HOW TO SET A TARGET PITCH?
- Hit your drum near a lug to detect its lug pitch.
- Press the SET button to mark that lug pitch as your tuning target.
- Clear your drum head! Hit near all other lugs and fine-tune them until all lug pitches match with your tuning target.
- Press the RESET button to start over.
HOW TO CHANGE THE MICROPHONE SENSITIVITY?
- Press the GEAR icon at the bottom.
- Slide the SENSITIVITY slider towards - to reduce the microphone's sensitivity.
- Slide the SENSITIVITY slider towards + to increase the microphone's sensitivity.
HOW BROAD IS THE PITCH DETECTION RANGE?
- The pitch detection range of the app goes from approx. 30 Hz, up to 450 Hz.
- To tune snare drum resonant heads put the 'snare reso' switch in the tuner screen to "on". This allows you to detect lug pitches up to approx. 450 Hz. When switched "off", the pitch detection range goes up to approx. 385 Hz.
- If the real-life pitch of your drum is above/below the pitch detection range of the app, then the app cannot detect the real-life pitch of your drum correctly. Instead, the app will show an incorrect value within its visible pitch detection range.
WARNING:
Use common sense while tensioning drum heads and keep in mind not to over-tension your drum heads because they may snap.
The lug pitch of a tightly-cranked 14" snare drum resonant head, is typically somewhere in the range of 400 Hz to 450 Hz.
You could choke your snare sound by tuning your resonant head too tight.
Most 14" snare drum heads will give a good snare wire response already when tuned into the range of 360-400 Hz.
(Balance the strainer tension to the tuning of the heads so you don't choke the head with the strainer itself.)
When a 14" snare drum's resonant head is tuned beyond 450 Hz it tends to risk snapping.
However, smaller diameter or table-top tight-cranked snare drum resonant heads could equally well have lug pitches exceeding the app's upper pitch detection limit of 450 Hz.
For example, if you feel your snare drum resonant head is really, really tight, but the app shows a 'low' or 'normal' pitch, then the real-life pitch of that drum head may be already well above the app's pitch detection range limit of 450 Hz.
If this is the case, you may see the app's readings go berzerk, or display incorrect values, or normal values. Respect the tensioning limits of your drum heads: do not over-tighten your drum head, as it may snap!
If you tighten your snare drum's resonant head above the pitch detection range's upper limit, and you feel the app readings can't follow anymore, we strongly advise you to tune 'old-school', by ear and to carefully avoid tensioning your drum head too tight.
HOW TO DETECT FUNDAMENTAL TONES?
- Ensure both heads are sufficiently tensioned above 'finger-tight', so they resonate.
- Remove any muffling from your drum heads.
- Lift the drum, or keep it in its stand, so both drum heads can vibrate freely together.
- Point your device's mic at the center of the drum head, towards the impact location. Keep your device 5cm-25cm/2"-10" away from the drum head. (Experiment with the best distance. EG. Sometimes a low-tuned kick requires a bit of a longer distance.)
- Gently hit the drum in the center of one of its drum heads.
- Now, you'll see the fundamental tone of the drum for the given tuning of both heads.
HOW TO DETECT LUG PITCHES?
- Ensure both heads are sufficiently tensioned above finger-tight, so they can resonate.
- Remove any muffling from the drum's drumheads.
- OPTIONAL: Mute your opposite drum head. (Placing your drum on a flat surface, like a floor or a table, may ease the detection of lug pitches.)
- Point your device's mic at the edge of the drum head, towards the impact location. Keep your device 5cm-25cm/2"-10" away from the head. Do not hit too close near the bearing edge of your drum. Try to hit 5cm-10cm/2"-4" inwards from the edge, towards the drum head center. (Experiment with the best distances.)
- Hit gently nearby a lug, maintain a constant force between different hits. Now, you'll see its lug pitch.
- If you wish to clear the head at the lug pitch you detected, then press the SET button to mark that lug pitch as your tuning target.
- Clear your drum head! Hit near all other lugs and fine-tune them until all lug pitches match your tuning target.
HOW TO AVOID OVERTONE INTERFERENCE?
- Hit your drum near a lug to detect its lug pitch.
- Press the SET button to mark that lug pitch as your tuning target. Once your tuning target is set, drum tuner EZ neutralizes any interfering higher-order overtones. This empowers you to get stable & accurate lug pitch readings while clearing your drum heads.
- Press the RESET button to start anew.
HOW TO TUNE FOR TONE & FEEL?
- Tension the drum heads to your liking, until you're in the ballpark range of the tone & feel you're after. There's no need to use the app at this stage: find your sound & feel in all creative freedom.
- Once you found a sound & feel to your liking, grab the app and fine-tune your drum heads to 'clear' them at their spots!
NOTE:
Drums are versatile instruments and mastering drum tuning takes time.
It takes time to practice and learn the skill.
Be patient and grant yourself the opportunity to learn and discover, to make mistakes, and to practice the handling itself.
When tensioning its drum heads, a drum's tone changes.
Tweak the tension of the drumheads, listen to your drum's sound at different tensions, tweak again...
That way, you can develop insight & understanding, build tuning experience, and gain 'sound awareness.'
Feel free to experiment & explore the drum's behavior at various head tensions! Tune for your musical needs. Whether a particular sound or tuning is useful or not, depends on the context it is used. Keep an open ear & mind when getting acquainted with your drum's tuning & sound potential over its entire tensioning range.
drum tuner EZ is a tool to help you with clearing your drum heads, but it also matters to which tonal spot you clear them to give you sound A or B.
By trial & error, and methodical exploring, you'll grasp which changes produce sound A or B.
That way, you can quickly tension the heads to get to sound A or B and then use the app to clear the drum heads at their tonal spots.
Below are a few things that are handy to know...
- Depending on the head type having different tensions for both heads, leads them to be tuned to different pitches. The more you tension a drum head to the upper limit of its tensioning range, the less it's able to produce a sustaining fundamental tone: it will start becoming choked due to the high tension.
- Depending on how far you tune both heads apart in pitch for a particular drum tone, the stick rebound, sustain, resonance, timbre, and decay dynamics of the drum sound change.
- Regardless of the drum's tone, and the pitch of the reso head, the tighter the batter head is tensioned, the higher its lug pitches, and the faster its stick rebound.
- Tighter batter heads tend to give a faster attack, directer response, and a more defined articulation.
- Tighter batter heads tend to produce more contrasted intonation due to a bigger tonal contrast when struck near their edge as compared to when struck dead center.
- If the batter head is tuned higher in pitch than the resonant head the above aspects will become enforced.
- Listen to your drum's sound from the side. The further apart both heads are in pitch, the more different the drum sound radiates in other directions.
- For close-miking, you capture what you hear above the drum. Many different tunings are well suited for close miking and record easily. If the resonant head's pitch is much different from the batter head's, in some occasions, the drum's sound may project much differently into the audience, or different frequencies may bleed into other mics, etc... All this may clutter the mix. Not all tunings sound equally well when observed from a different spot than right in front of the kit, where you sit as a drummer.
- As a safe haven for your tom sound, it may be nice to know that if both drum heads are tuned to the same pitch or approximately the same pitch, you'll get a tom sound that has generally a nice full tonal resonance & stable decaying timbre and sustain, which projects more uniformly in all directions. When in doubt, it could be a convenient basis to start experimenting from, and/or work with, possibly in combination with muffling.
HOW TO BALANCE THE SOUND OF YOUR ENTIRE KIT?
- While particular genres, may have a few 'conventional' sounds typical for the style, there are no standard ways to tune a kit. Feel free to tune the drums in your kit to tonal distances and sounds that fit your musical needs. Balancing your kit sound is all about tweaking the relative tonal distances between the drums that work well for your playing style and musical needs. Tune the tones of all drums of your kit proportionally towards one another so that you create a sweet-sounding tonal spacing between them and get a coherent sounding set.
- Try to consider how much sustain you want for every drum, what kind of dynamics and feel you like to get, and control your sustain by muffling or by changing the tuning.
- Check if there's sympathetic resonance and/or whether that would form an issue or not. Tweak the tension of the heads differently while staying around the same tone, to respect the tonal spacing of the drum in the kit to modify the drum's sustain and eliminate sympathetic resonance. If it's not possible that way, you could change the tonal spacing between the drums of your kit until it's gone.
For example, for a typical blues/rock/pop/fusion all-around tuning style for your toms: tune the (largest) floor tom as low as you want it to sound. (Perhaps for middle to pretty low tunings, tension the batter closer towards 'slack' and the reso towards 'choked' to get a more impressive growling floor tom sound. Alternatively, tension the heads closer together to remove those decay-dramatics and get faster stick rebound, while staying at the same middle-low to pretty-low tone.)
Next, tune the smallest tom as high as you like it to be. (Doing so, perhaps, tune the batter head a tad bit loser, thus lower in pitch, than the resonant head to accommodate the above genres' typical approach. Nonetheless, feel free to explore different approaches. Your musical needs determine what's desirable as an approach.)
Now listen to both drums' tones. Check how 'low' your floor tom is tuned and how 'high' your smallest diameter tom is tuned.
Form an idea of their proportional tonal spacing.
That total distance between both drums is the gap where the other toms will fit in.
Tune-up the other drums and try to fit their tone proportionally in between your smallest tom and your (largest) floor tom, so that you get a nice even tonal spacing between them and that they fill the gap nicely.
(Perhaps an equidistant tonal spacing between the drums works well in situations where you need balanced, and gradually decaying fills. Still, also here, it is your musical needs that determine what's desirable.)
Your musical needs determine whether this accounts for or not, but for the sake of tonal contrast, it may not be useful to have a floor tom tuned too close to the tone of your kick drum itself.
For the kick drum's tuning, perhaps try to get a similar tonal spacing as between the toms.
Tune the tone of the kick drum low enough below the tone of the (largest) floor tom so that you can still have contrasted dynamics when you play. (For the above genres, overall, you can keep the batter head of the kick drum fairly slack, while getting a bit more tension on the resonant head, to stimulate beater rebound and projection.)
The snare is a realm on its own.
You could tune your snare drum in tonal proportion to the rest of the kit, or not.
With the strainer engaged, it creates a much-contrasted blast with very particular dynamics, so if you tune your snare drum into your playing comfort zone, regardless of the tuning of the toms, it won't easily mess up the balance of your drum kit. It often works equally well, when your snare drum's tone just sits where you want it to sit as an individual instrument, as long as the rest of the kit is nicely balanced for your musical needs.
HOW TO REPORT A BUG OR A CRASH?
- Email us the details at sos@drumtuner-ez.com. We're happy to provide support & fix any issues found. Thanks!
HOW TO ASK FOR SUPPORT, REQUEST INFORMATION, PROVIDE A SUGGESTION?
- Email us at sos@drumtuner-ez.com. We're happy to provide support & think along. Thanks!
