I came across an interesting (albeit trivial) question last month while working on my Nine Stories recording.
Rather than sketch a drum/bass/guitar demo on my Trio+ looper, Iāve been lately been taking āshortcutsā and using Moises (yes, AI involved), to separate out the individual components of the original, so I can replace them with our bandās contributions.
I lowered the original key to fit my vocal range better, and while Moises is able to do that for playback, it only exports the stems in the original key
This meant I had to change the key for all the stems in my DAW (Reaper), which I had never done before, but proves to be no big deal.
After changing the vocals, guitars, horns etc, I was suddenly staring at theā¦
Drums!
Do I lower the key of the percussion as well?
I had a listen to both with and without change, and found I much preferred it with the key lowered along with the rest (possibly because thatās what I was used to)
Now hereās the question:
When bands play/record, everyone decides what key theyāre playing in and adjusts appropriately.
Iāve never heard of drummers changing the pitch of their rig for individual songs. They just seem to āwhack awayā.
With a regular drum kit, itād be impractical to be messing around with tuning like in orchestras etc, but with modern electronic drumkits, this is just a flick of a switch.
Anyone else out there ever mess around with the percussion pitch to see what works best for their music?
How many angels can we fit on the tip of this pin?
Haha, Iām not really that interested in the information. (Yes, I do know how to āgoogleā and spend days in rabbit holes! )
I was more surprised to be facing what seemed like a basic question I had never contemplated before, and was wondering if others here had similar āmiereneurkerismsā
In my world, everything matters.
Iām just never sure how!
To be clearā¦my post was in no way intended to say "go google it yourself lazy ant "ā¦
I was simply surprised to find so much about itā¦
Now I understand that that guy in the back of us was turning those drum screws so oftenā¦at least thatās what I think nowā¦ and moreā¦and yes this really suprised me
and if thatā¦ it must be a simple button on your dawn ā¦ so me
What do you think ā¦really???
And now leave me aloneā¦Iām really working on itā¦because I find this difficult enough and when a āploinckā sound comes along and I see Brian, Iām distracted ā¦ and a little scary I read/understood something wrong ā¦ again and ā¦
Edit:
A so There is a simple button ā¦ well it happens again
But I remember talking to a drummer about pitch. I mentioned that it seemed odd to me that though we played several songs in different keys, his drums always sounded in tune. His response was that the ambient sounds of the band would actually have an effect on the drums (particularly the cymbals), so that instead of producing white noise, they would resonate with whatever frequencies were coming out of our cabinets.
I accepted this at the time, since it seemed a perfect explanation. However, I wonder how this would work in the studio when drum tracks are recorded before any of the tunable instruments?
Anyway, I think this may explain why your drum track sounded better when adjusted along with all the others.
Really strange that I never thought about it ā¦ when you are young and play in a band you learn ā¦ put drummers in the back - take away their sticks during the break otherwise they will continue and drive you crazy ( or was it 'let guitarists put their guitars away with that annoying noodling? )- feed it - give it some but not too much beer - smile at them - and kick them in the nuts if they mess up the rhythm and give this ones as present at Christmasā¦
Whilst drums can be tuned, especially toms, itās not usual to tune them to match the key of the song.
Normally, the drums are tuned to a sound you like and what fits your genre. Tuning drums is roughly equivalent to getting a setup on your guitar; itās a maintenance task that you normally only do occasionally.
Thatās what I reckoned, and historically it makes sense, as it would be such a pfaff to do so.
I was just surprised at how much difference it made to the sound of the song
When you look at studios setting up drum mics and the effort they put into tweaking and equalising the sound, Iām just surprised Iāve never heard anyone mention āpitch-shiftingā with electronic percussion.
Iām not sure I buy that explanation. Objects, especially metal ones, resonate at particular frequencies, so yes, if you have loud ambient sound, the cymbals will resonate along with the force of the waves, but they will resonate at their pitch. Iām a bell-ringer and the same goes for those. Theyāre each have their own resonant frequencies.
I think it happens quite a bit in the EDM world, especially with synthetic percussion like the classic TR-808/909 or Linn drums which can be directly and easily tuned (rather than āpitch-shiftedā after the event). Even with more mainstream music, Prince famously played around with manipulating the sounds and tunings on his Linn LM-1.
Phil Collins also did a lot of messing around with drum machines in the 80s.
But I think this is more for effect than to match the tuning of the song.
Drums, in general, are considered āunpitched percussionā even though a given drum or even cymbal will have specific frequences more prevalent.
Examples of āpitched percussionā include things like tubular bells, marimbas, and celestas. And, of course, church bells
Iām using EZDrummer3 in my current recording project. EZD3 makes it very easy to alter aspects such as tuning for each individual instrument in the selected kit. I havenāt altered the pitch of the drum kit generally, but at one point I found myself thinking that the snare just wasnāt fitting in well with the song. Dropping its pitch a whole tone made a dramatic difference in making the whole drum set fit much better with the rest of the instrument track. While I doubt itās a general practice to tune the drum kit to each song a band records (and certainly not for live performance) I wouldnāt be at all surprised to find that subsets of the kit might be selectively tuned for particular songs where the difference matters.
)- feed it - give it some but not too much beer - smile at them - and kick them in the nuts if they mess up the rhythm and give this ones as present at Christmasā¦
