How to Tighten a Drum Head

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Part of the video series: Snare Drum Tuning & Repair

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Summary: Tighten a drum head slowly using a drum key; learn how with tips from our expert percussionist in this free snare drum video tutorial on drum repair.

Views: 1,187 | Tags: drums, drum, snare, instruments, musical, musical instruments

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About the Expert
Contact: alexcasimiro.com

Alex Casmiro Alex Casimiro, has been involved with marching percussion for many years. His experiences include marching with the Silver Knights, Targets, Spartans, Madison... read more

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Video Transcript

How to Tighten a Drum Head

So when we start to bring up the bottom head, we are going to start on the number 1 lug closest to the bottom and the right again, we are going to use the start pattern across, we are just going to use two very small cranks at first. Especially with these bottom heads, they are much more sensitive than the top heads and will pull much sooner and much easier so you are really going to want to keep that in mind. Even these Kevlar heads can take a little more abuse. If you are using the plastic version of this, you are going to want to think about that a little bit more. Especially just putting on the head right off the back, you can pull on one within 30 seconds at $40 a pop with this not being able to use this. It is a really important thing to think about. Now you are going to want to take this up slowly. So I've given it a few cranks now and I'm not going to touch this for about 1/2 hour. I am going to let it set because if you bring it up very quickly, it is going to stretch the head in kind of an awkward and it is really not going to be right. Once you have about 10 of these drums. They are all going to sound a little different and you are going to start to wonder really why the drums don't sound the same. It is really in this step that things could go wrong in your later tuning.