How to Set Up Your Drum Kit (and Tune It)

A kit set up around your body is easier to play, quicker to learn on and kinder to your back. A kit set up around the floor space, or around the last person who played it, makes every groove harder than it needs to be.

Here’s the order I’d set one up in, then how to tune the drums so they sound like drums. Positions are for a right-handed set-up; mirror them if you play left-handed.

Start with the throne

Everything else is placed around where you sit, so the throne comes first. Sit so your thighs slope slightly downwards, with your hips a little above your knees. Your feet should rest flat on the pedals without reaching.

Too low and your knees come up, which locks your hips and makes the pedals heavy work. Too high and you lose your balance on the throne. That slight downward slope lets the feet move freely and keeps your back straight.

Then the pedals

Sit down, relax, and put the bass/kick pedal and the hi-hat pedal where your feet naturally fall. Then move the drums to the pedals. Move the drums to the feet, never the feet to the drums.

A foot that has to stretch for its pedal loses time on every stroke, and your posture twists to make up for it.

The snare, toms and cymbals

• Snare: between your knees, with the top roughly level with your belt line. Flat, or tilted very slightly towards you. With relaxed arms, both sticks should reach the centre.
• Toms: close enough that moving from the snare is a small move, and angled gently towards you so the sticks hit the head square.
• Cymbals: within reach without stretching or standing up. The ride goes where your right hand falls, the crash a little higher and further out. If in doubt, lower is better than higher.

Cymbals set high look good in photos and cost you time and shoulder strain on every hit. If you can play it with a relaxed arm, it’s in the right place.

Then check your posture: back straight, shoulders down, elbows loose by your sides. If something hurts after ten minutes, move it. A set-up is something you adjust, and it’s normal to change it as you get better.

How tuning works

Each drum head is held on by a hoop, and the hoop is pulled down by tension rods, one at each lug round the shell. Tightening a rod with a drum key raises the pitch near that lug. Tuning is getting all the rods to agree.

Both heads matter. The batter head on top is the one you hit. The resonant head underneath shapes the ring and the sustain.

Basic tuning, step by step

1. Finger-tight. Loosen all the rods, put the head on, and turn each rod until it’s finger-tight.
2. Seat the head. Press firmly in the centre with your palm. You may hear a crack as it settles on the bearing edge. That’s normal.
3. Tighten in a star pattern. One rod, then the one directly opposite, then the next one across, and so on. Half a turn each, round and round, so the head comes up evenly. Going round in a circle pulls the head towards wherever you started.
4. Match the lugs. Tap lightly about an inch in from each rod. Every tap should give the same pitch. If one spot sounds lower than the rest, that rod is looser, so give it a small turn on its own until it matches.

A drum with matched lugs has a clear note and a clean decay. Those four steps are the whole of basic tuning; how high or low you take the drum is a matter of taste and of the music. There’s more on that in choosing sounds for a style.

A quick check before you play

Sit down and play a simple beat for a minute. Your feet shouldn’t stretch, your shoulders shouldn’t lift for a cymbal, and every drum should give one clear note. If any of those fail, fix that one thing and play again.

Now play it

Knowing the kit is the start. GrooveIQ takes you from here to playing it, building the 2&4 backbeat a step at a time, and FillIQ does the same for fills. If you already play, Find My Level is free, needs no account, and tells you exactly where you are on a groove or a fill in about five minutes.