Hi my name is Phil Shaw from Shaw Percussion
and today we're going to answer the question many drummers have and that is
how do I tell when my drum is out of tune and what do I do to tune it. Not as difficult as
many of you may think so let's get started. So which one do you think was out of tune? Well if you guess the first one you be
absolutely right it's pretty obvious when you hear it next to a tuned drum you
don't get the distinct base, tone, slap on an out of tune drum, there's a lot of
overtones coming off the drum and everything sounds kind of bass-ey, so if
you didn't catch it the first time let's do that one more time.
You hear the clarity in the bass tone and slap on
the tuned drum, it's just not there on the untuned drum..First thing you should
always do is strike the crown ring all the way around with a hammer. Two reasons,
in between tunings this is often all you need to do to pop your drum back in
tune. What happens is there's connective
tissue on the underside of the skin that can become glued to the bearing edge so
just by tapping this ring you're helping the ropes overcome that friction and
that'll pop the drum back in tune the other thing is that if you still
have to tune the drum it's making sure that this skin is free to move across that bearing
edge and you're less likely to break the head while tuning.
So I'm gonna go ahead
and tap this drum all the way around now if you're nervous you can always take a
block of wood and hammer the block of wood. just put the block of wood against your
crown ring. You'll hear this drum will probably go up just by doing this. Ok so I've secured my tuning rope off a
cradle at the bottom and I'm gonna be doing the locked method on this drum.
Here's the two I want to bring together as they have that continuous, they're
joined to each other at the bottom and one thing I like to do, a little trick is to
take a flathead screwdriver and slip it underneath the two verticals that I'm
working on and it just lifts them up off the drum so it's a little bit easier to
to work with and for this demonstration that makes it easier for you to see, so
I'm gonna go over the two, up through the middle, pull it down then I'm
gonna go back under the two ,pull it down, Pull the screwdriver out now.
So now I'm using my
tug cleat and I'm gonna pull… you saw how they flipped. This is the locked method so
my horizontal is trapped against the shell and it won't untie. So move to my
next pair, these two, I'm going to use my screwdriver. Over the two, up through the middle,
pull it down, back under the two. Next two, up to the middle pull it down now I'm
going to add something here that I kept it flat so that you could see what I was
doing when I'm actually pulling these for the sake of my back and my body this
is what I do have gone up through the middle I go back under the to pull
everything down screwdriver out now before I poll this I
want to have the most leverage in the Middle East friction when I'm pulling
the horizontal so what all do with a flip this to the side so that I'm
pulling Street in line with the not in its gonna make it a lot easier to pull
because I have less friction for my rotator drum back next to you after
you've tried a few diamonds in between you want to keep checking the two-year
drop and when you think you might be close to be sure you don't over tighten
stand the drama hit it with a hammer again to help overcome the friction
between the very edge of the skin and I can hear this truck going up I gotta
check my little better but it's not where I want it so I'm going to keep
going and with this drama I'm gonna have to go a full role so I'm gonna take a
full first row all the way around the drum good so I did get into a second row
on this truck hit the crown ring all the way around with my rubber mallet don't
use a metal mallet and make sure you're only hitting the crown ring not the skin
if you need to use a piece of wood on the crown ring and hit all the way
around and as you can see it's really not that hard to tune your drum after
you've done a couple of times it's going to become second nature keep your drama in tune and enjoy to its
fullest