Anyway, I wanted to talk about drum tuning. Not really tuning, but a tool for tuning drums that I think is a necessity for all drummers, especially those who tour regularly. If you have toured at all you will totally know where I'm coming from. You show up to the venue, everyone loads in and starts sound checking. Usually when you load in, the sound guy is blaring music, or someone is already sound checking. Needless to say, 95% of the time it's loud in there and unless you are just playing a local show, you cant tune your drums before hand, then load them up in the trailer and expect them to still be in tune after traveling through different weather conditions and/or being thrown around in your trailer as you drive over some crappy roads (i.e. almost every road in the north east). So what do you do? Well, since it's too loud in the venue to tune by ear, this is where the Drum Dial comes in handy.
Now, I've seen a lot of people knocking the Drum Dial on other forums saying things like "Why would someone need a dial to tune their drums?" and "Whatever happened to tuning by ear?" blah blah blah. To be honest with you, I used to think it was stupid too, but I actually used one and wished I had given it a shot a long time ago!
The thing is, you still have to tune by ear. The Drum Dial doesn't do it for you. All it does is read the tension of the head. So you tune the drum by ear, and then you go around each lug with the Drum Dial and fine tune it. Once it's fine tuned (every lug is reading the same number) write the numbers down and keep them in the box that the Drum Dial came in. Do this with every drum.
NOW you show up to the venue and need to tune your drums, but the sound guy is blaring "Stupiy" by Disturbed. What do you do? Well first you put in some ear plugs, then you bust out your trusty Drum Dial and your paper with all of your tunings and you tune your drums like a boss.
Boom,
Casey
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