First, think about the room itself. If is completely untreated you can be sure that when you put a drum kit in the room, it will resonate like crazy and likely be difficult to get a nice tight sound. At the other extreme, if the room is too dark or overly treated, all of the instruments you record will sound dry and unnatural. This means that you will constantly be adding artificial ambiance’ to the tracks. It comes down to balance.

This is where the LEDE concept has merit; you can have one end of your room treated with 60% of your acoustic budget while the other end could be treated more sparsely with the left over 40%. When recording drums, you could get a more controlled effect in the dead end and a more ambient sound in the live end. For voice recording, the dead end would eliminate much of the ambiance and let you add the effects as needed. Acoustic instruments such as guitars tend to sound more natural when the room acoustics are included. You could therefore position the guitar in the center of the room and have an omni-directional mic in the live-end to capture the space. There is no right – it is a matter of creatively using the space at hand.

How much material should I use?
Generally speaking, you are better to start with less and add more as you go. Start by recording in your room so that you can hear what it does. If you find that you are experiencing strange tones, you likely are hearing phase cancellation due to room modes causing a comb-filtering effect and therefore, you should consider adding more acoustic treatment.

One of the cool things about the Broadway panels is that the impaler clips make them both easy to put up and easy to relocate. Most successful studio owners start with a couple of boxes of Broadway panels and begin by creating the dead space. As you are putting panels up on the wall, nothing will happen… another panel – still nothing and then wham! All of a sudden the room will change. It will tighten up and you will hear it immediately. Stop. You are now ready to go over to the live end. This time, just think in terms of eliminating parallel surfaces. The Primacoustic Scatter Blocks are great for this as they can be placed in a random fashion around the space to tame the ambiance. Remember, this end is live.

[via primacoustic.com]

1. Use candle wax

Take the old head off. Wipe the dust and debris off the bearing edge. Wax the edge with a little candle wax for a tight seal.

2. Tension evenly

Ensure a new head is tensioned evenly, otherwise it will be pulled unequally, get distorted and you wont get a clean sound.

3. Use your fingers

Take up all the slack by turning the tension rod to ‘finger tight’ – when the head of the tuning rod makes contact with the metal rim.

4. One rod = one turn

Now increase tension by systematically applying a single turn to each rod, criss-crossing diagonally around the drum.

5. Use your fist!

Press down on the centre with your fist to make sure the head is properly stretched and ‘seated’.

6. And wait for the ‘crack’…

Continue until the head is board tight. The cracking sound is just the glue settling, and it’s important to hear this.

7. Slack evenly

Now you can slacken the head back off – again take care to do this evenly

8. Fine tun

At last you’re ready for fine tuning. Take the head back up, evenly all around – criss-crossing diagonally again.

9. One rod = one turn (again)

Make sure that each rod gets the same number of full, half or quarter turns.

10. Fine, fine tune

Tap lightly an inch so in from each tension rod. Make fine adjustments until the pitch is the same all around the head.

11. Tune up not down

It makes things easier to get the tuning right if you always tune up to the note than down to the note.

12. Use the guitar method

Quickly dip below the note and then zip back up to it so you hear the note rise to the required pitch.

13. Use your finger

Put your finger lightly on the centre of the head to dampen the overtones and you’ll hear the pitch better.

14. Write numbers…

…around the edge of the head next to the tuning rods to make the order of tuning easier, particularly on a 10-lug drum.

15. Tune the bottom first

Most drummers tend to tune the bottom resonant head first – go with the flow.

16. Bottom = tone, top = feel

Many drummers say they tune the bottom head for tone and the top head for feel.

17. Choose an option

There are three tuning possibilities: top and bottom same pitch; bottom head higher; bottom head lower.

18. High tune for projection

Some drummers claim that tuning the bottom head of your toms a little higher than the top increases projection.

19. Down tune for funk

When you have got the heads evenly tuned, try tuning down one of the tension rods by a quarter turn for a funkier sound.

20. And stay out of trouble

This should reduce the decay of the drum making it a more controlled sound. It may also eliminate troublesome overtones.

[to know more about drums visit www.musicradar.com/tuition/drums]