5 Common Snare Drum Tuning Mistakes

Does your snare drum sound bad? Well you're in luck since today were talking about 5 common snare drum tuning mistakes!

Big thanks to Sweetwater for sponsoring this video. Check out the heads I use on my kit:
Snare Batter:
Snare Side:
Tom Batter:
Tom Reso:
Kick Batter:
Kick Reso:
Other Drum/Recording Gear:

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0:00 Intro/Word from sponsor
0:56 Snare Wire Tension
1:47 Snare Side Head Too Loose
2:34 Wrong Snare Side Head
3:38 Batter Head Tuning
4:35 Snare Wire Placement

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[rdavidr]

Who is guilty of doing any of these? 👀

[GeoffBosco]

All of these "mistakes" can be useful effects in certain contexts.

[judecrawford]

Day 3 of asking David to convert a bass drum into a snare drum

[shellshockmultimedia]

The "too highly tuned" snare sounded incredible to me!

[nomiS.]

Its kinda impossible how this dude still has 217K subs, he should have 1 million right about now.

[YodaMan-]

sweetwater gives you candy too? i thought i was special :(

[LaTigerGenesis]

your drum sound, like production and mixing, is the dark horse of your channel. beyond the practical drum ideas and hacks, the evolution of your home recording technique has been a super influential tool. all that to say, you rip, dave!

[indigotheindieghost]

3:52 holy shit, that's about 90% of all 90s alt rock snares

[amwitty_]

This is what the world needs, drum tuning tips from someone who knows how to edit

[julianyoungsings]

I have been watching your channel for over 5 years now. I'm so happy for you that you've gotten these sick sponsors and airtime on Drumeo. You deserve and much much more, Dave.

[bakercrz]

In addition to having the snare side head too low, a lot of people also crank the snare side head way too high. This will kill the that a lot of us want to hear in a snare drum. This often ends up happening as a result of trying to cover up tuning issues else where on the drum. Cranking the bottom head too high can make a poorly tuned snare "passable" sounding, but usually not great sounding. Before over-cranking the snare side head do these things first: First the obvious, go around the drum tension rod to tension rod making sure tension is even on each side. Then consider the interval between heads. If the pitch of the top head and bottom head aren't complementary to one another, the drum will have displeasing overtones. Intervals such as major thirds, perfect fourth, or perfect fifth work well.

[dan]

I just like that literally all of those sounds are usable. Not all the best, but all usable.

[cosmic]

Thanks for pointing these out man! They helped a lot.

[mrzachwright]

Killer cymbal selection for that intro track.

[DaisyHead]

Gonna be honest, using the wrong snare side head sounded pretty cool to me. I like it.

[teebee]

The gonky lower pitched bottom head example sounds great in some instances. I love a good gonk.

[valento]

Please do this for all drums! I suck at tuning so bad

[MRCMNTR]

My college needs to see this video, the majority of the snares there, most of the students who use the practice rooms would CRANK the reso head up so much that it will break. But thankfully our technical officer who is awesome, replaces them, but... *HE USES TOM HEADS ON THE RESO SIDES OF THE SNARE DRUMS!*

[richardrussellabalos]

I just noticed my snare was too tight thanks to this video I fixed it, THANKYOU David!!!!

[vercality]

i needed this video six years ago. you were the only drum youtuber i watched back then and there were not a ton of videos about how to tune a snare