There was one point you made that struck home, "What you might feel like you are hearing where you sit might not be making it into the mics or out front." SO true. I definitely tend to tune down when behind the kit, and yet out front everything sees too low and mostly attack. Great points to keep in mind.
Yep, the pitch drops took me a while to understand that and get used to it. I mentioned to the channel about them doing a video on that, don’t know if they ever did.
I'm experimenting with this right now! Bunch of different tunings and recording it all so I can compare my ears against what the microphone actually picks up. Pretty wild how that signal changes!
Yes! It took me a while to realize that. I have gotten in ear monitors in the past few months. That helped me a ton. I'll tune, listen to it, mic it, and listen to it in the in ear monitors. Every time I find I'm shooting for low to my ears and not giving any body to the sound out away from the kit.
I've found this as well. I used to tune fairly low. I then saw a friend playing in a bar and his drums sounded amazing. Full and open. He had me sit in for a song here and there and I found that his toms were tuned pretty high when sitting behind the kit. Ever since then, I've started tuning a little higher and enjoy the wide open sound.
One thing I learned specifically about toms is the difference in sound with and without the presence of a snare drum on the kit. The toms sound totally different with sympathetic buzz and tone coming from the snare. Sounds obvious writing this but it helped me understand the need for cohesion when tuning up your kit. Great video!
So true! Often times we get hung up on sympathetic resonance as a bad thing but the distinct absence of it can be quite awkward too. Finding that balance and recognizing the drum set as a whole instrument rather than a bunch of independent pieces can make the experience far less frustrating. Cheers!
@@SoundsLikeADrum as a drummer and guitar player...I like snare buzz...A lot of guitar players "clean" sound actually has a bit of hair on the edges from the amp over driving or an always on pedal set to very low gain. The concept is that the grittiness helps define the edges of the note when mixed in with cymbals and vocals. In a mix, the audience hears only a clean sound because the edges get absorbed into the rest of the band. Listen to solo'd bass lines from James Jamerson in his Mowtown recording...the actual bass sound is quite fuzzy,,,but in the mix it sounds like clean, warm and fat bass.
I learned about tuning up for projection from you guys a while back! I love my 16 tuned way down, not flappy low, but very low on both heads. It just crushes the boom...where I sit. But it's all attack out front, and I almost never have mics where I play. I rock gig with a bop kit, so I use a 14" FT. Of course I tuned it as low as I could...until I learned this. Now I have it up a couple notes from that, with the reso a third to a fourth higher than the batter, and it has more life and goodness, especially out front. And it sounds quite low. I also learned that the difference between tom notes is WAY less discernable out front, so I tune my 12" RT to a fifth or sixth higher overall pitch than the FT to increase the distinction between them. Recordings from out front at our gigs have confirmed these were good changes. Oh, same for my 18" kick BTW...a little higher is better for rock, counterintuitively, unless you are getting mics. Thanks guys for the education!
This comment is super helpful for me. I just bought a really nice kit but the lowest tom is 14" and I've been perplexed by how other people have been able to get it low and fat while I've had no luck. I've got great shells, the right heads, all my gear is in good condition and I cannot seem to get the coherent "note" I hear others get. Are you saying maybe I should pay less attention to what I hearing from right next to the drum?
A few years ago I started tuning my toms (all of them) much higher than is typical and than I previously did. I get better stick response, better resonance and projection. I haven’t looked back.
My bone stock Imperialstar 14" tom sounded like the 4:45 take up till yesterday it suddenly sounded like a fart. Out of nowhere it resonated 5 seconds with any strike and the resonance was a terrible floppy harmonic fart. I have no idea what happened.
I started using coated Ambassador resonant side heads on all my toms and I am never looking back! I use Vintage Emperor batters and they sound fantastic. Just the right resonance and overtone control.
Great information and on my 16", it's pretty easy. My issue is that with an 18", I think the range is too low to come through in recordings, particularly when played back through small speakers like on pones. Lots of sub-bass and mid unless I tune it comically high. I would love any information you can share on an 18" floor tom. Thanks and happy jamming
I found that two-ply heads are generally best on floor toms regardless if the rack toms are one or two ply. Concerning the fundamental pitch, it kind of does make a difference if your drums have mics at live gig. At my live venue, our PAs are crossed over at 80Hz. We also have a subwoofer. My floor tom has a fundamental pitch of E flat, which is about 78Hz. It's still able to be audibly heard through the PA and/or sub. My bass drum is a G at 49Hz. That pitch sits very good in the middle range of the sub. So when drummers play loose heads on either the floor tom or bass drum, it might not sit well in the frequency range of the PA speakers. It might not matter as much without mics, but both the floor tom and bass drum frequencies will need to have more playing power applied to be heard by human ears as the fundamental frequencies go down. Subwoofers have larger amplifiers for a reason. Lower tuning only makes you work harder. Bonham used large drums that were tuned a bit high. Same concept. My 18 floor tom projects a lot of volume and tone. So my comment is that projection is very much connected to fundamental frequencies. We must consider how the audience will hear it, miced or unmiced. Great video again! I love this channel!
To your point regarding mounted floor toms, I learned a long time ago that almost anything larger than a 13" diameter tom seems to get choked under it's own weight when mounted on a stand. I put suspension type legs on my previously mounted floor toms (14" and 15") and I was very pleased with improvements in terms of low end, body and sustain. My tuning method with the floor toms is to tune the top head for the wallop factor (above slack but pretty low) and then tune the bottom head slightly higher to keep things in control (much like your example four which to me sounded the best). I'm also beginning to realize that drums in the low tuning range seem to sound better to me when I don't hit them as hard.
Hey man, just added a 14" Clear Pearl floor in front of the existing 16" metallic Green Export.This Acrylic tom has a slightly more hollowed sound than the wooden Floor ; challenge to match tones when tuning- with 3 toms extra open wooden snare drum w 2 Floor toms
Thanks for the great tutorial. Would you please consider making a detailed video about evening out the pitches of the lugs around the drumhead? I am not sure which part of the sound should I focus on, the initial attack, or the rest of the sound? Do the unintended slight variations of the velocity of the stroke near each lug produce different pitches that could possibly fool you? Is it easier to do this process with a mallet instead of a stick? Should we press the center of the drumhead ligtly with our thumb while going around to examing the pitches of the each lug? Experimenting with these parameters and also showing the graph of the waveform you are getting, trying to explain the different parts of it, would clear out many misconceptions. Is there any device or app that you would recommend for pitch recognition for those who do not have trained ears? Thanks again!
For amazing resonance, I put blocks of plastic foam beneath each foot. I shape them so that the rubber at the bottom of each leg rests inside the foam block. This isolates the body of the floor tom, because each leg actually limits the shell's ability to fully resonate because the legs are connected to the floor. By putting the foam blocks between the floor and the floor tom, the whole shell can deliver the tones it's made to produce. What kind of foam? You can try the white packaging foam, which is polystyrene. But I happen to have some foam made from Expanded Polyethylene (EPE), which works perfectly for my ear. You can try different kinds of foam and see what works best for you.
I still think in my opinion clear heads or hydraulic heads are easier to get a fatter sound and easier to get a great blend between the resonant and the batter ! I have got a pretty good sound out of coated heads, but for me it just never gave me my sound , but , I am however extremely fond of your snare sound !
Great video - thank you so much. I am a newbie in drumming. May I ask what device or tuning app to do recommend to guide the relative pitches of the beater and res heads? Thank you!
Your ears! I know that's cliche, and I sometimes use tools which have helped me train my ears better. I use a pitch pipe app sometimes just to listen to my tapped drum and compare to figure out what note a head or a drum is. I use iDrumTune app, costs a few bucks, and is really cool. The developer also has some great vids on how to use the app and how he views tuning. Way back I bought a Drum Dial which helped me for a long time, but I rarely get it out now.
I have a mid 70s vintage floor Tama mid range quality that has the lowest sustain clear note no farting ect.. - with almost any heads.. and I have a Sonor Force kit from early 2000 every component very snappy and impressive on the kit.. except the floor tom.. very specific heads have to be used or it just sounds card boardy ..lack of life or umph. The drum looks very pretty though LOL - and the Tama vintage looks non descript..just black wrap silver hardware almost like a ludwig.
Any chance there's an issue with the drum? A bent hoop, damaged edge, out-of-round shell, and a variety of other things could create the issues you describe.
Something I note in all these videos is that no matter what you do to the toms, somehow your miking is not oversaturated with tom overtones. In my experience close miking toms, no matter how much you catch the stick hits with the mic, the recording is ALWAYS oversaturated with the resonance and overtones of the tom. Whether using a Beyer TG58 condenser, a Octavamod SDC, a Peluso ribbon mic, an SM57, or Beta57, I can not seem to every record a tom drum sound that is anything but 80% resonance and 20% stick hits, which forces a lot of work in the mix. I wonder how come you don't have that problem. When you hit the toms in your videos, the sound is like 75% stick hit and 25% resonance.
Part of that has to do with how I mix the audio. I lean quite heavily on the Glyn Johns pair with the close mics present enough to faithfully recreate the sound we’re hearing at the drums. The point of this is to provide an honest, realistic point of reference for when viewers are listening to the sounds we’re producing and comparing to what they’re hearing from their drums.
On the drum rings it sounds right. You're never going to hear that ring once the band starts. Most of the drummers today used to play heads and they sound like pillows
Since you took the bait... 😉 What's your reference point for the "Benny Greb Floor Tom Sound"? A video? A record? An experience in person where you were hearing only the acoustic sound of the drum?
Very much so! And that's a common issue that we find when drummers are looking to produce a deep, punchy sound. Of course, this can work in certain scenarios but there are quite a few sacrifices as we mentioned.
I admit your floor tom does sound great..But it's very frustrating you never turned the drum on its side just to show what tensions and sound intervals you used..Don't keep it as a secret mate..
Once more for the people in back" THE PITCHES DON'T MATTER!" The pitches aren't answer to how you create this sound. I'm not sure how many other ways we can express this. We're not keeping secrets or hiding some master recipe here.
@@mathewshaw2772 We repeat this over and over and it was mentioned in the video at 6:35. No attitude, just simple facts. People are so caught up in the idea of quantitative measurement for the sake of reproducing sounds they hear and, as we mention in the segment referenced, the specific pitches used in our case aren't relevant.
There was one point you made that struck home, "What you might feel like you are hearing where you sit might not be making it into the mics or out front." SO true. I definitely tend to tune down when behind the kit, and yet out front everything sees too low and mostly attack. Great points to keep in mind.
Yep, the pitch drops took me a while to understand that and get used to it. I mentioned to the channel about them doing a video on that, don’t know if they ever did.
I'm experimenting with this right now!
Bunch of different tunings and recording it all so I can compare my ears against what the microphone actually picks up. Pretty wild how that signal changes!
Yes! It took me a while to realize that. I have gotten in ear monitors in the past few months. That helped me a ton. I'll tune, listen to it, mic it, and listen to it in the in ear monitors. Every time I find I'm shooting for low to my ears and not giving any body to the sound out away from the kit.
I've found this as well. I used to tune fairly low. I then saw a friend playing in a bar and his drums sounded amazing. Full and open. He had me sit in for a song here and there and I found that his toms were tuned pretty high when sitting behind the kit. Ever since then, I've started tuning a little higher and enjoy the wide open sound.
One thing I learned specifically about toms is the difference in sound with and without the presence of a snare drum on the kit. The toms sound totally different with sympathetic buzz and tone coming from the snare. Sounds obvious writing this but it helped me understand the need for cohesion when tuning up your kit.
Great video!
So true! Often times we get hung up on sympathetic resonance as a bad thing but the distinct absence of it can be quite awkward too. Finding that balance and recognizing the drum set as a whole instrument rather than a bunch of independent pieces can make the experience far less frustrating. Cheers!
@@SoundsLikeADrum as a drummer and guitar player...I like snare buzz...A lot of guitar players "clean" sound actually has a bit of hair on the edges from the amp over driving or an always on pedal set to very low gain. The concept is that the grittiness helps define the edges of the note when mixed in with cymbals and vocals. In a mix, the audience hears only a clean sound because the edges get absorbed into the rest of the band. Listen to solo'd bass lines from James Jamerson in his Mowtown recording...the actual bass sound is quite fuzzy,,,but in the mix it sounds like clean, warm and fat bass.
I learned about tuning up for projection from you guys a while back! I love my 16 tuned way down, not flappy low, but very low on both heads. It just crushes the boom...where I sit. But it's all attack out front, and I almost never have mics where I play. I rock gig with a bop kit, so I use a 14" FT. Of course I tuned it as low as I could...until I learned this. Now I have it up a couple notes from that, with the reso a third to a fourth higher than the batter, and it has more life and goodness, especially out front. And it sounds quite low. I also learned that the difference between tom notes is WAY less discernable out front, so I tune my 12" RT to a fifth or sixth higher overall pitch than the FT to increase the distinction between them. Recordings from out front at our gigs have confirmed these were good changes. Oh, same for my 18" kick BTW...a little higher is better for rock, counterintuitively, unless you are getting mics.
Thanks guys for the education!
This comment is super helpful for me. I just bought a really nice kit but the lowest tom is 14" and I've been perplexed by how other people have been able to get it low and fat while I've had no luck. I've got great shells, the right heads, all my gear is in good condition and I cannot seem to get the coherent "note" I hear others get. Are you saying maybe I should pay less attention to what I hearing from right next to the drum?
The Mr. Rogers of RUclips drumming strikes again! Great video guys!!
A few years ago I started tuning my toms (all of them) much higher than is typical and than I previously did. I get better stick response, better resonance and projection. I haven’t looked back.
Sounds great! I always loved that color wrap!
I Always learn something from your Videos. Thank you!
My bone stock Imperialstar 14" tom sounded like the 4:45 take up till yesterday it suddenly sounded like a fart. Out of nowhere it resonated 5 seconds with any strike and the resonance was a terrible floppy harmonic fart. I have no idea what happened.
I started using coated Ambassador resonant side heads on all my toms and I am never looking back! I use Vintage Emperor batters and they sound fantastic. Just the right resonance and overtone control.
Oh boy you know your thing
Really loving the last tuning sounds actually punchier
Once again, GREAT ADVICE 🥁
My floor toms have always been my nemesis. All too often all I can get is a papery resonance at the end.
Great information and on my 16", it's pretty easy. My issue is that with an 18", I think the range is too low to come through in recordings, particularly when played back through small speakers like on pones. Lots of sub-bass and mid unless I tune it comically high. I would love any information you can share on an 18" floor tom.
Thanks and happy jamming
This is exactly what i needed cheers man 👍
This topic is endless
It's true! In fact, the broad scope of tuning and sonic experiments with drums really is endless.
Agreed! I also struggle with snare drum tuning. So many options like snare tension, type, head type etc etc
I found that two-ply heads are generally best on floor toms regardless if the rack toms are one or two ply.
Concerning the fundamental pitch, it kind of does make a difference if your drums have mics at live gig. At my live venue, our PAs are crossed over at 80Hz. We also have a subwoofer.
My floor tom has a fundamental pitch of E flat, which is about 78Hz. It's still able to be audibly heard through the PA and/or sub. My bass drum is a G at 49Hz. That pitch sits very good in the middle range of the sub.
So when drummers play loose heads on either the floor tom or bass drum, it might not sit well in the frequency range of the PA speakers.
It might not matter as much without mics, but both the floor tom and bass drum frequencies will need to have more playing power applied to be heard by human ears as the fundamental frequencies go down. Subwoofers have larger amplifiers for a reason. Lower tuning only makes you work harder. Bonham used large drums that were tuned a bit high. Same concept. My 18 floor tom projects a lot of volume and tone.
So my comment is that projection is very much connected to fundamental frequencies. We must consider how the audience will hear it, miced or unmiced.
Great video again! I love this channel!
Excellent points all around! Thanks so much for sharing your experience and perspective!
To your point regarding mounted floor toms, I learned a long time ago that almost anything larger than a 13" diameter tom seems to get choked under it's own weight when mounted on a stand. I put suspension type legs on my previously mounted floor toms (14" and 15") and I was very pleased with improvements in terms of low end, body and sustain. My tuning method with the floor toms is to tune the top head for the wallop factor (above slack but pretty low) and then tune the bottom head slightly higher to keep things in control (much like your example four which to me sounded the best). I'm also beginning to realize that drums in the low tuning range seem to sound better to me when I don't hit them as hard.
Always been my Achilles heel. Thanks for this. 🙏
Hey man, just added a 14" Clear Pearl floor in front of the existing 16" metallic Green Export.This Acrylic tom has a slightly more hollowed sound than the wooden Floor ; challenge to match tones when tuning- with 3 toms extra open wooden snare drum w 2 Floor toms
Thanks for the great tutorial. Would you please consider making a detailed video about evening out the pitches of the lugs around the drumhead? I am not sure which part of the sound should I focus on, the initial attack, or the rest of the sound? Do the unintended slight variations of the velocity of the stroke near each lug produce different pitches that could possibly fool you? Is it easier to do this process with a mallet instead of a stick? Should we press the center of the drumhead ligtly with our thumb while going around to examing the pitches of the each lug? Experimenting with these parameters and also showing the graph of the waveform you are getting, trying to explain the different parts of it, would clear out many misconceptions. Is there any device or app that you would recommend for pitch recognition for those who do not have trained ears? Thanks again!
How do u get rid of the ringing I have an E - ring and moon gel but it’s still like BOWWWWWWNNNGG
For amazing resonance, I put blocks of plastic foam beneath each foot. I shape them so that the rubber at the bottom of each leg rests inside the foam block. This isolates the body of the floor tom, because each leg actually limits the shell's ability to fully resonate because the legs are connected to the floor. By putting the foam blocks between the floor and the floor tom, the whole shell can deliver the tones it's made to produce. What kind of foam? You can try the white packaging foam, which is polystyrene. But I happen to have some foam made from Expanded Polyethylene (EPE), which works perfectly for my ear. You can try different kinds of foam and see what works best for you.
We’re big fans of these: tnrproducts.com
I still think in my opinion clear heads or hydraulic heads are easier to get a fatter sound and easier to get a great blend between the resonant and the batter ! I have got a pretty good sound out of coated heads, but for me it just never gave me my sound , but , I am however extremely fond of your snare sound !
Great subject, floor toms were difficult in my younger years. That snare is killer! A masters, correct?
Great video! Thank you!
I like my kit full open, with lots of rumble. but my studio is small and has really great acoustic....
Very helpful thank you!!
Great video - thank you so much. I am a newbie in drumming. May I ask what device or tuning app to do recommend to guide the relative pitches of the beater and res heads? Thank you!
Your ears! I know that's cliche, and I sometimes use tools which have helped me train my ears better. I use a pitch pipe app sometimes just to listen to my tapped drum and compare to figure out what note a head or a drum is. I use iDrumTune app, costs a few bucks, and is really cool. The developer also has some great vids on how to use the app and how he views tuning. Way back I bought a Drum Dial which helped me for a long time, but I rarely get it out now.
@@jeremyschneider9531 Thank you!!
A good muffle trick.. From Benny Grebb. Put a piece of cotton wool in the drum, acts like an active damper
Control Your Floor Tom: Muffling Hack | Season 2 - Episode 6
ruclips.net/video/L8um1r5-YEc/видео.html
have you guys always had a rack mounted Floor tom? FT's with legs are completely different beasts.... like wow! almost too much.
ohhh, i just got to the part of the video where you address this... lol..
Did you wind up using any muffling on the bottom head of the floor tom?
Nope, we removed the muffling entirely.
@@SoundsLikeADrum It sounds fantastic! I thought so but wanted to double check. Thank you very much!
Even «bad» sounds good in these videos 😅
I have a mid 70s vintage floor Tama mid range quality that has the lowest sustain clear note no farting ect.. - with almost any heads.. and I have a Sonor Force kit from early 2000 every component very snappy and impressive on the kit.. except the floor tom.. very specific heads have to be used or it just sounds card boardy ..lack of life or umph. The drum looks very pretty though LOL - and the Tama vintage looks non descript..just black wrap silver hardware almost like a ludwig.
Any chance there's an issue with the drum? A bent hoop, damaged edge, out-of-round shell, and a variety of other things could create the issues you describe.
Something I note in all these videos is that no matter what you do to the toms, somehow your miking is not oversaturated with tom overtones. In my experience close miking toms, no matter how much you catch the stick hits with the mic, the recording is ALWAYS oversaturated with the resonance and overtones of the tom. Whether using a Beyer TG58 condenser, a Octavamod SDC, a Peluso ribbon mic, an SM57, or Beta57, I can not seem to every record a tom drum sound that is anything but 80% resonance and 20% stick hits, which forces a lot of work in the mix. I wonder how come you don't have that problem. When you hit the toms in your videos, the sound is like 75% stick hit and 25% resonance.
Part of that has to do with how I mix the audio. I lean quite heavily on the Glyn Johns pair with the close mics present enough to faithfully recreate the sound we’re hearing at the drums. The point of this is to provide an honest, realistic point of reference for when viewers are listening to the sounds we’re producing and comparing to what they’re hearing from their drums.
On the drum rings it sounds right. You're never going to hear that ring once the band starts. Most of the drummers today used to play heads and they sound like pillows
Awesome. I tune my floor tom in a medium low tuning.
How to fix floor tom sound? Wear an earplug.. as it will cancel some unnecessary overtones..
I’m here searching for the Benny Greb sound
Since you took the bait... 😉 What's your reference point for the "Benny Greb Floor Tom Sound"? A video? A record? An experience in person where you were hearing only the acoustic sound of the drum?
Always tight i bottom a little more
First 2 tunings were dead and flat.
Very much so! And that's a common issue that we find when drummers are looking to produce a deep, punchy sound. Of course, this can work in certain scenarios but there are quite a few sacrifices as we mentioned.
I admit your floor tom does sound great..But it's very frustrating you never turned the drum on its side just to show what tensions and sound intervals you used..Don't keep it as a secret mate..
Once more for the people in back" THE PITCHES DON'T MATTER!" The pitches aren't answer to how you create this sound. I'm not sure how many other ways we can express this. We're not keeping secrets or hiding some master recipe here.
@@SoundsLikeADrum ok..I'm just putting forward my thoughts..A bit of an attitude reply..You tune as you want mate..
@@mathewshaw2772 We repeat this over and over and it was mentioned in the video at 6:35. No attitude, just simple facts. People are so caught up in the idea of quantitative measurement for the sake of reproducing sounds they hear and, as we mention in the segment referenced, the specific pitches used in our case aren't relevant.