Tuning drums starts with a drum key. I actually have one on my keychain so I'll almost never be without one. Unless I lose my keys, but that will never happen, right? You need this little tool to turn the rods that tighten or loosen the drumhead on the drum. This is called tuning the drum, which you will learn to do shortly. The second use for a key is to tighten various things on the hardware or stands. If you go to tighten something that's too small to grab with your fingers, you'll probably need your trusty key. If you don't have one handy, just find me. I have one on my keychain. Hey, wait. Where are my keys?! - Anyway lets go on and check out the drumheads!



There are two heads on each drum, top and bottom. Drumheads differ in various ways, such as color, single ply or double ply, or sound characteristics, but the most important difference is weight or thickness. The bottom head on the toms is usually of a lighter type than the top because it's to add tone to the drum, not to be hit like the top or batter head. On snare drum, we find the greatest difference between top and bottom heads. The bottom snare head, usually called the snare side head, is very thin. Drumheads come in not only many varieties of type and color, but also several degrees of quality.

The best sounding and most durable heads are the most expensive, and, in order to keep the cost of the full kit down, the heads that you get with your drum set might not be the best quality, depending on the line of drums that you get. These heads are fine when you're starting out, but when they break, replace them with a quality name brand head, such as Remo or Evans. You should immediately hear the difference in sound. Once the drumheads are placed on the drum, they need to be tuned. I don't fully tune the drums until after the kit is completely set up. For the purposes of the article, however, I've explained the process of putting on the heads and tuning the drums in my previous article.

How many pieces in your kit? What does that mean, anyway? Here's a bonus tip about how drummers talk about their kits. You'll often hear them talk about a four piece kit, a five piece kit, or a seventeen piece kit. What they are referring to is the number of actual drums they have in their kit. They are not including the number of cymbals they have in their number count. This can be a good thing to know if you happen to be looking in the paper for a used kit. For example, if it says "five piece drum set," that means it has five drums. If it doesn't say how many cymbals the kit comes with, that will be a question for you to ask whoever is selling it. Tuning the Bass Drum and the Toms Place the drumhead on the drum shell first, and then place the rim over the head.