Evans Blacked out drumline, the intervallic relationship.

[jonz311]

tympani can be tuned to a pitch....how are they different than a snare drum or anything other marching drum, tom, drum set, etc?

if each lug is tuned to the same tension, the head will have one true pitch. it's when the heads aren't "trued" that different overtones factor in and the pitch is lost. The snare drum loses its sense of pitch once the guts are turned on, but if you turn off the guts and hit the drum, you should be able to hear the "note" the drum is tuned to. Quads and bass drums absolutely have their own pitches and it should be easy to hear a note when any of the drums are played. Problem is that most people don't understand the need to true the heads and a lot of hs/college/less experienced drum corps drums sound like garbage because they aren't tuned correctly.

part of the problem that the original poster may be having is that the A he is tuning to may be in the incorrect octave. A2 will sound very different from A6, but the note is still technically an A

[jonz311]

Bottom line: I still don't think you can nail down the pitch of a snare drum (much less the individual snare strands, as someone suggested earlier) to a specific note. But if someone wants to tune their snare drum(s) to what they perceive as a C#, Bb or whatever, then go for it. If they can get the drums to sound good, who am I to argue?

peace!

Fred O.

sure you can....it's another step that many novice tuners don't take or know about.

how is an individual snare gut different from a guitar string, or any other stringed instrument? the only difference is that the guts are stretched across the bottom of a drum, but they sure do act the same. they even used to be made out of the same material....cat gut!

take a snare drum, turn it upside down so the guts are facing up, back the guts up so they are not touching the head and tighten them up as tight as they will go.

now take a small flathead screwdriver and use it like a pick to pluck each gut....can you hear a pitch? use a screwdriver to adjust the tension on that gut....does it go up or down in pitch? sure does....

snare drums that have the guts all tuned to the same tension have better response and sound LIGHT YEARS better than drums that have all of the guts at different tensions(or pitches)

[sday88]

FWIW everything in the world has whats called a natural frequency, perhaps this is whats being termed pitch.

Yeah, but most, if not all, objects have multiple, if not infinite, natural frequencies, depending on the complexity of the object.

[kusankusho]

Back to the heads (and we had some discussion on this in the DCA forum) - I'd never want black bass heads for summer use. They absorb heat like crazy and make tuning really tough. Not to mention they show up every technique problem by contrasting against those nice white mallets.

Edited September 9, 2008 by kusankusho

[drumno5]

tympani can be tuned to a pitch....how are they different than a snare drum or anything other marching drum, tom, drum set, etc?

There's an article on line that talks about this at great length, enough to make your head spin (unless you have an advanced degree in physics). Here's the link, for anyone that can stomach it: http://music.nebrwesleyan.edu/wtt/index.html

Mind you, I'm not making this stuff up, and as I said earlier, far be it from me to argue with anyone who can coax a good sound out of their snares, whatever their method or madness may be. But it's pretty universally acknowledged by the acoustic/scientific community that timpani are the only membranophones (i.e. drums with a head) that are bona-fide instruments of definite pitch.

Thanks to everyone for the lively discussion!

Fred O.

[jonz311]

But it's pretty universally acknowledged by the acoustic/scientific community that timpani are the only membranophones (i.e. drums with a head) that are bona-fide instruments of definite pitch.

fair enough, but if you ask me to tune a snare drum to a C#, i can make it so that it sounds like a C#

[drumno5]

fair enough, but if you ask me to tune a snare drum to a C#, i can make it so that it sounds like a C#

If you say so - fair enough, back atcha!

Peace - no disrespect intended,

Fred O.

[drumno5]

sure you can....it's another step that many novice tuners don't take or know about.

how is an individual snare gut different from a guitar string, or any other stringed instrument? the only difference is that the guts are stretched across the bottom of a drum, but they sure do act the same. they even used to be made out of the same material....cat gut!

take a snare drum, turn it upside down so the guts are facing up, back the guts up so they are not touching the head and tighten them up as tight as they will go.

now take a small flathead screwdriver and use it like a pick to pluck each gut....can you hear a pitch? use a screwdriver to adjust the tension on that gut....does it go up or down in pitch? sure does....

snare drums that have the guts all tuned to the same tension have better response and sound LIGHT YEARS better than drums that have all of the guts at different tensions(or pitches)

Yeah, we did all that back in the day (with real catgut snares, treated with scotchgard to make them more weather resistant)- plucking, listening, poking (to get a feel for the relative tightness of each strand). We even tried alternating strands, every other one looser/tighter, to help response at loud and soft volumes. We thought they sounded better - or at least we felt better for having made the effort. But I'm not sure anyone listening to us could tell the difference (lol!)

8 or 10 snare drums, 12 or 15 flimsy little 14" strands per drum, no resonating chamber to focus/reinforce that tiny little pitch (let's face it, a snare drum with kevlar heads cranked to the max is not the ideal resonating chamber, even if you did spend hours "tuning" the heads to A and D, or C6, C# or whatever) - you'd need ears like a bat to get them all to sound the same. Then come back 5 minutes later (or play the drum while running around a football field for 10 minutes or an hour) and they all sound different again. Or ask one of the other techs on the staff to check the pitches for you - and sit back while he fiddles around with the drums for another three hours, because they sound different to his ears than they did to yours.

I'm not saying that snare tension isn't an important factor in getting a good sound, or that balancing the tension on the indivdual strands isn't worth the effort. But I still don't think you can "tune" them like a guitar or violin - not with any real or consistent accuracy.

Fred

[Slow Adam]

I'm not saying that snare tension isn't an important factor in getting a good sound, or that balancing the tension on the indivdual strands isn't worth the effort. But I still don't think you can "tune" them like a guitar or violin - not with any real or consistent accuracy.

Fred

I will respectfully disagree with this last part. I have tuned individual snares, it's not as refined as a guitar or violin...think Banjo, haha. Proper gut tuning does make a difference.

[dabierwasgood]

Why don't we ask someone who has perfect pitch if certain things have pitches or not. . . ?