Care and Tuning

Cleaning

It is very important to keep your drums clean. Dust and dirt can ruin the finish of your drumset. It can also tarnish your cymbals making them not sound bright and alive as they should.

There are many types of creams you can use to polish your cymbals. Use creams that are made to polish cymbals. Never use household creams as they could ruin them.

Only use a cream to polish your cymbals when they look really bad. Once you have them polished, use a window cleaner to keep them that way but make sure that the window cleaner does not have ammonia. Ammonia will eat the finish off of your cymbals. When handling your cymbals, try wearing cotton gloves to prevent the dirt and acid from your hands marring them up. It's always useful for a drummer to have a feather duster to dust of their drumkit.

If your drums have a wrap finish. You can easily use a window cleaner. Once again, make sure the window cleaner does not have ammonia. If your drums have a lacquer finish, use a very soft cotton cloth to wipe them. As previously mentioned, use cotton gloves when handling your cymbals so as not to marr them up. This comes in handy because you can polish your kit with the gloves at the same time right before a gig.

Tuning

Drum tuning is the art of modifying a drum's sound into your liking. Drum tuning involves varying a drum's tonal quality as well as pitch. While there are many things you can do to change a drum's sound, such as using different types of drumheads or adding dampeners on the inside, we'll concentrate on adjusting the drum head tension. This is the most essential skill for beginners, and what you must always do as you get a new drum or drum kit. Some drummers prefer to not use a bottom drumhead, some use both. If you use both, you can tune your kit in a few different pitches. You can tune your top drumhead to the same pitch as the bottom drumhead, a pitch lower or a pitch higher.

You must prepare a drum before applying new heads. The first thing you must do is remove the old heads. Use a drum key to loosen all of the tension rods, remove the tension rods and lay them aside. Remove the rim and the old drum head. Do this to the top and bottom head. It really doesn't matter which order you do it in. Use a clean dry cloth to wipe off the hoop and bearing edges, removing stick shavings, dust, and any build-up that may have formed. Apply a thin coat of Parafin Wax to the bearing edge. This ensures a proper seat of the head. Be sure to remove any debris that falls into the drum. Place the new head onto the drum and spin it around the bearing edge to ensure clean contact. Tighten the tension rods until they make contact with the hoop. DO NOT APPLY PRESSURE TO THE HEAD YET.

Before you put the head back on, inspect it for cracks, and small holes. If your head has dents in it from normal use, you can probably get by with it for a while more.

If putting on the head is giving you a problem, check the head to see if it is warped by rolling it on the floor. If it is okay, then check to see if you shell is warped. If it is, then it is recommended that you take it back to the manufacturer for replacement.

Inspect the tension rod castings before you put the tension rods back in. Clean the dirt and grime from the outside of the castings.

Follow the Clock Method, see illustration below. Begin tensioning by turning each tension rod 1 complete revolution. Repeat this procedure until you have turned each tension rod one time. Continue the tensioning sequence using smaller increments (1/2 turn). Tune the head until you can hit it and get a sound, not like a carboard box, but an actual clear tone. NOTE: pitches will vary in relation to the size of the drum you're tuning. A moderate to high amount of tension should be applied, but use caution. Excessive tension can cause damage to the head. Tap around the circumference of the head listening for high and low spots. Tension up the low areas in an effort to maintain evenness in pitch. It is not always possible to maintain perfect evenness, and it may be helpful to select one rod at a time, detune, and then bring the rod back up to pitch while tapping the edge.

NEVER JUST LOOSEN A TENSION BOLT, ALWAYS LOOSEN LOWER THAN WHAT YOU WANT AND TUNE UP!

Listen closely to detect any improvement in the evenness of the overall sound.

If one tension rod position has a higher or lower pitch than the others, then you need to either tighten or loosen that rod. Keep in mind that if by tightening or loosening that rod does not affect the pitch, it is the rod directly across from it.

Place the drum on the floor or table. Tap the head dead center with the tip of your finger. Listen and then hum or sing the pitch and remember it. Place your palm in the center of the head and, with your other hand on top, apply a firm amount of downward pressure using your arms. Listen to the pitch again, and remember the original pitch you hummed. If the pitch has lowered, tension the head up to the original pitch and repeat the procedure. This loosens the glue in the collar and stops the head from detuning while you play.

For maximum resonance and clarity, the bottom (resonating) head should be tuned to the same pitch as the batter head. But if you tune the bottom head one step lower you can cause a faster decay. Experiment with different tunings, if you play rock up probably want the bottom head one step lower. If you play jazz you probably want them the same pitch. But remeber that the heads must harmonize or it will sound very bad.

These directions for tuning and care go for all of your drums, from the snare head, floor toms and bass drums. Both the top and bottom heads would be tuned in the same fashion.

NOTE: If you turn your snare upside down and turn off the strainer, does it look like a tangled mess? If there are only a couple of wires that are mangled looking, take a pair of wire cutters and cut them off. It is suggested that you take the snares off of the drum first before cutting anything. Cut them flush with the edge. If you do not, you run the risk of poking holes in your bottom drum head. If there are a lot of wires that are mangled, throw it away and get yourself a new set of snares.

You can always go to your local music store and purchase a torque key. By using this key, you can adjust the tightness on the key to your preference.

Bass Drum Setup Tips

The bass drum is the center piece of the drum set, upon which much hardware rests, and is also essential to driving the beat. Therefore, having a bad bass drum setup can severely curtail your ability to play. Assembly instructions should be included with any new drum kit, so this page assumes you already know how to assemble your bass drum, and describes a few important things that are usually omitted.

Bass Drum 'Creep'

Bass drum creep is the tendency of the drum to move away from you as you step on the kick pedal over and over. (What do you expect... when you hit things repeatedly, they tend to run away!) Setting up your kit on a rug or a carpet will help keep things together, but is not enough. If you use a relatively small rug, make sure it is large enough for the throne to be on the rug as well. This is to prevent the whole drum-kit-on-a-rug setup from moving away together. The next thing to do is use the pointy spikes that should be present on the bottom of the bass drum legs. (If your bass drum legs don't have spikes, throw them away and get ones that do.) Position your bass drum legs so that the spikes dig into the rug. If you find that your bass drum still creeps forward as you play, adjust the bass drum legs so that the front of the drum (the side further away from you) is higher up and the drum rests at a slightly steeper angle. You should have at least enough space between the bottom of the front side of the drum and the rug to insert the palm of your hand. If the bass drum creeps, increase this gap. The increased angle will shift more weight onto the front of the drum and therefore make the dug in spikes more effective. Discovering and doing this last thing is what finally put an end to the bass drum creep in my kit.

Tuning

Tuning a bass drum is much like tuning any other drum, but with a few notable specifics. The first thing to remember while tuning a bass drum, is that it's not going to have a high pitch even if you adjust the heads tightly, so don't be afraid to tighten things up. Loose heads usually result in ugly overtones. Some bass drums come with a small pillow or some foam to be placed inside. Some drummers even throw a towel or a sweat-shirt in there. This is done to muffle ringy overtones. Muffling the sound this way certainly helps, but is not always necessary. Tuning the batter head and resonant head to radically different pitches also muffles the ring, and in a good bass drum may be sufficient to produce a nice, ring-less 'thump' sound. On my acoustic kit, I have the bass drum resonant head adjusted very tightly (higher pitch tuning), and the batter head adjusted somewhat more loosely.

Protecting the Batter Head

The bass drum's batter head is hit, using the strength of a foot, at the exact same spot again and again. It is a big problem for the poor bass drum head. If you play for a while, especially if you play with some volume, first you'll have a batter head with a small dent where the hammer strikes, then a larger dent, and then the hammer will go straight though. And that will be the end of your batter head. You'll have to buy a new one, take apart the bass drum, and install and tune it. I'm speaking from personal, unpleasant experience here. Therefore, before you start playing your drums, do your batter head a favor and get a bass drum protector pad. This is a special sticker that goes over where the hammer hits and strengthens that spot. Using an impact pad will considerably increase the batter head's life span.