snare pitch vs toms

[antichef]

Here's another pesky straw poll by a guitar player trying to find his drum-ass with both hands:

What size toms (and snare, for that matter) do you normally use, and when you release the snare off your snare drum, where does its normally tuned pitch fall in relationship to the various tom pitches - e.g., higher than the 12" but lower than the 10"? I recognize that each drum probably has two heads and they may be tuned differently - I'm talking about the perceived "dominant" pitch when you hit the thing.

Right now, my 14" snare is tuned to a higher pitch than my 10" tom, but not by much. I think I usually have it set up this way. I have an 8" tom that sometimes makes an appearance, and it's normally higher than the snare.

(to those of you who, like me, are suspicious about how useful this information really is, please bear with me, this is the internet, after all...)

 

[Rimshot]

My kit is as follows:
20" kick, 14" snare, 10",12" rack toms, 14" 16" floor toms (I may on occasion add an 18" floor tom to the kit and then the 14" tom goes on the rack).

I keep my drums tuned a little lower than others do. I like my kick drum and my snare tuned to about the same note (G) but two octaves apart. My 10" is usually at an E flat and I use 2" intervals between my toms because I like there to be whole steps between the toms. (or there about)

 

[dintymoore]

... I keep my drums tuned a little lower than others do...

Me too. I've always found that most drumsets I sit down at have the heads too tight on the kick and toms.

The guy that invented the drumdial, Bob Neary was my Sunday school teacher and he had his drums so tight (playing rock music) that it was nuts. His floor tom was higher than my 8x12.

My snare is higher than my smallest tom, which nowadays is a 10" Chinese tom from probably the 1930's.

I like snares that are high like Stewart Copeland for a crack and I also like low snares like Mick Fleetwood used. Lower snares are great with female vocalists because they don't compete for the same frequencies.

On this classic drum solo there's lots of spaces where you can hear Michael's snare with the snares off and compare the pitches:

 

[Seafroggys]

I usually have my drums deep. Not uber deep, but deep with tone. My snare is about medium. Though for the past year or so I've had everything tuned higher, especially my high tom. Mostly because the heads are pretty old and it helps me cut through my band's wall of sound. But it doesn't record nearly as well.

 

[TheChikenMaster]

my snare is about between my 10" and 12" I also tune a bit low like about the threshhold that if i were to tune my floor tom and 13" down a few notches the heads would be lose

 

[ZionBound]

Dinty = Drum Guru

Feel free to pass any knowledge my way.

 

[dintymoore]

Thanks ZionBound but I don't know if I want to accept any positions that require I know anything.

There's so much info out there. I was watching this today, truthfully it's pretty boring and could be much shorter. But what I was seeing was something that really helped me way back when a drum teacher told me. You only need to watch a minute of the video to see it. See how the kick beater stays against the head whenever he hits? At rest his kick beater is against the head. I only made it about 1/2 way through the video but I thought it was a great demonstration of good kick pedal technique. Probably tons of drummers do this and don't even think about it.

[video=youtube;e-3GU6Nry0Q&feature]video[/video]

You've got to be careful with technique 'cause it's easy to get into it and forget that the main thing is the song. Your concentration should always be on the song, not on your fills or your pedal technique. So learn it and forget it.

There's another video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJtT_QBuNHc that is what I would call "how not to do it". See how his beater comes back from the head all the time and doesn't stay against the head? That will give you a very lightweight sound, and I always try have what I call a "heavy beat"(I don't mean loud) even when I play soft jazz - a low solid kick that "goes right into the ground". You can hear Dave's kick go into the ground, that other video doesn't.