Lesson 03
Tuning the Pitch of a Cylindrical Drum
All cylindrical drums have a fundamental pitch, which is the frequency you hear most prominently. Learn how to land on a value you love.
'Cylindrical drums' are those us drummers are most used to playing – cylindrical shells with two drumheads, one on each of the batter and resonant sides. No matter how they are tuned, all cylindrical drums have a sonic 'pitch', which basically means the frequency which the drum vibrates at and which we hear with the most prominence. If you make the drumhead tighter the pitch goes up, looser and the pitch goes down. It's no different to a guitar or violin – you tighten a string, the sound goes up in pitch; loosen the strings and the pitch goes down.
You might have seen the previous lesson on the vibration modes of a drum – we mentioned that the most...[lesson locked]
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Course content by Professor Rob Toulson – Professor of Musical Acoustics, Inventor of iDrumTune and author of the book Drum Sound and Drum Tuning: Bridging Science and Creativity.