つっちーの「太鼓奇談」第六回｜ドラムセットチューニング概論

Dear readers of the JPC Newsletter, I'm Tsucchi, who is in charge of the Yota story for this magazine. How are you all doing? I'm currently writing this manuscript in Sapporo, where the wind is blowing cold and it's snowing a lot.

I just ate a very delicious soup curry at a soup curry restaurant called "Garaku" in Susukino, but it was spicy. I looked at the crazy monitor engineer on our tour who was recklessly receiving the maximum spiciness of 40 spiciness, and I tried a modest number of 15 spiciness, but even so, I was sweating all over my body, my nose was dripping, and I couldn't stop crying. I had a sip of that 40 Spicy once before, and it was a scorching heat.If I were to compare it to drums, it would be as intense as ``listening to the ride cymbal of Tony Williams, who is in the best possible condition, legatoing his explosive be-bop'' right in front of me.
Normally, I would have said something like ``280 BPM blast beat'' or ``two basses over 200 on one leg,'' but for some reason Tony Williams came to my mind. Maybe Tony's yellow Gretsch came to mind because it was curry...

Well, it's a really insignificant story and I could just end it like this, but this time I had a rare request from Drum City Manager Nishio, and I'd like to tell you what it is...

"Contains explanations and advice about professional tuning, which we receive many requests from our readers."

So I thought I'd take a look at some information about it.

First of all, I'm often asked by drummers, roughly speaking,

"I don't know how to tune it."

This is really often said. This applies to both professionals and amateurs. To be frank, what I'm doing with everyone is "physically" the same. Just tightening and loosening the screws.

So why do you make money just by turning screws?

I feel that this comes down to accuracy and speed. In the professional field, both recording and live performances are a race against time.
It's very rare that you can spend hours tuning your drums. As a rough guide, it will take about 30 minutes at most to tune a standard 4-piece set + snare drum. 15 minutes at the earliest.
If it's a recording, it might be okay to take an hour or so, but if it takes an hour at a live performance, you might end up thinking, "Oh, that guy's too busy."
On the tour I'm currently on with Eikichi Yazawa, instruments are brought in at 9 a.m. and can only be put on stage between 10:30 and 11:00. During that time, guitar strings and drum heads are changed in the wings of the stage and in the hallway of the dressing room.
Then, we set up the instruments on the stage.

It goes by so quickly. At this time, what state was the drum set in? It looked like it was set up as usual, the sound engineer was setting up the microphone, and it looked like it was ready for a live performance right away, but it was tuned to a high-pitched pitch.
Yes, it's a head stretch. There are many ways to do this, but on Eikichi Yazawa's tour, most of the drummers are foreigners, and some request that they always stretch their heads, so I do the same thing, so I do a can-can first, set it up, and then have lunch. After that, the instrument check begins with the other roadies.
It's here that I tune the drums for the first time, but the guitars, keyboards, and basses are pounding all around me. In that process, we quickly create the best sound of the day.
The work progresses with friendly banter, but my ears are in full tuning mode.
Gradually loosen the stretched head and find the point where the drum is thickest and has the core. The drum set is tuned in ascending order. He hits the lowest kick with a bang. Checking the mute setting, the front tension, the attack of the hitting surface, the overall sound, the hardware...it took about 5 minutes. The sound that is not passed through the microphone echoes in the hall. At that time, the sound engineer seemed to be casually checking the sound of the hall.
Tune the floor tom, tom, and snare, check the overall balance, and make final adjustments. Mute and resonance controls.

Ah, I'm sure that's what you want to hear.
But this is very difficult to explain in writing.

I try to organize what I get intuitively from listening to "sound" in my head and translate it into a numerical perspective, but this theory is difficult to explain. If I had to say it, I would say that I think of the ``overall atmosphere'' first. I don't end up being complacent; the sounds fly forward, and I feel like they're resonating with me as well.
It's my usual practice to say that the top head is the pitch and the bottom head is the timbre, but there is an interesting feeling here. That is "dividing".

If you tune it roughly like this and try to produce a sound, you might find yourself saying, ``Huh? There are strange overtones.'' It often happens to us too. At times like these, aren't you all trying your best to deal with the overtones?

At times like that, I ignore the overtones and tune the next drum. As I progress through this process, and when I get to a certain level of progress, I return to the drum in question and feel like I can approach it with fresh ears, and in most cases the problem is easily resolved.
This is because a drum set is made up of a variety of instruments, so if one of the two toms changes, the one next to it often changes as well.
As I continued to play low tom and high tom with the overtones of the floor tom being strange, I wondered, where did the overtones of the floor disappear? That's not true at all.
The other drums help out. They resonate, absorb each other, and form an ensemble as a single instrument.
Therefore, this is exactly the point where people who can easily fall into it easily.

Individually, they sound good, but when they come together, it's hard to believe.
I'm suffering from the triple trouble of not being able to get rid of it, not being able to stretch it, and having no core. Even if you try to make drums of different sizes and locations sound equally good, you won't be able to get them all together.
Have a clear image of the sound, what kind of sound, how to play, and what kind of music you want to play. Please worry seriously.

A kick with a strong core, a plump and expressive snare, a sexy high tom, a deep low tom, and a mischievous floor tom. For example, if you try tuning with this image in mind, you might be freed from the ``everything sounds good'' disease and become ``all the sounds you like.''
The sound of musical instruments is a world of 100 different people and 100 different colors.

I always think that the things that people around the world say ``what you should do'' are rarely applicable to you. The real pleasure of music is to pursue what kind of music you want to play, and discover things by trying things out.
We are just helping people do that. That's why it's so important to have conversations with players like, ``That's great, do you know this?'' What do the performers feel and what do they want to express? We constantly accumulate experience and knowledge to meet these demands. Not just music, but books, movies, art in general, delicious food, alcohol, romance, encounters and farewells, and music is a wonderful way to share various events and thoughts in life.

Of course, the latest equipment is great, but in order to create your own sound when it's all you have, you need a broad perspective, flexible thinking, and tough mental strength. I am still training myself. There's no way I could have said something like that lol
Feeling this way, I'm sure that somewhere today I'm having a mental conversation with an instrument I've never met before. When we go on tour, we spend several months with the same instrument, and there are times when we're told that we're in a good mood or how cute we are, and other times when we completely bend over and get looked at like we don't know. A woman's heart, the autumn sky, and the heart of a musical instrument are all changeable.
I feel that the basics of tuning are whether or not you can enjoy it to the fullest.

Sorry for not being able to explain anything concretely. I sincerely hope that the younger readers will enjoy their new life experiences, and that the older readers will be able to fully pour out the ups and downs of their lives up until now, and hear a rich sound. I believe that music doesn't just exist in major places; it can be found on every street corner and in everyone's heart. I would like to end my New Year's greetings by expressing my gratitude to all the readers who have been playing such wonderful music over the past year, and thank them for their continued support in 2014. I pray that 2015 will be a year filled with as much brightness and love as possible for everyone and this country.
Ah, this doesn't mean the series is over...
Maybe lol

Shimotsuki 2014
Yoshinori Tsuchida