Tuning Your Drum Kit

Tuning one drum is the same as tuning them all. The same steps and procedures should be taken to ensure the best sound from any drum you are playing. Let's say we are tuning a tom drum. Let's start at the absolute beginning; seating the drum head on the shell. Before you even place the head on the drum, make sure you wipe down both the rim and the head. Any unwanted dirt or chips will cause an uneven sound on the tom. So with a towel, just wipe around the rim of the drum. The next step is obviously seating the drum head on the drum. Once this is done, and the rim is placed over top; screw in the tension rods hand tight. You do not want to screw them in to much right now, or you can throw off the tuning process. This step is just for positioning the rods.
Once all the rods are secure, you want to stretch out your drum head. This is an important step to do; it will strengthen and stretch out your skin as well as help it maintain its tuning once it is found. To do this, simply make a fist, and press down in the middle of the drum. Do not press to hard, you do not want to damage your skin. This is the same idea as a guitarist stretching out his new strings before he tunes. Now you are finally ready to tune!

This process is similar to installing a new tire on your car. To make sure there is no unbalance, you will have to tighten the tension rods opposite to each other. The best way to do this is to start at any rod, and tighten a few turns with your drum key. Once that is complete, locate the tension rod opposite to that one and repeat the process. Do this until each rod is secure and tight. Try to keep each turn uniform by counting the amount of rotations and imitate that on each tension rod. Here is a diagram of the tightening process;

As you can see, each tension rod is tuned opposite of each other. Start at A, and work your way around the drum.

Once each rod is tightened, try striking the drum. Chances are you will not get the right sound on your first try. This is where you have to start fine tuning. Pick a tension rod to start at, and tap the head around 2 inches from that rod. Again, use the diagram and tap each rod opposite to each other. Try and hear for any inconsistent sounds. If there are any tones that are not even, tune each tension rod accordingly. Remember this is a fine process, tuning a half a turn will change the sound to the whole drum.