ringing drums

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nick The Man
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Nick The Man

Nick The Man

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how do you get your drums to sound ringy , mine sound real dead and muffled right now they sound like black sabbaths drums but i wanna try to get them to ring some more ....any suggestions
 
What kind of drums, what kind of heads? This is a head/tuning issue. Are you using any dampening?
 
im using dampining ....but when i take it off they sound like shit
 
If you tune them well (and the heads are reasonably fresh) you won't need dampening.
If your drums are totally dead, you are using too much. Trycutting up an old towel into 2 inch squares, one for each drum. duct tape it to the head along one side of the square, to create a little flap. when you hit the drum, the flap will fly up and not dampen the drum right away. It will control the ring, but tuning the drums right is the better option. New heads are always a help.
 
in addition to heads and tuning (both very important), make sure to check your bearing edges and whether the shell is in round.

set the drum, without the heads/hoops on, on a flat surface like a table. if you can wobble the drum, your edges are fucked up or the shell is out of round. both of these can make your drum sound like shit (but not necessarily - i have a set of ludwigs that have messy edges from being abused by the previous owner, and they sound like heaven and hell).

also make sure that you're hitting the drum in the center of the head and HARD. hitting it with a limp wrist will emphasize the stray cat frequencies.

you might also want to try recording them, turn up the overheads a bit, and see how it sounds when recorded. they may not "sound like shit" when you're listening through a bunch of microphones.
 
its all depending on the heads your using..

what are they? it all comes down to tuing. It's a common thing to dampen your drums if they're tuned badly. As a simple solution tune the heads high and use moongel to take off teh nasty overtones...But you still get nice resonance. Thats a very simple way to do it. if you want to know what do to about it in the future... then learn how to tune and buy teh right heads for your style of music.. Good Luck!
 
Just to add to prior comments, make sure everything is "tight" on your kit, or you'll get all kinds of unwanted rattles when you record. You can also opt for different heads/skins if the ones you're presently using don't ring to your liking.

Tuning each drum is highly suggested, and when you tune the top head don't forget that you should tune the bottom head, too! You're drums aren't going to ring properly or sound very good if the top and bottom skins are tuned completely different.
 
buck62,

actually, that's not really true. you can get desirable sounds, although they're a little bit specialized, if you tune them to different pitches (like, if you have a tight batter and more loose resonant, you can get those goofy BEEEEEEeeeew simmons-esque sounds). but still, not a very versatile sound.
 
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