How do you guys tune your snares?

Great video! Kristian makes your snare PHAT! Machen Sie Ihre Snare übergewichtig!! Feed it beer (German Beer!) and strudel!

As a drummer of just over 40 years(shit im old) and a recording engineer of 30+ years I have learned a few things about drums and recording them. The first thing I learned is if it sounds good then it is good, regardless of the technical aspects of things, some drums just sound awful no matter what you do with them(and price) and some sound amazing. All things aside if you want bottom end from a drum at source the depth of the drum is the least important part. Depth is usually about speed, Its kind of like the release on a compressor. Taking a 14 inch snare, an eight inch depth wont be lower in pitch than a 5 inch depth simply because eight inch is more than five, it will usually be a combination of factors. Pitch of a drum is depicted by its diameter, how thick the shell is and its tuning. A 14 inch snare will be lower in pitch than a 13 because of the larger diameter. Thicker shells resonate at a higher pitch and are louder. Thin shells are lower pitched but not as loud. A kick drum is loud because of the overall diameter, usually 20 to 24 inch and is usually made really thin for the low end. So the recipe for a fat snare(in my experience) 14 inch snare(depth doesnt really matter) Stay away from super thick shells. I like metal snares like steel/brass but thinner shelled wood snares can sound huge. tuning Think of snare tuning like this. The batter head sets the pitch and the reso head sets the sustain. Tune the ring/sustain in/out with the reso head but keep it relatively tight and the snare wire response will be faster, the tighter it goes though the less it will ring. The batter head sets the pitch, if its a touch too ringy detune the bottom two lugs to control ring, drummers have their own methods and they are all a little weird and wonderful. I tend to like my drums a little live sounding and dont use moon gel/damping etc. The last thing I would say to drummers is to remember your drums sound totally different sitting behind them to what someone standing in front of them or a mic hears and tune your drums to the guitars not for yourself. Love your channel, thank you for a great video

a snare drum from the 90s is vintage now? man, that makes me feel so old :P

Great video and wise words! Jens Bogren taught me the same when I was at his studio. You have to go Looooow!

At last someone with taste. I am sick and tired of everyone telling me that the pif pif sound of their snare is good. Nice video man keep it up. Always quality content only

This is the first time ever I see a video on drums tuning in terms of frequency rather than "tension" and using drumdial and stuff. Great content as usual and please, PLEASE: send stuff! :D

I absolutely love my tune bot. Tuning by ear is possible if you're good, but getting perfectly tuned intervals among your toms, plus nailing a consistent snare is impossible without it. Every guitarist uses a tuner, drums are no different. Love that you rock the pearl floating 14x6.5, I've got the Maple and it sounds great. I'm a drummer though and fell into the "tuned too high" camp. Oops. Thanks for the tips as always!!

My brother is a drummer...we always fight for the tuning. I need to show him this video!

Man, those Pearl brass free floating snares were / are rad (and loud as hell). Really enjoyed this and thanks for sharing.

The 235 / 325 Hz sounds to me very much like my absolutely preferred Metal Drummer, Cozy Powell! HE was the guy with the most beef and power in his drums. His snare hits were bigger than life! Good video tut here, Kohle! DANKESCHÖN aus Österreich!

My favourite part was there you glued three tunings to hear em one after another. The only thing that changed was snare!😁 Really cool!

So you're basically tuning the resonant head around a perfect fifth higher than the batter head. It makes a lot of sense to explain the thickness in the sound from a musical theory perspective.

I liked the 275Hz / 300Hz combo the best, personally. I think the other side of drum tuning that would be cool to explore in another video is the interaction between the drums and the bass and guitar. For example the higher tuned snare might work better with some guitar or bass sounds than others.

As a drummer by trade, I think its safe to say this: When the resonant head is too low compared to the batter head...ready for it?... they are out of phase....ha ha! I hope I made you laugh. You are correct and your tones prove it! Great video as always!

Tuning low is very much in vogue for heavy styles right now, but Tim Redmond of Snapcase still takes the prize for coolest snare sound ever, on "Progression Through Unlearning".

I would be super interested in a tom tuning video, especially in connection with the Tune Bot!

I found the video interesting. It was interesting how the ring changed with the adjustment of the resonance head. I would love to see the proposed video on snare drum processing.

Awesome! I’ll trust your tuning and selections, dude!

I would love this same video but with kick drums! The kick of the drummers i have recorded always sound weird and weak, not metal at all. I always learn a lot with your videos thank you a lot!

Nice lesson. Put more drums on your videos. Thanks

Cool Kohle - Would love to see how you tune (and mic) toms.

That kick though!

The most important item here is "how does the snare sound itself" and "how does the snare sound in the whole band mix" thing. At least I know, that is certainly where I am struggling with... doing everything individually, and then in the end nothing fits together... Thanks for giving input in a direction I had not considered currently...

Ever since I bought a big, fat brass snare I haven't looked back. It is 95% perfect for me. Now i just need to try your tuning recommendations.

Very helpful Kohle, thanks! It would be great to see videos like this also for toms!

My band's drummer, and studio session drummer for other projects, got a Ludwig Black Beauty snare for his kit last year. It's the best snare I've ever heard and had the pleasure to record. He uses the Drum Dial to tune his kits.

That’s one of my biggest issues with drummers that don’t take tuning their drums seriously especially the snare drum !! Thank You for the tips on low tuning the snare !!

17:45 when the drums only start, its such a great sound, wow :)

There are a few ways to keep the snare drum tune high but sound low. You can also get a big fat snare drum or use a cutout drumhead and place it on top of your snare drum. If you do that it will still have the sustained but it will lower the fundamental pitch. Another option is to detune the two or three lugs closest to you if you are sitting at the drum. It will lower the pitch if you do that but if you needed to be a higher in Pitch again add tension to the lugs across from those. There is another drum tuning tool bald drumdial. It measures the tympanic pressure of each lug. I as a drummer have developed the year that I have for tuning over 10 years. But I still have trouble sometimes it can be helpful I'm sure to use a tune bot the place you are in maybe very loud and it can become a crutch.

Sounds great to me!

This could be the greatest video about snare recording. Amazing

Listen to this man, he knows his shit!

I tune my snare in different ways, a lot of it based around the sound of the band itself and what will fit in to help complete it. After that part is figured out, I decide on the shell type, depth, and the heads. It's sometimes possible to make cheap drums sound good with the right head combinations, but not always. For heads, I usually use the coated ambassador for most applications. The coating adds a nice little bit of muffling without removing the ring/resonance of the head and has enough warmth and attack. If you need to cut off some ring, moon gels are the ticket away from muffling rings. The 275/300 tuning works well on a maple or mahogany shell for jazz if that's your thing, but can work for some rock when tuned a little lower, like 250/300. I like maple/mahogany for wood, brass for metal. A Tama Bell Brass snare from the 90s is my Holy Grail of metal snare drums. 6.5x14 or 7x14 has always been my preferred depth because you can tune them super high like a marching snare if needed but also can tune them low and fat for metal and funk. Now, I don't have a tunebot, just ears. I'll use a tension meter and tune by ear to tension. This won't give as much accuracy but if your ears are good, the drum is good, the heads are good, and the room sounds good, the rest is easy to dial in. Taking a little extra time in the setup saves time in the post processing.

OMG, that's an awesome sound! Tha's what i was looking for in the snare sound

Mooooom!! Kohle's made another great video for us, and now I really need a tune-bot! Thanks master Kohle 🤘🏻🤘🏻🍻

Great video Kristian. I used to make the mistake of letting drummers tune their drums too many times. It took a while until I realized that they mostly don't know what they are doing.

Great video! I’m a huge advocate for tuning lower for bigger sounding results. I also use the tune-bot and my favourite batter head tones are around the same mark as yours. I have found that those numbers can change with thicker heads that have a lower timbre though. I’m intrigued by the 300~325 range for the reso. I’ve always loved 400hz for a snare reso as I find it really opens up like a presence knob on an amp around this frequency. But I’ll do some A/B’s under the mics and see what sounds better!

I played as drummer father`s 14x8 and it sounded very fat. Old Tama Superstar set from 80s, with concert toms. Very massive tone, but needed bright skins, and higher pitch.

4:57 that moment of realization. Made me laugh out loud haha.

You explain things so well. This is gold

Another excellent video with great information presented in an easily digestible and light hearted way. Thank you Kristian. Keep up your great work. Cheers and beers

If you want to be able to tune higher without losing the punch, try and get a bell bronze snare (also known as bell brass, e.g. Tama Bell Brass). They have much more low frequencies than snares of other materials. I own one and recording has gotten so much more joyful now :)

I use a digital drum dial. I love my Pearl aluminum snare. Even after trying other high end (brass and wood) snares I still go back to my aluminum snare.

That final sound of the snare sounds Gorgeous Kohle... can't wait for a video of explaining that post-processing (as you stated in 17:27) :-)

Super gutes, hilfreiches Video!!! ❤️

Super interesting video. I'm a drummer loves a high tuned ringy snare. I don't make metal, more heavy melodic proggy stuff, but I think I'll try the low tuning for the heavier stuff. Great information.

After hearing the snare sound of Clive Burr on Killers, Igor Cavalera on Beneath the remains and Mick Harris on Harmony Corruption... I wouldn't call that a fat snare at all man...

I'd definitely be interested in the post-processing you do on snares. Great video!

Kristian Kohle Muchas Gracias !!

I agree, it's better a deeper snare. With 5.5" snares if you want a fat sound you usually tune them lower but they sound flabby. I could never get my 5.5" snares sound great as I want when they're tuned low. At least with 6.5" you can tune a bit higher, as you say Kristian, but still retain the deepness needed

Sehr geil genau das Video das ich gerade gebraucht habe XD ... Bitte Bitte genau so ein Video noch ein mal für die Toms :-P !!!

I swear on Satans name that been all week listening to Metallica Admiring his snare tone, and today you up load this

I'm feeling that I've learned a lot just watching this video! Thanks man!

Schön, das mal aus einer Nicht-Drummer-Sichtweise zu sehen. Ich nutze den TuneBot auch. Außerdem verfechte ich seit Jahren tiefgestimmte Snares ohne Dämpfung. Nur meine einlagigen Felle brauchen einen Dot in der Mitte, sonst sind die nach zwei Songs durch.

Fantastic video! I have a very similar approach, and even go a bit lower on all of the Horrendous records. This should be required viewing for all drummers!

Great video! Drummers should know more about how to work in the studio. I've recorded many drummers who use small drums, and play softly, but still expect heavy and fat results. Also many drummers put cymbals very low next to toms, because it's easier to play, but it also causes horrible cymbal bleed to tom mics. Same with the snare tuning, it's easier to play when it's tuned high, but you can't get a fat tone out of it that way. I personally really like CLEAR Emperor or Controlled Sound heads for the batter head. Clear head has ever so slightly more upper punch, and Emperor or CS is not as ringy as Ambassador, and lasts longer.

Looks like my comment was nixed...use a frequency chart to find the key of the songs corresponding frequency. For example..if the key of the song is B..247 or 248 would be your target top head tuning frequency. Hope this adds value to what your doing here...great video as always! Prost!

Cool video!! I will put this to the test! Thanks

Cool. The hoops make a difference too. The more deeper\fat of that aluminium is because of the power hoops instead of die cast on brass. I like S-Hoop on top with Power Hoop on bottom. Good work!! Rock on!!

shell, head & snare choice tuning & snare tightness the right mics cohesion between close and room mics and of course, the drummer themself

No hate! That sounds really nice and I seem to like the wires sounds in there too. I need to work on this. 😊

It's very educational. I would like to see the tuning and recording kik and toms:) Thank you!

brass ring is great but acrylic is balanced try converting an old sonor acrylic 10 inch deep tom to a snare it gives all the right body and takes single ply heads like a hammer of god, brass does great though world max hand hammered are affordable too, got to really work at tuning

Very cool stuff 🤘🔥 could you maybe also include the fundamental note you see on the tune-bot in addition to the lug pitch? That would make a great video even greater.....

I feel like drum sounds are starting to get a bit out of control again like those bloated, super cannon-blast Bob Rock thing again. I love great drums but they just don’t sound like real drums which I guess makes sense in the quantized, auto-tuned world of metal these days. Not my thing but clearly some people are into it.

I will totaly buy that course, even if I think that I'm not a beginner anymore. But there is always new stuff to learn, isn't it?

Thoughts on regular use of rimshots - good, bad, context dependent, add them later??

Out of topic, tom tom sound pretty good too. Haha! Thank you for the tuner information.

Snare is a king

Saving this video, so usefull!! thank you Kristian!

Great video once again!

hello, please make a video of how you use tunebot :) a lot of people would appreciate it

Hey Kohle!!!, do you tune your toms to specific notes and intervals (3rds, 4rths, 5ths)? I know producers/drummers who tune their toms that way, sounds very musical. I don't know if it would work on say a brutal death metal band that uses chromatism, in pop it makes sense because of the melodic nature of the music. Maybe this is an idea for a future video, cheers!!!

You have to make a video of how to tune a snare drum! Congratulations Khole.

Dude that video is gold

Still waiting for "how to make ezdrummer less boring"

Please do a more detailed video about the processing that you put on that snare. It sounds awesome.

Great video and a great channel. It would be interesting to see some post-processing.

When will you make the video on snare slams and how to mix them properly? great video anyway, you have great sounds and you did a great job with all your productions!

Great vid, really interesting tips!

The cranking the reso is also dangerous, because it might introduce some very nasty ONGG ONGG and excessive pingy ringing and overtones when it's waaayy too tight. Also the balance is something good to experiment. The 235&300 had already some nasty off sounding resonance. In my opinion. But the final result is was great.

A Drum tuning Video would be great ?

Great video! But I found "your" tuning dissonant for some reason, so I did the math and found out why. The 235 Hz of your batter head are a bit sharper than the note A#, which sits at ~233 Hz, the B above it would be at ~247 Hz. The 325 Hz of your resonance head are a bit flatter than the note E, which sits at ~330 Hz. E and A# will be quite dissonant, even more so if one is sharper and the other is flatter, so I guess that was what I didn't like. E and B however should work well together, so maybe try that next time? FWIW, here's the formula to convert notes to frequencies, using the A @ 220 Hz as the reference note, where "semitones" is the offset from the reference note, which can also be negative: 2 ^ (semitones / 12) * 220 So... 2 ^ (+1 / 12) * 220 = A220 + 1 semitone = ~233.082 Hz = note A# 2 ^ (+2 / 12) * 220 = A220 + 2 semitones = ~246.942 Hz = note B 2 ^ (+7 / 12) * 220 = A220 +7 semitones = ~329.628 Hz = note E Simple, huh? :) Or if that looks too intimidating, here it is in words: The next time when you're recording a song rooted in E or B, try tuning the batter head up to ~247 Hz and the resonance head to around 329-330 Hz, and see what that does. Should sound way cleaner. (For songs rooted in other notes, just use the above formula.) It's OK, you can thank me later. ...or just keep on making these amazing videos. :)

I'm excited! I must try this trick ;)

Exceptional Video, Thank You!

I used to like me some "311" super high snare pop, but nowadays my tuning is getting lower and lower, just like my sacroiliac. I was a lil shocked how low I go tho. Apparently my goldilocks zone is from around 240 to 260hz, depending on reasons. 230-235 was a little in the dumps for me tbh, and 275 was a bit high. I'll prolly never do 300 or above tho, unless I'm zoomin my Delorean back to 1998. Cheers! 🍻

Lovin the snare drum philosophy... Track it beefier. Gonna put that into play this week on a session...

I’ll trust your tuning and selections, KOHLE! Maybe i should get these Pearl Brass Snare for my Metal Stuff, it sounds great :-D.

You cant go wrong with a 14x6.5 brass snare, they just sound great.

Have to try those setting on Tunebot, I usually tune my bottom head around F#4, G4-G#4, 392 to 400-410....And the top around C#4-D4 or E4, 277 to 329....lol...the Bohnam style....Don't try the new Tune Bot buy more beer instead I throw it out of the window and didn't drink anything....I still use the old one.

Hmm interesting, I seemed to like the first one best, maybe I just don't like low tuned snares though

I’ve been guilty of tuning my snare too high. The reason it was done is for something you mentioned early in the video: the guitars eat up the sustain. In a live setting, you’re then left with just the attack, which is what needs to cut through. How do I get my blast beats to cut through? Tuning my snare really high. Yes, it sucks for recording, but how often is a gigging drummer in a studio vs playing live? And that is why our snares sound like crap in a studio.

Great lesson with the humour too🤣

Interesting to see how many people are digging lower snares now. I still prefer the sound of a screaming higher pitched snare á la Tool/Rage Against The Machine/Audioslave but i guess i'm oldfashioned. I like the fact that you emphasize the importance of the source though

No longer will my snare sound like a horse taking a shit onto a wet newspaper. Thank you!

I just tried to put a resonant head on a snare for the 1st time. It popped before it even reached 200Hz. I used tunebot.

Fantastic video, I love the fat snare 🥁 ! 🇺🇸

Nice video, great info. Don´t forget to add the snares tension factor to the academy, I have found that when you have the tension too high the snare shoke and sound really crapy. But I don´t know when is tight enough for fast metal.

Nice Vid, Bro! Thx.