How do you find the Key the drum kit is tuned in?

[Mojave]

I own everything Toontrack makes. I have every library and...

I own everything Toontrack makes. I have every library and in all these super cool products, I am yet to find one detail. What “Key” are the libraries and kits tuned to? Especially the Kick and snare. I will run a kick and snare in Melodyne and see if I can get a tuning read that way. I was also thinking of Flex time stretching say a kick drum and drag it out long enough to keep the pitch on so a tuner could read it in logic.

Still, there must be a set tuning and standard? I use the Massive Ludwig a great deal and that 26″ Slingerland kick is really big and deep. Not sure but I think I am getting G# off the tuner. It can’t be trusted since the tuner bounces around to much and I don’t know if its correct.

Any tips would be appreciated. Someone has know or the software might offer this up, just not sure where.

Recent Demo I am working up.

Victor Mason
Mojave Desert
Apple Valley CA

I own everything Toontrack makes. I have every library and in all these super cool products, I am yet to find one detail. What “Key” are the libraries and kits tuned to? Especially the Kick and snare. I will run a kick and snare in Melodyne and see if I can get a tuning read that way. I was also thinking of Flex time stretching say a kick drum and drag it out long enough to keep the pitch on so a tuner could read it in logic.

Still, there must be a set tuning and standard? I use the Massive Ludwig a great deal and that 26″ Slingerland kick is really big and deep. Not sure but I think I am getting G# off the tuner. It can’t be trusted since the tuner bounces around to much and I don’t know if its correct.

Any tips would be appreciated. Someone has know or the software might offer this up, just not sure where.

Recent Demo I am working up.

Victor Mason
Mojave Desert
Apple Valley CA

Topic

[DiegusMaximus32]

ORIGINAL: Ashton Page
SUPERIOR TUNINGS AND PITCHES:
The stock Custom and Vintage SDX kit is tuned thusly:
Bass Drum – Bb
Floor Tom – Eb (this is a perfect 4th above the kick)
Low Rack Tom – Ab (another perfect 4th)
Mid Rack Tom – Db (as above)
Hi Rack Tom – Gb (as above)
Snare Bb (this is a major 3rd above the Hi Ride Tom – which places it 2 octaves above the kick).

Fantastic Ashton, thanks so much for this information. I myself was wondering about this for a while. Interestingly, the drums seem to be tuned like a 7 string guitar down a half step! (low to high Bb-Eb-Ab-Db-Gb-Bb-Eb). Very valuable insights indeed. How did you go about figuring this out?

----GUITARS---- Ibanez Prestige RGA121VF Ibanez S7420 7-string Custom handmade 6-string Hohner GW-3000 -----STUDIO----- MacBook 13" w/ Logic Studio 9 Apogee ONE USB interface Shure SM57 dynamic mic Akai MPK49 USB MIDI controller

[justin shardlow]

What a bunch of absolute tools. No one cares about your opinions on why we don’t need to know the tunings. We want to experiment and see if it makes a clear difference. Talking about “what professional drummers do” and what they don’t do. Who cares? Professional drummers probably don’t use EZDrummer. But we want to make our productions sound professional, so every tool at our disposal is beneficial. The guy asked a very simple and legitimate question. What keys are the drum hits in? He (and me) obviously want to experiment with matching the fundamentals of the drums to the key of the song or vice versa, to see if it sounds better/tighter or whatever. How can we make informed decisions and experiment if we don’t know the keys to start with (and no tuner is capable of detecting the fundamental frequency). If someone in the comments section knows the answer, please provide it. If Toontrack knows the answer, please provide it. Simple.

[Henrik]

One can always use a standard tuning plugin to try to find the tone of a drum. The problem is that most drums have a tone that changes over time. When you hit a drum the tone is usually higher, and then drops the longer the tone rings. So depending of how long the drum is audible (depending on the decay, other instruments that plays the same time, etc) you can hear one drum sound like different pitches.

So my advice is to start to try to find the tone (by ear, comparing to a sine tone, using a tuner, etc). Then listen to the drum in context to where it’s used, since you may find that it sounds different there!

Kicks are often best tuned with a tuning software, since they can have a low fundamental frequency, which is hard to hear by ear. But having a tuned kick to your song can make a difference for the better.

I should also mention that many drums don’t have a distinct fundamental frequency, i.e. a clear tone. A snare, for example, can often be perceived as lots of tones, depending of its rich content of overtones. Two users may very well hear that snare to be in 2 different tones.

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

• The post has been modified 2 times, last modified 5 years, 5 months ago by Henrik.

[Simon Jones_1]

This article will go into how to select pitches for your entire drumset that sound good together, using the Drum Tuning Calculator TTRockStars.

[aaron999]

I understand this is an old topic, but I just have to butt in anyway. There are NO SET RULES with drums and tuning. There are basics we tend follow, but I think as drummers we can all agree that it’s like a 90% custom instrument all around. From tuning to technique, you do what you like, and what feels right. And isnt that the beauty of our instrument?

I too have pondered how to find the fundamentals of each drum in Ezdrummer, as I myself like to tune to key. Everything just sounds better that way to me, and your really good so long as whatever your playing isnt more than a step or 2 away from what your tuned too. However, someone did make a point of clashing tones with other instruments, and they’re absolutely right,  so its something to watch out for.

From what I can tell (going off of the ‘Made of Metal’ ez pack) the base tuning is fairly standard for the whole kit.

10″ Tom- 147hz (D3)

12″ Tom- 110hz (A2)

14″ Floor- 82.5hz (E2) (a very standard tuning, that you’ll find on most kits, or something very close, since it can work on 12-16 inch drums)

16″ Floor- 73.5hz (D2)

Snare- 196hz (Standard G, sits well in most situations) (also works well at 220)

Kick- 49hz (G1) (or 55hz A1, to match a higher tuned snare)

Hope this helps. I tune my acoustics to these tones to match up and trigger Ezdrummer, and they sound mint. This also allows me to capture both the actual drum sound and match it with a sample, which can really make a mix sound amazing. We all definitely play better when we sound good, and this setup works well for me, and I’m an all genre playe . From Jason Mraz and Jamiroquai to stuff like BFMV and 3 inches of blood.

[Author]

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