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Ok, so I know that you should tune your percussion, and drum hits to the same key as a song/bassline, but I was wondering what's the best way to do this? Sometimes I press a key on a piano and try and do it by ear but I'm sure that's not the best way.

Any help?
Thanks !

or 2 if you have 2

If you had read my post, you would have read that I already do that.

I was asking for other ways of which people do this.

try auto tune. or if your in Logic i think you can tune the drums in Ultrabeat easily as they state the note they are at

you could use a spectrum analyzer and this http://www.birdsoft.demon.co.uk/music/notecalc.htm

Thanks for the help guys.
I have tried Autotune before but I don't think it can detect bass drums very well. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

I'm not aware of any plugins that do this though if there are and someone could suggest them that would be great.

Think the best way would be to slap a spectrum analyser over the channel and hone in on the fundamental frequency and adjust the pitch accordingly.

Kick drums don't have a pitch... if you look at a kick on a spectrum it is just a high pitch going down to a low pitch very quickly. Tuning your kick drums to the key of your song? LOL. Don't know where you heard that but it's bullshit.

I usually find pitching the sample up about two octaves or so and then just using a piano to determine the pitch usually works well. However you don't always need to tune your drums the key of you track, In fact I rarely tune any of my hits with relation to the track itself.

software tuner. logic has grwat one built in

However you don't always need to tune your drums the key of you track, In fact I rarely tune any of my hits with relation to the track itself.

This.

Although pitching your drum hits to sit well together and within the context of the track, there are no set rules for this as every tune is different, and it totally depends what you are trying to do with those elements. At the end of the day it's whether it sounds good or not that is the main thing, and kp mike was right in saying your ears are the best way of figuring that out.

jargs wrote:Kick drums don't have a pitch... if you look at a kick on a spectrum it is just a high pitch going down to a low pitch very quickly. Tuning your kick drums to the key of your song? LOL. Don't know where you heard that but it's bullshit.

Sorry mate, but you dont seem to know a thing on this subject. Tuning drums is common practice in lots of styles, especially Techno and House stuff. And i find it useful in Dubstep too, if you have a prominent kick to supplement your bass, tuning it makes the whole line far more melodic.

edjrussell wrote:I usually find pitching the sample up about two octaves or so helps

This. Another option is adding heavy distortion to the kick (temporarily), to find out which harmonics are present

I tend to do it by ear by soloing the kick and the bass untill it sits right

using a spectrum analyzer helps aswell so you can see what freqs. are doing nothing to help

No it doesn't.. YOU don't seem to know a thing about this subject. A kick drum is just a noise that keeps the beat, as long as it sits in a certain frequency range (above the sub bass in dubstep) then it's usually all good...

You might have to tune a kick drum in order to shift it's frequency range up a bit, but it's got nothing to do with musical notes.

jargs wrote:

jobbanaught wrote:if you have a prominent kick to supplement your bass, tuning it makes the whole line far more melodic

No it doesn't.. YOU don't seem to know a thing about this subject. A kick drum is just a noise that keeps the beat, as long as it sits in a certain frequency range (above the sub bass in dubstep) then it's usually all good...

You might have to tune a kick drum in order to shift it's frequency range up a bit, but it's got nothing to do with musical notes.

Cymbals are noise, kicks and toms are not. Most kicks and toms are based on sines, which of course DO have a fundamental frequency. And even if there is a pitch bend on it (which happens a lot, i agree), they can be tuned quite easily. Anyway, if you do not have a need to tune them, thats your thing, but saying you cant tune a kick is pure bollocks. Its common practice.

shh

jargs wrote:No it doesn't.. YOU don't seem to know a thing about this subject. A kick drum is just a noise that keeps the beat, as long as it sits in a certain frequency range (above the sub bass in dubstep) then it's usually all good...

You might have to tune a kick drum in order to shift it's frequency range up a bit, but it's got nothing to do with musical notes.

Hey kid, as the other guy is trying to say, you are uninformed.

I actually play drums and I know for a fact that it's really important to keep my drumkit in tune.

I'll give you an example, try using a very short piece of audio of a saw wave, and use it on the downbeat (1, 5, 9, 13). Put a little basic bassline melody over it, and now try pitching those downbeat saw to different notes. You hear how fucked up it sounds on some notes? That's because it's not in key with the bassline.

If you still think you are right, you are ignorant, sorry.

EDIT: You are saying that tuning a kick will shift it up in the frequency spectrum, but not affect the notes? What do you think a note is?
For your own reference:

@jargs more sustained kicks have very definite & obvious tonal information an while with dampened ones it maybe less obvious it's usually still there. The pitch sweep that you see generally with a kick is what give it its bit and punch and gives the kick some presence however once that's over (generally very quickly) the sustained part of the kick is much more tonal is where the meat of the kick exists and that's what you might want to tune.

Go and look up how to synthesis an 808 style kick drums and experiment with it a bit it's basically a sinwave with a quick pitch envelope at the start of a sine wave which has a very definite tone. Another thing to try is load a kick up in a sampler and play it across you're keyboard and you can definitely hear that it can be tuned.

Back to the original topic though, I do it all by ear, I don't really try to tune the drums to the specific key or whatever but rather I try and tune them so they just sound good with everything else.

ok ya i was wrong i just listened to some kicks and there is a tone

You detect it with your ear.

*EDIT* It appears someone else has already left this smart ass comment.