Tom-Tom Tuning
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Learn How To Tune Your Tom-Toms!
Now that you've learned to tune the snare drum and the bass drum, it's time to learn to tune the toms. In my setup I have 10", 12", and 16" toms. These are high end yamaha drums, but they haven't been tuned yet. As you watch the video, listen to how they sound before they are tuned. In my opinion they sound more like cardboard boxes than they do custom drums, so let's make them sound more like they should.
First let's start by pulling the drum off of the mount and setting it upside down on a pillow to muffle the top head. This will allow us to tune the bottom first. For small adjustments I leave the drum on the mount, but for main tuning I take it off. About an inch inward from each tension rod, tap the drum and see how it sounds. Most drummers use a higher pitch for the bottom, but as always the key is to keep it even all the way across. If you get the bottom tuned, then turn the drum over and hit it, it will still kinda sound like a cardboard box. We have to get that top head tuned. Even after you've gotten all of the tension rods on the top head good and tight, you'll find it still sounds cardboard box like, maybe a nice cardboard box, but that isn't what we are going for. For the initial tuning let's go around and give each tension rod a quarter turn and try it again. Keep making big adjustments like this until you get the basic sound that you want. Then it's time for fine tuning.
Just like you've done for all of the drums in the past, tap about an inch inward from the tension rods and decide which one you like the sound of best. Tune all of the other tension rods so that they match the sound of the one you like. When picking your pitch, remember that the 10" tom should be the highest pitched, so pick one of the higher pitched rods for that one. The opposite is true for the floor tom. Once you've got all of the tension points tuned to an even sound, the drum should sound a lot more like a drum and a lot less like a cereal box.
Learn you not values using the note value exercises in the next video.
