearly higher or lower than one another - such as a snare drum and a bass drum.


I like drums that are noise, an explosion of sound. What "note" is a hand grenade when it goes off? To me, there is something overly 'polite' about rock drums that sing out with a more or less pure tone. Why not get the bass player to perform that tom run? Or do it on a keyboard with marimba or tympani sounds?

Of course it all depends on musical style and taste, but when I want notes from the toms, I usually use electronics or single headed drums like congas, roto-toms and octobans.

I don't want my trap set toms to go "dooom", I want them to go BAM!

YMMV