As a long time drummer (next year makes 50 years), I would like to offer something that few people address: The vast majority of the folks in the audience do not understand, nor do they care about the sound your drums make. In many instances, they are not even actively listening to the music and in some cases, don't want music because it makes it hard to converse with their friends. My point? Tune and muffle for yourself.... for what YOU want to hear from your drums when you play because very, very often, you are the only one who cares what they sound like. Food for thought. Of course, if you are the 1% who made the "big time", this doesn't apply. lol.
I agree. Players are going to be more in tune with the details of their sound than anyone else. Your bandmates are second. And the audience might "feel" how good it sounds without understanding why. Be yourself and enjoy the process and that will translate without any effort to please others.
This is my first year drumming, and right away someone warned me about anyone who talks in absolutes. And yet that seems to be exactly what many do. Always muffle, never muffle. Put a king duvet and a pillow in your bass, get the laundry out of your bass! Never bury the beater! Even though most of the expert drummers I've seen so exactly that, and sound awesome doing it.
Don't lose sight of that! You're gonna figure out stuff that works for you and stuff that doesn't, but other stuff works for other people too. There are objectively correct answers about setup, ergonomics, and technique, but there's also a huge amount of subjectivity when it comes to sound
I think it’s more the drummers that muffle to not worry about tuning. You should learn how to tune and if u need to muffle for record to help with the frequency or to get a sound for a specific thing the. Ppl skip things like techniques and the basics. But the bass drum if you are going for speed then there are techniques for that. If u want power same thing, so things may differ depending on style or songs.
I'll mirror what a few have already commented on. As time goes by, you'll figure what make you tick. Muffling, no muffling, a little muffling etc. You'll come a balance where it works/is necessary to muffle and when you can leave the kit open. Personally, I leave mine open as possible, until a sound engineer tells me to muffle it.. I do it to make his job easier and to not be pig-headed or something. But, Simon Phillips doesn't muffle (except a little on his kicks) and his sound is unmistakable. Good luck on your journey brother!
I've said this before. This is by FAR, like not even anything close, the BEST channel for drummers. I've always been against muffling because when I was young I didn't know what I was doing and just had tape all over the kit. I'm still against most muffling and controlling tones using different heads instead. That being said, anyone that's played gigs in different venues and studios knows do what you need to do to get the correct sound.
Hey Cody, great video as usual. My 2 bits worth: I used to use various drum gels around my kit to even out tuning and over-ringing, and then, through watching various video tutorials including some of yours, I discovered I wasn’t doing a very good job of tuning. Now with better tuning skills and better positioning of my rack tom and snare, together with edge control heads (Evans EC’s, Remo Pinstripes etc.) I have never been so happy with the sound of my drums! Drummers of the world unite and rock on!
Anyone who has played enough gigs or recorded any sessions as a sideman, band member or artist, with different kits, sizes, quality, ages/ conditions of heads/ rims, etc; Whether large rooms with mics/ PA, or small coffee houses with no production, or various types of music on sessions (multi mic or one mic) - KNOWS at SOME point, you NEED to have a knowledge of tools/ methods to control or manipulate the sound of the kit for the musical situation you are working in. Too many comments on here that appear to be based on limited first hand experience. Play just ONE gig with a backline/ rental kit, and you KNOW that gaff tape can be a gig saver 🤘🏻❤
100%. I've played hardcore shows in VFW's with no mics and no muffling, club shows where the FOH engineer didn't know what to do with unmuffled drums, so it was expected to have a pillow in the kick and at least some moongels on the toms and snare. Playing in worship settings lately & it's everything heavily muffled. You gotta tune, muffle and play to the room, & no room is the same.
@@jmfs3497 Not a terrible idea - but I have almost NEVER had time to change and audition heads at a regular gig - out on the road/ a string of dates there is often time, but usually not on a typical on nighter. I do usually keep spare heads in the bags w the drums tho - always be prepared!
I totally agree with how you summed it up at about 12:25 into the vid. It's all about the sound you want and need for a situation and for the type of music. Nice episode.
I used to use hand towels on the snare and toms. I never figured out a good temporary kick drum muffler on my old kit, other than walking around the kit between songs and throwing a folded blanket inside. (no reso). I now have a Gretsch with Pratt mufflers and I am learning how to dial those in as needed. So far it has come in handy. Almost as handy and tensioning the snare while playing. I dial in the toms and snare as I'm playing.
You guys pour so much incredible content out there! Thank you! I’m embarrassed to say for years (decades even 😬) I’ve believed gaining control of the sound of the drum through tuning was impossible for me, but now I I’m excited to hone this craft! Thank you again!
I have always used e rings on all of my toms and a ring and moon gels on my snare. My thought was that since the kit was a lower-tier kit I would just not be able to get the sound out of the drums that I wanted. So, I never bothered REALLY learning how to tune them. I mean, I knew the fundamentals of tuning, I just didn't take the time to really sit and fiddle and get them dialed in. And I didn't fully appreciate the significance of the reso head and the relationship between the reso and batter. Just getting each head in tune with itself was about all I ever worried about. Recently, I purchased a new kit. Pearl Session Studio Select paired with a Masters maple 14 x 5.5 snare. While awaiting their arrival I watched TONS of videos on tuning (this channel quickly became my favorite). I was in the headspace that you mentioned in this video. "How dare I buy these expensive drums and muffle them in any way!?" Which, ill-guided as that thought may have been, it did force me down the path of learning how to properly tune a drum and appreciate the journey of getting to know each piece of my kit. As I watched more and more videos and reflected on my own philosophy of drumming and tuning I came to the same conclusion you did in this video. It's about achieving a certain sound. My sound. The sound that is required for the gig at hand. The ability to manipulate the sound of the drums given various external factors. Who cares what tools one needs to pull out of their toolbox to achieve any one of those things. As of now, my current setup is running all of my toms (10,12,14,16) wide open with EC2 batter and EC reso. My kick has an EMAD 2 batter and EMAD reso with a small muffle pad (the one that came with the kit) barely touching the batter. My snare has a Remo coated pinstripe batter and a clear Ambassador reso with one moongel on the batter. Though, I think with some more time I will also get to the point that I can run it wide open as well if I wanted to. Currently, I just can't get the sound out of it that I want without throwing the moongel on it. Too much overtone and crosstalk between the snare and the 10 inch rack. Anyway, thank you for this wonderful channel. It has quite literally been the catalyst for a fundamental shift in the way that I approach my kit. Peace and love.
Interesting.. I recently just bought the same exact kit.. I’m still messing around with heads and tuning and I’m finding getting that 12in dialed in pretty difficult.. but I feel what you’re saying, achieving the sound I want is almost impossible without a little muffling.. however I still need to experiment with different tuning methods.. I always was an evans guy until I started using Aquarian, so I’m patiently waiting the arrival of my new heads.. good luck brother
Even for Sounds Like a Drum you guys have surpassed yourselves in the amount of sense you talk in this vid and how true every word and statement is , I love my drums unmuffled, fine tuned with Tunebot , a towel in the kick that's it , but when necessary muffling is a tool that it would be beyond selfish to ignore , when we play with a band, live or studio, we're part of a team a collective and if as drummers we don't do everything we can to make our part as right as it can be in content and sound then we're failing in our role within that collective. Absolutely right when you say it's the terms used that are a put off, 'muffled' 'dead' 'muted' as opposed to 'open' 'resonant' 'singing' It's about time we all changed our vocabulary when it comes to tailoring our sounds !!! Thank you guys for another quality video !!! 👍👌
I remember the 70s when it was fashionable for pop/rock drummers to throw the reso heads off the toms and bass drums and tape the sloppy tensioned batter heads to complete sound death with paper handkerchiefs. Today I hate muffling of toms, and many great drummers share this view. The bass drums are treated very pragmatically depending on purpose. And trying many tricks on snare drums, I must say, that intelligent tensioning of the heads and the snares gives so many options for lively sounding drums without annoying overtones or wobbling tone floats. Let‘s summarize: Problems start with most (!) drummers being not able or willing to tune their instrument the right way. No excuse. No other instrumentalist (except piano, organ and keyboards) would ever be hired who could not tune his instrument. Great if you can afford to employ a good drum tech.
Excellent video! I tend to sit in the camp that if I use muffling I failed in tuning. You are so right that muffling is just a tool, and consider it to reach a certain sound that you have in mind. Bravo!
Exactly. Throw dogmatic thinking out the window, In art, and in every other part of life for that matter. That's a great message you've conveyed in this video.
I LOVED this video. I use a good old wallet for my snare muffling if I am playing the type of music that favors that style. Every tuning you showed today was completely usable in my opinion. Great stuff and info here on this channel!
YES, Yes. I literally have four pieces of tape on my 14x8 Ludwig hammered bronze snare. Ofc it sounds amazing without muffling but I just love that completely dry top head sound in a sort of medium range, rim shots are absolutely planet destroying!! I don’t care if it’s sacrilegious
I would like to play an 8" deep snare, I bet that thing rings like a beaut. Rn I run a Pork Pie Big Black 14x6.5, but for a few days recording an album this summer I got to upgrade to a DW Bell Brass guy that was superb...it's perfect ring and tone inspired me to get my not terribly shabby snare seriously dialed in tuning wise, and ever since I did I left the gels etc behind, it's like I became hyper aware of what my snare's previously untapped potential was and now can't bear to hear its voice cut short at all. Of course, if I need a different sound I will adjust that accordingly.
Great video, loved the muffled kit sound at the start of the video (they sounded super phat!) As many have mentioned here, knowing how to sculpt your sound for the gig or the session is a vital skill, made easier by superb tutorials like yours! That Acrolite sounds superb at all tunings, janky, dead and wide open!
Very much love this installment in the series, and totally agree that muffling is just one of many options for getting the right sound for the right music and/or setting. I was a little surprised that you didn't try Evans Onyx heads, at least on the batter sides. Those are certainly heads that don't ring much. I don't think I've ever seen anyone try using them on the reso side, but that's the sort of thing that would be right up your alley. Might give a sweetly muffled sound with just heads alone. Side note: For me, part of the fun of watching these videos is seeing what grooves Cody will play at various times in the videos. There are always straight-ahead grooves for demo purposes, but at least a few times in every one, he pulls out something jazzy, or funky, or swingy, or Afro-Cuban, or whatever. And always tight and interesting. Keep up the good work, Cody!
I like very light muffling on the snare Batter, sometimes a piece of paper folded or a business card towards the edge. A moongel to dry a lively ride. Felt strips on the bass drum.
Brave video and very tasteful. I consider myself to be a very good drum tuner. When I started taking tuning seriously, I experimented with everything. At first I fell into the extreme muffling rabbit hole. I used Remo O rings on every tom. I even put foam around the outer edges of the bass drum like a marching bass drum. I played a bass drum in DCI in 1991. Nowadays, I have a sound that I keep coming back to no matter how much I continue to experiment. First, I'll say this. When I play at clubs, I always arrive early and ask if I can tune the drums. I always seem to rip of a lot of duct tape and make drastic tuning changes from what was presented to me. I also understand that other similar blues/rock drummers will be using the same kit for that night. The sound techs are always amazed by how much EQ-ing they have to take off on the drum mics. I live in Japan and play at various sized clubs, but my method always works on any drum set and with any condition heads. Here's my secret sauce. Tom resos are a perfect fourth higher. The high and low tom fundamental pitches are a perfect fifth apart. The floor tom gets half a Moongel. Snare gets half a Moongel. Bass drum has a small pillow barely touch both heads. That's it. The only other variable is considering the fundamental pitches of the toms. 12 or 13 is B flat, 16 floor tom is E flat. If another drummer likes a higher tuning, I am flexible and go C and F. Bass drum has to have a little more than above wrinkle and then tune the batter to the room in a friendly relationship with the sound tech at the mixer. I swear by this for blues/rock. At any volume. With or without mics. It's the ideal middle of the road sound that most drummers at all levels are looking for. It works on my own cheap 1970's luan kit and on my Pearl Reference Pure. Personally I prefer all coated heads. Thanks for reading this far! I wonder who else has come to this same general conclusion.
I love all your videos. The production is so well executed and the info is detailed but not too much. I know you’ve talked about this before but one suggestion would be if you recorded all three versions to music and listened to each version in context within a track. This would help illustrate that depending on the style, levels, and mix, some drums might not need muffling due to where they sit overall or when used as an intentional stylistic choice. I remember one time while recording that I was trying to muffle out all the ring in my snare and toms only to find out later it didn’t matter much or rather didn’t enhance overall sound of the song like I thought it would. Love your channel. Keep doing what you’re doing 🤘🏻
I've never understood the sort of divided view on this topic, meaning the camps that have formed. I don't ever remember this being a thing in my early years of drumming. For me it has always been about the sound I'm after, whether live or in the studio, and what the space is also offering me sonically. There is a regionally located band here in NE that I've seen live a couple of times. The drummer places tea towels on the top third of his toms and snare. The thought has never entered my mind that he didn't know how to tune them, or that he shouldn't do that to his beautiful C&C drum set, but rather that he wanted a more seventies sound to bak the original music they were playing. It was a good, well suited sound that was affective.
These are all useful tools, and whatever combination of muffling and "correct" tuning vs asymmetrical tuning gets the desired sound and feel is valid. What's most interesting to me is that I have drums which I always leave wide open because I think they sound best this way, and others which I always muffle for the same reason; but only a few which I think play just as well in both camps. Not that the others sound bad in the reversed state, but they just seem to respond that much better in the specific combinations I've found.
Well said on every point. Some drums in some rooms will just be a problem, so do what you have to do to get the sound you want. Also, it really depends on your FOH or recording engineer. If they don't know how to EQ for the sound you want, giving them the closest possible sound to your desired end result before the mics even pick them up is your best case scenario. They can still completely miss the mark, though.
I like to use muffling on some of my drums my snare drum bass drum and both floor toms but not on my three higher toms I leave those wide open to cut through the mix better
My bass drums have no muffling, and sound great. My toms used to have Pinstripe batter heads when my music was prog-rock focused. I would occasionally use Deadringers on them to cut down some of the overtones, but mostly they didn’t need that. Now I have Ambassador coated batters on them, and for the jazz I’m now playing there’s no muffling needed. Btw my set is Yamaha Stage Custom Standard - and those shells, while inexpensive, are also great for generating modern drum sounds.
In my 30 years of drumming, I've never been a fan of ringy snare drums. I've always preferred a very short note with lots of attack. Toms and Kick can definitely change based on need.
I quit using muffling once I got my tuning to a reasonable place. A Jan 1990 issue of Modern Drummer was my guide. That was when I was 14! I did so because my Noble & Cooley ZerO Rings fell off when in transport. Today I take a pack of moongels, and a dw bass drum pillow just on case.
My first way to go is unmuffled, get the drums to sound good (you guys at sounds like a drum help me a lot to achieve that!). Then depending on the room I might use a bit on the bass drum (I use one my kids stuffed animals) that barely touches both heads inside. For the snare, I might wanna play a bit more like using a BFSD or a ring…to change drastically the sound for a certain song, or to change the feel. But nothing bothers me more than a sound guy that doesn’t even look and listen to the kit before asking me to put tape of gel on my instrument!
I don't use a lot of muffling, although it depends on the drum. My floor tom has some cotton balls in it, and a bit of gaff tape to get rid of some high overtones. Instead of doing the accordion fold or loop, I layer pieces of tape on top of one another, kinda like the black dots on tabla. My bass drum has an EMAD with the thinner foam ring, and a PowerStroke 3 front head with a 4" offset port, but nothing inside. It's a compromise - it almost sounds like a jazz bass drum when I feather it, with a long, clearly defined note, but when I lay into it, it works decently for rock (albeit ringier and not as tight). If I gigged with it more, I'd set it up for the gig, but this is my play-it-at-home-too-lazy-to-constantly-retune-it setup. Rack toms are wide open, as are most of my snares. I'm not against muffling per se, but I'm super-picky and it's very difficult to get it just right, and I'd rather my drums ring too much than not enough, unless it proves to be problematic for recording. The floor tom is slightly problematic, in that it rings a bit too long - after most of the sound has faded away, there's a really low fundamental that keeps going for a few more seconds. Any attempt to muffle it results in a sound that's a little duller than I like. Tuning the drum to fight itself can result in an amazing tone, but the decay is too fast, almost like someone put their hand on the batter head right after I hit it. I like the decay to be long enough that I can perceive it fading away.
Another great video, Cody and Crew! Can you please tell us, what is the snare behind you? Rich, brown wood with the Trick throw and the light on top? Looks like a stave of some kind. Beautiful looking instrument.
i prefer muffling only when i get my drums as well tuned as possible. i use old t-shirts so i can roll them up on the edge of the drum, drape them over the head, wrap the tshirt over the head for less cloth on the drum, or just toss them aside. it's super versatile, in about 15 secs i can go from ringos boxy sound to a loud open sound. no tape required.
Question for you Cody, what's your thinking about drum sounds with free floating cable tension hardware that only allows for even headed tuning but doesn't have the traditional bolted on lug hardware? Drums like WTS and Hudson Custom Drums.
Hey there! We’ve actually partnered with WTS on a few videos and have new ones coming out soon! They’re great instruments and you can’t argue with the ease of tuning and ability to switch it up on the fly. We’ve had a blast with them and found them to be warm and resonant with a huge tuning range! It’s true that the heads will always be tuned to the same tension but in the course of working with them it never bothered me at all. Hope that helps! -Cody
@@SoundsLikeADrum I own a Hudson Custom Drum set which is a similar hardware design as WTS. I have run into hardliners about even head tuning vs independent head tuning so it's interesting to hear your perspective on it.
Great, third video of this channel I'm watching, so time to subscribe! question: how would you tune/muffle a 20x14 bassdrum (ludwig neusonic) to get a nate smith/funky sound? any advice on which batter head to go for, and what do you put inside the bass drum? porthole yes/no? thank you som much!
Growing up listening to very "produced" drums sounds, like the infamous Phil Collins gated reverb snare (there are so many other examples), I find that I quite often have very unrealistic expectations of my "natural" drum sounds live and un-miced in the jam space. I realize I have spent the last 30+ years trying to mimic these recorded drum sounds and have my drum set sound that way IRL, with minimal microphones. I have chosen every head and cymbal to sound a certain way, and that was almost never based on how other live acoustic drums sounded in real life. Weird.
On a side note. That bass drum needs 2 plys on both batter and reso, a 50 pound sand bag, pillows, stickers, aluminum foil & a towel hanging all the way across for good measure 🤘
This channel is a wonderful discovery...BR, Lb and GK were my main influences...I like to imagine an engineer asking Buddy to muffle his drums...Kinda like asking a Bengal tiger to smile while hunting. I did however acquire a Bobby Columby fetish from his original Blood Sweat and Tears album. This could get long so I will stop here. Sincerely, Michael Hinton
Do you have an opinion on the Remo Muff L Ring Control products? For some reason my ear is good for finding the bad and ugly of my drum sound but not to help me solve the issues. I have a new $300 Yamaha with Remo Smooth White Emperor. Thanks for your videos. Listing to you is like going to drum school......for free!!!!
Could not agree more. Dampening is not a cure for bad tuning nor is prefect tuning the be all and end all. It's all options thats how Iv'e always looked at it. Tuning will come close but wont replicate dampening 100%. The bass drum is a perfect example of this. You will never get rid of the basketball sound without dampening. Getting rid of overtones on a low tuned snare is next to impossible. However a great snare tuning dampened gives you the sound without the bad overtones. At the end of the day its horses for courses, what ever works works. No matter how affordable or expensive a kit is they all will need good tuning and dampening at times. Physics stays the same if you have a no name kit or a DW. You might have less issues on a expensive kit and more on a cheap kit but they will share similar issues. Plus with dampening you can have a punchy sound and taking it off you have an open sound in seconds, without changing drums. Now thats a bonus.
I have a question that's unrelated to the episode (to tuning or the drum sound) How do you record your voice? Do you use the room mic you use to record drums? Or is there a separate mic for your voice? It sounds so clean
Hey there! I mic Cody up with an Audio Technica shotgun mic that’s just out of frame for all of the narrative sections. There’s a bit of EQ and a limiter on this track. Cheers! -Ben
I know it has a place in certain styles, but in general I don’t like the sound of muffled drums. I don’t like hearing drums that just go “thunk.” I feel strongest about this with the toms-I really like to hear them sing.
(Also I try not to be judgemental but it blows my mind how people will spend thousands of dollars on incredible drums then between head selection, tuning, and muffling, make them sound like cardboard boxes. To each their own, but I don’t get it.)
Obviously studios is different to live,although sound engineering put a new light on with microphones, in my opinion if it sounds good, then its good but everybody has their own idea of sound
One point you didn't cover is once you add a mic to the drum, it also changes the sound, muffled or not. I go by the theory that a drum kit should sound great even before a mic comes near it. However, I play a other kits (not mine) that sounds blah in the room, but when you hear it back in live recordings, it sounds really good. A bass drum that sounds like wax paper (to the ear), sounds thumpy in the house (once mic'd). And the reverse of this, is, a drum kit that sounds wonderful in the room, can be destroyed in a mix if the micing and mixing aren't good. If you have any input or videos on this, that would be good to see the comparison. Maybe have a mic in the room that can pick up the drums, and then mic them individually to point out the differences. In this video, except for your snare (when it was not muffled), I thought the toms sounded good both ways, and it's hard to say that the micing of them didn't have anything to do with that. You were in the room live with the drums, we always heard them mic'd in the video. :-)
Simple answer is no; muffling is really never “necessary”. Simon Phillips is perfect proof of that. However, most people will run into situations where for whatever reason a change in the character of the drum or drums is desired, and the simplest way to accomplish that is with muffling. It’s a tool in the toolbox you should know how to use
‘Concert tuning’ anyone? Somewhat heresy now, but worth a try depending on style, even if just for shits ‘n’ giggles; if doesn’t cost anything to try 😎 That and/or Remo Emporer heads or equivalent has been tempting for me, though I do flip and flop in 6 month Road to Damascus inconsistency 😆
it depends of the music and style you play. Tame Impala and Chris dave have super muffled drums. Hardcore bands and more Jazz aproach bands are not as muffled. Just two examples for show that it depends of taste and style. Tapes are cheap and saves a lot on gig using shitty used drumkits without screws and with beaten up heads.
I feel like no muffling is romanticized so much, more than it’s actually usable. To my knowledge, I’ve never heard wide open drums sound that good besides some Bonham sounds.
There are some people that think about their drum sounds entirely in a bubble without any musical context and think that choosing to muffle a drum somehow devalues the instrument. This is quite a pretty ludicrous mindset in our opinion but it's all too common. That said, lots of people don't understand what heads to use and tuning schemes to employ so that resort to muffling as a "bandaid" rather than a tool for sculpting tone.
Spoiler: Yes. Its needed. Ill explain: these guys have 10s of thousands of $ of equipment , unlike us. Cailou, hes a cartoon kid w a giant a$$ lightbulb head.
Furthermore, most of these vids have almost zero effect in the real world. Show me 2 videos where their theories have a change in a band setting. Yes, i also am wasting time here.
This channel is criminally underrated. You guys talk about the stuff that matters
Honestly!
Wrong. Just because someone says its true, does NOT make it so.
Wheres the differences in the mix?
Thought so.some folks just like to talk..
Criminally? No. These guys NEVER show difference in a mix. Because it doesn't matter (much).
As a long time drummer (next year makes 50 years), I would like to offer something that few people address: The vast majority of the folks in the audience do not understand, nor do they care about the sound your drums make. In many instances, they are not even actively listening to the music and in some cases, don't want music because it makes it hard to converse with their friends. My point? Tune and muffle for yourself.... for what YOU want to hear from your drums when you play because very, very often, you are the only one who cares what they sound like. Food for thought.
Of course, if you are the 1% who made the "big time", this doesn't apply. lol.
I agree. Players are going to be more in tune with the details of their sound than anyone else. Your bandmates are second. And the audience might "feel" how good it sounds without understanding why. Be yourself and enjoy the process and that will translate without any effort to please others.
This is my first year drumming, and right away someone warned me about anyone who talks in absolutes. And yet that seems to be exactly what many do. Always muffle, never muffle. Put a king duvet and a pillow in your bass, get the laundry out of your bass! Never bury the beater! Even though most of the expert drummers I've seen so exactly that, and sound awesome doing it.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Don't lose sight of that! You're gonna figure out stuff that works for you and stuff that doesn't, but other stuff works for other people too. There are objectively correct answers about setup, ergonomics, and technique, but there's also a huge amount of subjectivity when it comes to sound
I think it’s more the drummers that muffle to not worry about tuning. You should learn how to tune and if u need to muffle for record to help with the frequency or to get a sound for a specific thing the. Ppl skip things like techniques and the basics. But the bass drum if you are going for speed then there are techniques for that. If u want power same thing, so things may differ depending on style or songs.
Richard sleeve....just look and listen.
These guys are here to help us.
20 years ago so much info wasn't so easey to get.
I'll mirror what a few have already commented on. As time goes by, you'll figure what make you tick. Muffling, no muffling, a little muffling etc. You'll come a balance where it works/is necessary to muffle and when you can leave the kit open. Personally, I leave mine open as possible, until a sound engineer tells me to muffle it.. I do it to make his job easier and to not be pig-headed or something. But, Simon Phillips doesn't muffle (except a little on his kicks) and his sound is unmistakable.
Good luck on your journey brother!
I've said this before. This is by FAR, like not even anything close, the BEST channel for drummers. I've always been against muffling because when I was young I didn't know what I was doing and just had tape all over the kit. I'm still against most muffling and controlling tones using different heads instead. That being said, anyone that's played gigs in different venues and studios knows do what you need to do to get the correct sound.
Hey Cody, great video as usual. My 2 bits worth: I used to use various drum gels around my kit to even out tuning and over-ringing, and then, through watching various video tutorials including some of yours, I discovered I wasn’t doing a very good job of tuning. Now with better tuning skills and better positioning of my rack tom and snare, together with edge control heads (Evans EC’s, Remo Pinstripes etc.) I have never been so happy with the sound of my drums!
Drummers of the world unite and rock on!
By the way I don’t place a pillow inside my bass drum but will rest one against the bottom of the reso head in smaller venues.
Anyone who has played enough gigs or recorded any sessions as a sideman, band member or artist, with different kits, sizes, quality, ages/ conditions of heads/ rims, etc; Whether large rooms with mics/ PA, or small coffee houses with no production, or various types of music on sessions (multi mic or one mic) - KNOWS at SOME point, you NEED to have a knowledge of tools/ methods to control or manipulate the sound of the kit for the musical situation you are working in. Too many comments on here that appear to be based on limited first hand experience. Play just ONE gig with a backline/ rental kit, and you KNOW that gaff tape can be a gig saver 🤘🏻❤
100%. I've played hardcore shows in VFW's with no mics and no muffling, club shows where the FOH engineer didn't know what to do with unmuffled drums, so it was expected to have a pillow in the kick and at least some moongels on the toms and snare. Playing in worship settings lately & it's everything heavily muffled. You gotta tune, muffle and play to the room, & no room is the same.
I've considered bringing a cymbal bag exclusively for a range of batter heads.
@@jmfs3497 Not a terrible idea - but I have almost NEVER had time to change and audition heads at a regular gig - out on the road/ a string of dates there is often time, but usually not on a typical on nighter. I do usually keep spare heads in the bags w the drums tho - always be prepared!
What a fantastic video, and typical for this channel. Free of hyperbole. Excellent.
I totally agree with how you summed it up at about 12:25 into the vid. It's all about the sound you want and need for a situation and for the type of music. Nice episode.
You could upload a 2 hour freestyle drumming session and I'd watch the whole thing. Great stuff as always!
We've got extended demos from a lot of our episodes over on Patreon!
I used to use hand towels on the snare and toms. I never figured out a good temporary kick drum muffler on my old kit, other than walking around the kit between songs and throwing a folded blanket inside. (no reso). I now have a Gretsch with Pratt mufflers and I am learning how to dial those in as needed. So far it has come in handy. Almost as handy and tensioning the snare while playing. I dial in the toms and snare as I'm playing.
You guys pour so much incredible content out there! Thank you! I’m embarrassed to say for years (decades even 😬) I’ve believed gaining control of the sound of the drum through tuning was impossible for me, but now I I’m excited to hone this craft! Thank you again!
I have always used e rings on all of my toms and a ring and moon gels on my snare. My thought was that since the kit was a lower-tier kit I would just not be able to get the sound out of the drums that I wanted. So, I never bothered REALLY learning how to tune them. I mean, I knew the fundamentals of tuning, I just didn't take the time to really sit and fiddle and get them dialed in. And I didn't fully appreciate the significance of the reso head and the relationship between the reso and batter. Just getting each head in tune with itself was about all I ever worried about.
Recently, I purchased a new kit. Pearl Session Studio Select paired with a Masters maple 14 x 5.5 snare. While awaiting their arrival I watched TONS of videos on tuning (this channel quickly became my favorite). I was in the headspace that you mentioned in this video. "How dare I buy these expensive drums and muffle them in any way!?" Which, ill-guided as that thought may have been, it did force me down the path of learning how to properly tune a drum and appreciate the journey of getting to know each piece of my kit. As I watched more and more videos and reflected on my own philosophy of drumming and tuning I came to the same conclusion you did in this video. It's about achieving a certain sound. My sound. The sound that is required for the gig at hand. The ability to manipulate the sound of the drums given various external factors. Who cares what tools one needs to pull out of their toolbox to achieve any one of those things.
As of now, my current setup is running all of my toms (10,12,14,16) wide open with EC2 batter and EC reso. My kick has an EMAD 2 batter and EMAD reso with a small muffle pad (the one that came with the kit) barely touching the batter. My snare has a Remo coated pinstripe batter and a clear Ambassador reso with one moongel on the batter. Though, I think with some more time I will also get to the point that I can run it wide open as well if I wanted to. Currently, I just can't get the sound out of it that I want without throwing the moongel on it. Too much overtone and crosstalk between the snare and the 10 inch rack. Anyway, thank you for this wonderful channel. It has quite literally been the catalyst for a fundamental shift in the way that I approach my kit. Peace and love.
Interesting.. I recently just bought the same exact kit.. I’m still messing around with heads and tuning and I’m finding getting that 12in dialed in pretty difficult.. but I feel what you’re saying, achieving the sound I want is almost impossible without a little muffling.. however I still need to experiment with different tuning methods.. I always was an evans guy until I started using Aquarian, so I’m patiently waiting the arrival of my new heads.. good luck brother
Even for Sounds Like a Drum you guys have surpassed yourselves in the amount of sense you talk in this vid and how true every word and statement is , I love my drums unmuffled, fine tuned with Tunebot , a towel in the kick that's it , but when necessary muffling is a tool that it would be beyond selfish to ignore , when we play with a band, live or studio, we're part of a team a collective and if as drummers we don't do everything we can to make our part as right as it can be in content and sound then we're failing in our role within that collective.
Absolutely right when you say it's the terms used that are a put off, 'muffled' 'dead' 'muted' as opposed to 'open' 'resonant' 'singing'
It's about time we all changed our vocabulary when it comes to tailoring our sounds !!!
Thank you guys for another quality video !!! 👍👌
I remember the 70s when it was fashionable for pop/rock drummers to throw the reso heads off the toms and bass drums and tape the sloppy tensioned batter heads to complete sound death with paper handkerchiefs. Today I hate muffling of toms, and many great drummers share this view. The bass drums are treated very pragmatically depending on purpose. And trying many tricks on snare drums, I must say, that intelligent tensioning of the heads and the snares gives so many options for lively sounding drums without annoying overtones or wobbling tone floats.
Let‘s summarize: Problems start with most (!) drummers being not able or willing to tune their instrument the right way. No excuse. No other instrumentalist (except piano, organ and keyboards) would ever be hired who could not tune his instrument. Great if you can afford to employ a good drum tech.
Excellent video! I tend to sit in the camp that if I use muffling I failed in tuning. You are so right that muffling is just a tool, and consider it to reach a certain sound that you have in mind. Bravo!
Exactly. Throw dogmatic thinking out the window, In art, and in every other part of life for that matter. That's a great message you've conveyed in this video.
I LOVED this video. I use a good old wallet for my snare muffling if I am playing the type of music that favors that style. Every tuning you showed today was completely usable in my opinion. Great stuff and info here on this channel!
YES, Yes. I literally have four pieces of tape on my 14x8 Ludwig hammered bronze snare. Ofc it sounds amazing without muffling but I just love that completely dry top head sound in a sort of medium range, rim shots are absolutely planet destroying!! I don’t care if it’s sacrilegious
I would like to play an 8" deep snare, I bet that thing rings like a beaut. Rn I run a Pork Pie Big Black 14x6.5, but for a few days recording an album this summer I got to upgrade to a DW Bell Brass guy that was superb...it's perfect ring and tone inspired me to get my not terribly shabby snare seriously dialed in tuning wise, and ever since I did I left the gels etc behind, it's like I became hyper aware of what my snare's previously untapped potential was and now can't bear to hear its voice cut short at all. Of course, if I need a different sound I will adjust that accordingly.
Great video, loved the muffled kit sound at the start of the video (they sounded super phat!) As many have mentioned here, knowing how to sculpt your sound for the gig or the session is a vital skill, made easier by superb tutorials like yours! That Acrolite sounds superb at all tunings, janky, dead and wide open!
Very much love this installment in the series, and totally agree that muffling is just one of many options for getting the right sound for the right music and/or setting. I was a little surprised that you didn't try Evans Onyx heads, at least on the batter sides. Those are certainly heads that don't ring much. I don't think I've ever seen anyone try using them on the reso side, but that's the sort of thing that would be right up your alley. Might give a sweetly muffled sound with just heads alone.
Side note: For me, part of the fun of watching these videos is seeing what grooves Cody will play at various times in the videos. There are always straight-ahead grooves for demo purposes, but at least a few times in every one, he pulls out something jazzy, or funky, or swingy, or Afro-Cuban, or whatever. And always tight and interesting. Keep up the good work, Cody!
I like very light muffling on the snare Batter, sometimes a piece of paper folded or a business card towards the edge. A moongel to dry a lively ride. Felt strips on the bass drum.
The world of sound ... great Episod ...
Brave video and very tasteful. I consider myself to be a very good drum tuner. When I started taking tuning seriously, I experimented with everything. At first I fell into the extreme muffling rabbit hole. I used Remo O rings on every tom. I even put foam around the outer edges of the bass drum like a marching bass drum. I played a bass drum in DCI in 1991.
Nowadays, I have a sound that I keep coming back to no matter how much I continue to experiment.
First, I'll say this. When I play at clubs, I always arrive early and ask if I can tune the drums. I always seem to rip of a lot of duct tape and make drastic tuning changes from what was presented to me. I also understand that other similar blues/rock drummers will be using the same kit for that night. The sound techs are always amazed by how much EQ-ing they have to take off on the drum mics. I live in Japan and play at various sized clubs, but my method always works on any drum set and with any condition heads.
Here's my secret sauce. Tom resos are a perfect fourth higher. The high and low tom fundamental pitches are a perfect fifth apart. The floor tom gets half a Moongel. Snare gets half a Moongel. Bass drum has a small pillow barely touch both heads.
That's it.
The only other variable is considering the fundamental pitches of the toms. 12 or 13 is B flat, 16 floor tom is E flat. If another drummer likes a higher tuning, I am flexible and go C and F. Bass drum has to have a little more than above wrinkle and then tune the batter to the room in a friendly relationship with the sound tech at the mixer.
I swear by this for blues/rock. At any volume. With or without mics. It's the ideal middle of the road sound that most drummers at all levels are looking for.
It works on my own cheap 1970's luan kit and on my Pearl Reference Pure. Personally I prefer all coated heads.
Thanks for reading this far! I wonder who else has come to this same general conclusion.
I love all your videos. The production is so well executed and the info is detailed but not too much. I know you’ve talked about this before but one suggestion would be if you recorded all three versions to music and listened to each version in context within a track. This would help illustrate that depending on the style, levels, and mix, some drums might not need muffling due to where they sit overall or when used as an intentional stylistic choice. I remember one time while recording that I was trying to muffle out all the ring in my snare and toms only to find out later it didn’t matter much or rather didn’t enhance overall sound of the song like I thought it would. Love your channel. Keep doing what you’re doing 🤘🏻
I've never understood the sort of divided view on this topic, meaning the camps that have formed. I don't ever remember this being a thing in my early years of drumming. For me it has always been about the sound I'm after, whether live or in the studio, and what the space is also offering me sonically.
There is a regionally located band here in NE that I've seen live a couple of times. The drummer places tea towels on the top third of his toms and snare. The thought has never entered my mind that he didn't know how to tune them, or that he shouldn't do that to his beautiful C&C drum set, but rather that he wanted a more seventies sound to bak the original music they were playing. It was a good, well suited sound that was affective.
The hero we need.
These are all useful tools, and whatever combination of muffling and "correct" tuning vs asymmetrical tuning gets the desired sound and feel is valid. What's most interesting to me is that I have drums which I always leave wide open because I think they sound best this way, and others which I always muffle for the same reason; but only a few which I think play just as well in both camps. Not that the others sound bad in the reversed state, but they just seem to respond that much better in the specific combinations I've found.
Love your work Cody! When I grow up I want to play like you. I’m seventy seven… 👏🌹🇦🇺✌️
How about a video with the same (rack tom) drum, same heads... but tuned for pitch bending up (res>batter) with short and long sustain, down (res
Well said on every point. Some drums in some rooms will just be a problem, so do what you have to do to get the sound you want. Also, it really depends on your FOH or recording engineer. If they don't know how to EQ for the sound you want, giving them the closest possible sound to your desired end result before the mics even pick them up is your best case scenario. They can still completely miss the mark, though.
No muffle on my drums except for pillow in bass drum. Too many drummmers muffle their drums making them aound like boxes. Let them resonate!
I like to use muffling on some of my drums my snare drum bass drum and both floor toms but not on my three higher toms I leave those wide open to cut through the mix better
My bass drums have no muffling, and sound great. My toms used to have Pinstripe batter heads when my music was prog-rock focused. I would occasionally use Deadringers on them to cut down some of the overtones, but mostly they didn’t need that. Now I have Ambassador coated batters on them, and for the jazz I’m now playing there’s no muffling needed. Btw my set is Yamaha Stage Custom Standard - and those shells, while inexpensive, are also great for generating modern drum sounds.
In my 30 years of drumming, I've never been a fan of ringy snare drums. I've always preferred a very short note with lots of attack. Toms and Kick can definitely change based on need.
Please discuss the difference in reso heads, especially for toms. Thank you!
I don't muffle at all, never had the need to. Great video!
What did you think of the muffled sounds?
@@SoundsLikeADrum Sounded great!
I quit using muffling once I got my tuning to a reasonable place. A Jan 1990 issue of Modern Drummer was my guide. That was when I was 14!
I did so because my Noble & Cooley ZerO Rings fell off when in transport.
Today I take a pack of moongels, and a dw bass drum pillow just on case.
My first way to go is unmuffled, get the drums to sound good (you guys at sounds like a drum help me a lot to achieve that!). Then depending on the room I might use a bit on the bass drum (I use one my kids stuffed animals) that barely touches both heads inside. For the snare, I might wanna play a bit more like using a BFSD or a ring…to change drastically the sound for a certain song, or to change the feel. But nothing bothers me more than a sound guy that doesn’t even look and listen to the kit before asking me to put tape of gel on my instrument!
I don't use a lot of muffling, although it depends on the drum. My floor tom has some cotton balls in it, and a bit of gaff tape to get rid of some high overtones. Instead of doing the accordion fold or loop, I layer pieces of tape on top of one another, kinda like the black dots on tabla. My bass drum has an EMAD with the thinner foam ring, and a PowerStroke 3 front head with a 4" offset port, but nothing inside. It's a compromise - it almost sounds like a jazz bass drum when I feather it, with a long, clearly defined note, but when I lay into it, it works decently for rock (albeit ringier and not as tight). If I gigged with it more, I'd set it up for the gig, but this is my play-it-at-home-too-lazy-to-constantly-retune-it setup. Rack toms are wide open, as are most of my snares. I'm not against muffling per se, but I'm super-picky and it's very difficult to get it just right, and I'd rather my drums ring too much than not enough, unless it proves to be problematic for recording.
The floor tom is slightly problematic, in that it rings a bit too long - after most of the sound has faded away, there's a really low fundamental that keeps going for a few more seconds. Any attempt to muffle it results in a sound that's a little duller than I like. Tuning the drum to fight itself can result in an amazing tone, but the decay is too fast, almost like someone put their hand on the batter head right after I hit it. I like the decay to be long enough that I can perceive it fading away.
Another great video, Cody and Crew!
Can you please tell us, what is the snare behind you? Rich, brown wood with the Trick throw and the light on top? Looks like a stave of some kind. Beautiful looking instrument.
Just set up a completely open 7 piece in my tiny practice space 😆 way too loud but its fun and I usually use a 3 piece
S4 E21 and still finding this stuff really interesting and helpful.
i prefer muffling only when i get my drums as well tuned as possible. i use old t-shirts so i can roll them up on the edge of the drum, drape them over the head, wrap the tshirt over the head for less cloth on the drum, or just toss them aside. it's super versatile, in about 15 secs i can go from ringos boxy sound to a loud open sound. no tape required.
Question for you Cody, what's your thinking about drum sounds with free floating cable tension hardware that only allows for even headed tuning but doesn't have the traditional bolted on lug hardware? Drums like WTS and Hudson Custom Drums.
Hey there! We’ve actually partnered with WTS on a few videos and have new ones coming out soon! They’re great instruments and you can’t argue with the ease of tuning and ability to switch it up on the fly. We’ve had a blast with them and found them to be warm and resonant with a huge tuning range! It’s true that the heads will always be tuned to the same tension but in the course of working with them it never bothered me at all. Hope that helps! -Cody
@@SoundsLikeADrum I own a Hudson Custom Drum set which is a similar hardware design as WTS. I have run into hardliners about even head tuning vs independent head tuning so it's interesting to hear your perspective on it.
Beautiful and dead, I've had same on mind - why does he polarize, then - oh, he is pointing that!
dropping science like galileo dropped the orange
Great, third video of this channel I'm watching, so time to subscribe! question: how would you tune/muffle a 20x14 bassdrum (ludwig neusonic) to get a nate smith/funky sound?
any advice on which batter head to go for, and what do you put inside the bass drum? porthole yes/no? thank you som much!
Growing up listening to very "produced" drums sounds, like the infamous Phil Collins gated reverb snare (there are so many other examples), I find that I quite often have very unrealistic expectations of my "natural" drum sounds live and un-miced in the jam space. I realize I have spent the last 30+ years trying to mimic these recorded drum sounds and have my drum set sound that way IRL, with minimal microphones. I have chosen every head and cymbal to sound a certain way, and that was almost never based on how other live acoustic drums sounded in real life. Weird.
Woah where’d that Evans bandana come from?! I gotta get one 😲
That was a limited edition thing years ago but we're working on our own. Stay tuned...
@@SoundsLikeADrum you have my attention😁 can’t wait
On a side note. That bass drum needs 2 plys on both batter and reso, a 50 pound sand bag, pillows, stickers, aluminum foil & a towel hanging all the way across for good measure 🤘
This channel is a wonderful discovery...BR, Lb and GK were my main influences...I like to imagine an engineer asking Buddy to muffle his drums...Kinda like asking a Bengal tiger to smile while hunting. I did however acquire a Bobby Columby fetish from his original Blood Sweat and Tears album. This could get long so I will stop here.
Sincerely,
Michael Hinton
I prefer no muffling on my kit.
A small towel up against the batter head on my bass drum is about all I use. That helps when its mic'd up.
The fact that muffling CAN be used as a crutch doesn't mean it should be avoided. A good drummer knows how to use all the tools available to him.
100%
tha mufflin' sound u had at 1st, made me think y'all shoulda pulled an Al Green beat lol
Do you have an opinion on the Remo Muff L Ring Control products? For some reason my ear is good for finding the bad and ugly of my drum sound but not to help me solve the issues. I have a new $300 Yamaha with Remo Smooth White Emperor. Thanks for your videos. Listing to you is like going to drum school......for free!!!!
👍
I once deadened a tom using a pillow to muffle and wrapping the head with duct tape. I'm sorry, not "tom", "Tom". 😐
Maybe use a little bit on the snare, but the rest of the kit sounds fantastic on their own.
Could not agree more. Dampening is not a cure for bad tuning nor is prefect tuning the be all and end all. It's all options thats how Iv'e always looked at it. Tuning will come close but wont replicate dampening 100%. The bass drum is a perfect example of this. You will never get rid of the basketball sound without dampening. Getting rid of overtones on a low tuned snare is next to impossible. However a great snare tuning dampened gives you the sound without the bad overtones. At the end of the day its horses for courses, what ever works works. No matter how affordable or expensive a kit is they all will need good tuning and dampening at times. Physics stays the same if you have a no name kit or a DW. You might have less issues on a expensive kit and more on a cheap kit but they will share similar issues. Plus with dampening you can have a punchy sound and taking it off you have an open sound in seconds, without changing drums. Now thats a bonus.
I have a question that's unrelated to the episode (to tuning or the drum sound) How do you record your voice? Do you use the room mic you use to record drums? Or is there a separate mic for your voice? It sounds so clean
Hey there! I mic Cody up with an Audio Technica shotgun mic that’s just out of frame for all of the narrative sections. There’s a bit of EQ and a limiter on this track. Cheers! -Ben
@@SoundsLikeADrum thank you for the response
I know it has a place in certain styles, but in general I don’t like the sound of muffled drums. I don’t like hearing drums that just go “thunk.” I feel strongest about this with the toms-I really like to hear them sing.
(Also I try not to be judgemental but it blows my mind how people will spend thousands of dollars on incredible drums then between head selection, tuning, and muffling, make them sound like cardboard boxes. To each their own, but I don’t get it.)
Obviously studios is different to live,although sound engineering put a new light on with microphones, in my opinion if it sounds good, then its good but everybody has their own idea of sound
Would like to hear the difference with a bass player & guitar
One point you didn't cover is once you add a mic to the drum, it also changes the sound, muffled or not. I go by the theory that a drum kit should sound great even before a mic comes near it. However, I play a other kits (not mine) that sounds blah in the room, but when you hear it back in live recordings, it sounds really good. A bass drum that sounds like wax paper (to the ear), sounds thumpy in the house (once mic'd). And the reverse of this, is, a drum kit that sounds wonderful in the room, can be destroyed in a mix if the micing and mixing aren't good. If you have any input or videos on this, that would be good to see the comparison. Maybe have a mic in the room that can pick up the drums, and then mic them individually to point out the differences. In this video, except for your snare (when it was not muffled), I thought the toms sounded good both ways, and it's hard to say that the micing of them didn't have anything to do with that. You were in the room live with the drums, we always heard them mic'd in the video. :-)
Take a break and cheer up!
Join Barry’s Video Fellowship. We’ll have a few laughs together.
Simple answer is no; muffling is really never “necessary”. Simon Phillips is perfect proof of that. However, most people will run into situations where for whatever reason a change in the character of the drum or drums is desired, and the simplest way to accomplish that is with muffling. It’s a tool in the toolbox you should know how to use
As the proud owner and small time ginger with ye olde Gretch blackhawks. You have to muffle cheap drums.
‘Concert tuning’ anyone? Somewhat heresy now, but worth a try depending on style, even if just for shits ‘n’ giggles; if doesn’t cost anything to try 😎 That and/or Remo Emporer heads or equivalent has been tempting for me, though I do flip and flop in 6 month Road to Damascus inconsistency 😆
it depends of the music and style you play.
Tame Impala and Chris dave have super muffled drums.
Hardcore bands and more Jazz aproach bands are not as muffled.
Just two examples for show that it depends of taste and style.
Tapes are cheap and saves a lot on gig using shitty used drumkits without screws and with beaten up heads.
I feel like no muffling is romanticized so much, more than it’s actually usable. To my knowledge, I’ve never heard wide open drums sound that good besides some Bonham sounds.
There are some people that think about their drum sounds entirely in a bubble without any musical context and think that choosing to muffle a drum somehow devalues the instrument. This is quite a pretty ludicrous mindset in our opinion but it's all too common. That said, lots of people don't understand what heads to use and tuning schemes to employ so that resort to muffling as a "bandaid" rather than a tool for sculpting tone.
Well, it depends. In my opinion that's all that can be said about this. There are way to many variables.
Exactly! And, in our opinion, it should ALWAYS depend, because context is what informs our musical decisions.
Except for the snare, those heads are still muffled. Try with single layer heads all around.
Spoiler: Yes. Its needed.
Ill explain: these guys have 10s of thousands of $ of equipment , unlike us. Cailou, hes a cartoon kid w a giant a$$ lightbulb head.
I don't muffle my drums because I like a full sound
Furthermore, most of these vids have almost zero effect in the real world. Show me 2 videos where their theories have a change in a band setting. Yes, i also am wasting time here.
Anything but headphones will show about zero difference...in EVERY VID.
So, go see ur fave band, and b sure to bring ur headphones..