There's been a lot of questions on my Facebook page and in some of the
comments on my YouTube videos asking. "man, how do you get those sounds?" I'm going to go
through that and more coming up!
Hey everybody welcome back my name is Cameron Fleury. I do funny drum covers
drum lessons, and I do some blog stuff. If you're new to the channel please
consider subscribing. Let's move on to the lesson shall we? Okay so there's a
lot of different techniques when it comes to tuning your toms. So the first
thing I want to show you guys are the skins that I use on my drum set.
I'll just get a nice close-up shot here. With these two paired together they
sound really good I've got the g2 on the top and then on the resonant side I have
the genera reso by Evans so all my stuff is Evans drumheads, and I'll show you a
couple little tricks how to get my rack tom sound. First thing you need is your
drum key and then I'm gonna use the existing skins on here just to show you
how I use it. Seat your drum head, tighten it so the wrinkles are out, and then I
take this drum dial and I ensure on every lug that it is all equal so it
takes the guesswork out of all of your tuning and this first rack Tom here is a
10 inch I tuned it roughly to between 70 and 75 for tension on each lug so I'll go
around you can see the face of the dial here the needle points at a certain
number and then you go around each lug ensuring that you have the same tension
and then once I'm done doing that I'll go to the center of the drum and see
what the overall tension is which in this case it's about 73 and it's really
that simple I know Glenn Fricker is a big fan of the drumdial too because it
really creates a convenience for somebody in the studio release get their stuff
tuned up and do a session and like myself I do a lot of session work so in
order to keep my drums in tune before I go record which wink-wink is a really
good idea I use this drumdial now already I've dialed it in with my ear
and I I know what I'm going for basically after playing for about 16-17
years you kind of get the idea of what you
going for as far as your Tom sounds to go anyway so that's the top skin the
bottom skin reflects how much sustain you're gonna have in your drum so what
does that even mean that means how long the drum is gonna resonate for or how
long it's gonna sing the tighter this skin is on the bottom the longer it's
gonna sing now basically what I'm gonna do with the bottom head the resonant
head I'm going to tune it the exact same way that I have tuned my batter head
what I mean by that is that I'm going to take the wrinkles out take my hand off
of it and then I'm gonna go around with the drum dial and then refer to the same
number that I had for tension on the batter head and then translate that over
to my resonant head so that way when you hit the drum well we'll go like this the
frequencies move at the same time so you have the same pitch it's not low and
then high now that's a personal preference and everybody Tunes their
drums differently but that's how I get my drum sound so for all you that are
curious as to why my toms sounds so good it's just a really simple technique that
I've adapted from a few other players and some really great ideas and then
kind of translate it into my own way now you can go on and on about Tom tuning
and you can get into real specifics but this is easy especially if you're in a
pinch or if you don't know what all the fancy terminology is all you need is a
drum key and a good ear so if you find yourself having to put a bunch of
dampeners on your skin so maybe try and back off the resonant head a little bit
so that you're not getting all that like growliness all that unwanted frequencies
my word it does work wonders and it's worked for me every single time it's not
because the drums are awesome it's all into your ear and your technique there's
lots of great videos online but these are my tips moving forward I'm gonna
show you how I do the floor tom this is a little bit different because I've only
recently changed the way I tuned them now obviously not everybody has a 16
inch floor tom but this is my 16 inch floor Tom and I have the same skins on
my floor toms as my rack toms so everything is the same all the way
around and what makes this drum different is that I have put cotton
balls in here if you can see that that's one little trick that I learned
from a couple of drummers basically what's happening is the cotton balls
rests on the resonant head once you strike down on the batter head the
cotton balls lifts up once the sound dissipates the cotton balls then fall
down back onto the resonant head and then that helps kind of muffle the
sustain of the drum so if you have some really low sounding floor toms that just
keep on ringing and you're trying to record something or you just don't like
the sound overall might I suggest the next time you put new heads on that you
throw a couple cotton balls in there it's it's really handy and its really
added a lot to my mixes now it's highly important when you want really big
sounding toms in the recording because instead of trying to manipulate the
sound you get the sound of the source and this is a great way in manipulating
that sound wave to get that desired sound you're looking for it
so to recap that put the head on take the wrinkles out do it on the other side
of the drum make sure your tension is the same if you don't have a drumdial
just do it to ear and then take the wrinkles out Bob's your uncle Rob's your
dad's brother-in-law if you want more tips and tricks like this please feel
free to comment down below and I will answer to you as quickly as I can
thanks so much for watching and I'll see you on the next one
you