Warning: if you hadn't done it yet, or if you landed here from a search engine, you may want to know how to mount the drum heads. Otherwise, move on to the tuning part.

 I need to make a technical premise: there are two schools when it comes to drums tuning. One says the drums should be tuned to a precise temperated scale pitch, the other one says they don't, yet they should have different pitches and possibly relative intervals. Tuning my drum set I discovered an interesting fact. I already knew the shells had a specific resonance frequency, pretty much like everything else, but in addition to that, I found these frequenciese to be very close to those of the equal temperament. For example, using a spectrum analyser, I found that my toms behave like this:

I noticed that, starting from A2 for the 10" tom, they are placed at a minor third interval from each other. I tend to think that non-chromatic percussions should not be tuned to precise pitches: there's always some bandwidth around the central frequency so that it's possible to move around without loosing much resonance. For example, I like to keep my 10" and 12" toms a bit lower than their frequencies, and the 14" and 16" a bit higher (just to be precise: the 10" would be much lower than the 12" with respect to their central frequencies, and the same is true for the 14" and 16" in the opposite direction).

A useful tip for those mounting new drum heads is to remove both batter and resonant heads, mounting the batter, bringing it to the approximate desired pitch—you'll notice you are there because the shell really starts to sing—and finally mounting the resonant head, and finish the tuning. But for now, let's take one step at a time.

Let's start again to work on the lugs until the head reaches the pitch we like, while keep checking the pitch to be the same near each lug. Once we've reached the desired pitch, push the head like when we were mounting it, and bring it up again, always checking the lugs for equal pitch. Now it should be safe to assume the tuning is going to last for a decent amount of time.

The most interesting part starts now: we have to decide the colour of the drum. Each wood and each building technique give the drum a number of acoustic characteristics, but we can still decide whether we want a deep and rich tone that resonates for a long time, or a dry sound with very short decay. This solely depends on personal taste, or repertoire needs. In short, it's time to mount the bottom head, which is called resonant because it's never hit directly with the sticks—hopefully, though I've seen people mounting toms upside down "because it's the same", irremediably damaging the thinner and more delicate head (anyway there are people who mount batters as bottoms too, that's a perfectly legitimate choice if you know what you're doing; in this case it may even be acceptable to use the drums upside down, yet it's not advisable).

We mount the head the usual way: opposite lugs, pressure for settlement—lighter pressure with the more delicate heads—self tuning and so on. Speaking of the resonant pitch, it's always safe to tune it to the same pitch of the batter head. This way, the air the batter pushes down gets almost completely reflected by the resonant, providing the widest harmonic range possible, and the longest decay time, depending on the type of the heads: double-layered and muffled (like Remo Emperor or Pinstripe) or hydraulic (like Evans Hydraulic) are likely to have shorter decay time than single-layered (like Remo Ambassador). Anyways, the rule of thumb is that tuning the resonant higher than the batter results in a clearer and crispier tone, while keeping an interesting decay, while tuning it lower results in a darker tone, shorter decay time, and more control on overtones. The former is my way of choice. I'm not sure about how much lower than the batter it should be: I tune it between a second and a third below. If we want to be extremely precise, we can use a spectrum analyser and check the fundamental frequency, which of course we'll notice it's changed (in my case it becomes lower). Generally speaking we can bring it back to its original value tuning the resonant head rather than the batter: just to be safe, for a coarse tuning we work on the resonant, for a finer tuning we work on the batter. Once it's all settled, we'll only have to work on the batter. Conversely, if we have to start over every week, it's very likely we've made some mistake in the first place while mounting and settling the heads.

All this general rules still apply to snare drums, with some special care for the resonant head: given the limited depths of these drums, lighter and thinner heads are usually preferred (like Remo Diplomat or Ambassador). Moreover, the snare drum has a tuning screw that regulates how much the snares adhere to the resonant head, which in turn influences the length of the decay time. Tightening the snares means shortening the decay, thus making the sound drier. For example, I really like to tune my snare drum lowering the resonant head and tightening the snares. It's a very powerful, balanced and dry sound. For those who don't like the sympathetic snare noise, there are two advices. First, the snares that vibrate the most are the external ones, and removing them "solves" the problem. Second, there are special snares like the Puresound Equalizer 12: I don't use them but I've been told they're very good, and I think I'll give them a try soon.

A few words about the bass drum. The general rules still apply regarding pitch and tone, keeping in mind that bass drums are typically hit with softer mallets resulting in a softer sound with less attack. I like to tune the batter as I please, generally so low that the spectrum analyser is of no use here, and to loosen the resonant as much as possible. I'm using a Remo Powerstroke 4 as the batter, and the stock black Mapex head as the resonant, and I'm pretty happy about them.

One thing that should really be avoided is to punch a hole through the bass drum's resonant head. This may compromise both the harmonic characteristics of the instrument, and the head itself, not to speak of the shape of the shell. If we want to reduce the excessive boom, use mufflers.

Last advice: we should change the drum heads at least once a year. If we play the instrument very often, if we care about it, and if we use it to teach, we may want to change them more often: they're cheap and we won't regret it.