How Often Do Percussion Instruments Need To Be Tuned?

Tuning is one of the small things that can make a big difference when it comes to the final quality of the sound you produce when playing your drums, and is usually taught at drum lessons for adults and children. Here are some tuning tips:

There are different theories about tuning drums and they are all correct to some extent. Some consider more important to detect the resonance frequencies of the drum itself. As with any other music-related discussion, you need to use your ears and choose the frequency that best fits what you are going to play. With tuned drums, your performance will sound much more coherent.

A drum is a two-dimensional size and is not characterized only by a single fundamental frequency; it produces a rich spectrum of frequencies in addition to the fundamental one, which can be obtained from infinite combinations of the degrees of tension of the membrane, using the tuning screws.

In order to obtain a correct tuning, the screws should tension the drum membrane evenly, removing the dissonant intervals, and the fundamental frequency has to be equal to the frequency of the desired musical note. For achieving uniform tension, measurements of the resonance frequencies near the tuning screws are required. Do this whenever you feel that the sound produced does not have the required quality.

 

Originally Posted on: How Often Do Percussion Instruments Need To Be Tuned?