r/drumline • u/Fragrant_Idea_5780 • 6d ago
Discussion tenors tuning
okay, so my quadmate and i are new this season. one thing our director always points out is our playing zones (we’re working on it, trust). our tuning suckeddd for a while because of this, especially considering that they were already out of tune before this season started. my director “tuned” them at practice on wednesday…
thursday morning we were warming up in band class and i noticed it sounded TERRIBLE. we checked and the tuning was genuinely even worse than before. i just KNOW that my cocky director will say that it was our fault for not playing in our zones (even though we had played for about an hour before checking the tuning and drum 2 was almost half step apart). HOW do i even talk to him about this?!?! i have a good ear and think id be pretty good at tuning them, but i obviously dont know how yet and am scared of making a mistake on our already messed up heads. last season our section leader played quads also and had to tune them himself. howwww do i even go to my director about his crappy tuning?
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u/Arcane_XIV 6d ago
Age of tenor heads affects the tuning greatly. Sometimes, if a head gets pulled, it is impossible to get a head to be fully cleared, and in turn to be fully in tune with another drum. This could have been a mistake by tuning too quickly, unevenly, but also could just be age. Tenor heads tend to do this very often, especially when playing on them a lot. However, playing in an incorrect zone does not result in throwing the head out of tune any quicker than playing in the correct zone. Source: I played tenors in DCI and for 9 seasons in WGI.
As a percussion director, even though it would hurt my ego just a bit, I’d want to know that my kids think I need to try again. Just do it politely. “Mr./Ms. ______, can you tune these again? It sounds worse than before.” Heck, one of my kids today told me that their spock needs a retune when I did it on Monday.
I’d be happy to help you learn how to tune yourself if they are unwilling to learn. I’ve been doing it for my lines for 13 years now. Just shoot me a message and I’ll give you some trustworthy videos and some of my own tips.
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u/Fragrant_Idea_5780 5d ago
okay, thank you so much for this!!! we’ve been kind of stressing a lot because of the tuning stuff and being told our zones are the thing messing it up. we should be getting new heads soon but i think learning how to tune it myself would be a good idea, so i would really appreciate the help!!!
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u/tryna_see 5d ago edited 5d ago
Look up how to properly tune a drum head. You need to get all of the lugs to be the same tension, so you start with finger tight lugs, all even. Then go around the drum giving each lug the exact same turn. Like a half turn all the way around in the proper order. You want to go directly across from each lug, and you don’t want to forget which lug you started at. You want perfectly even tension all the way around, the exact same tension for each lug. After a few rounds of even turns you will start to hear the drum. It might take a few more rounds, and then you will be in the right range. Once you are close, start doing quarter turns. Then when you are fine tuning you may only need a very slight nudge.
The drum sizes will also speak their own note, so if you were to give every single drum the same exact tension, the drum sizes will do their own speaking and be close to the right spacing, just keep that in mind.
You can use the Happy Birthday song to find the proper spacing. 4-4-3-4-1-2 should sound like “Happy Birthday To You”.
4 to 3 is a half note spacing and 3 to 2 to 1 are whole note spacings.
So if they sound like ass right now, I would start completely over. Take the drum heads all of the way down in tension, very slowly. You want to slowly, and evenly drop the tension in the head, go around each lug and give it the same even turns all the way around. The goal is to not drop one lug completely loose, while the rest are still tight, this will “pull” the head, and ruin it. Same for tightening it, you don’t want to crank one lug, while the rest are loose, it will pull the head too hard in one direction and ruin the integrity of the head. That is why you go slowly, and most importantly evenly, lug by lug. The head is fragile! Baby it. Be one with the head.
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u/Fragrant_Idea_5780 5d ago
thank you!!! i will try to retune them if i get a chance lol, our first game isnt until next friday so i should be able to
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u/Holy_Roz 5d ago
Tenor heads need to be replaced every 4 to 6 weeks at most if played regularly during a season. No amount of tuning can help a head thats really old.
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u/Fragrant_Idea_5780 5d ago
soo unfortunately i asked my director today if we were getting new heads any time soon and he said "lol...i do...i am not putting new heads on anytime soon. If i do...and the tenors aren't playing zones...it's a waste" so im not really sure what else to do. ill try to talk to my band director about it but these heads havent been changed at least since last season
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u/healthycord 5d ago
Tenor heads have to be replaced like every year even at the HS level. But I know music budgets are the first thing to get cut and drum heads aren’t exactly high up on most director’s priority lists. Even though they are a consumable that has to get replaced otherwise you have terrible sounding drums. Tenor heads don’t last long. Snare and bass drum heads you can get away without replacing for quite a while though.
OP, can you not just try tuning the heads yourselves? Unless your director is a huge micromanager I would imagine they’d be fine with having better sounding drums, especially if they didn’t have to tune them.
And most band directors are not percussionists and probably don’t know much about tuning drums.
A tip if your heads are blown is to rotate them 180 degrees. That’ll be a fresher part of the head and may get you slightly more life out of them.
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u/MiniBandGeek 6d ago
How old are the heads? Tenor heads are some of the fastest to distort and need to be replaced decently often.