How can we tune the drums in Ipad? Is there an app for the note detection?

RainyDayOnMars

Hello all. I bought DigiStix 2 yesterday and the app has tuning knobs for kicks, snares, hi hats etc. The main problem is I don’t know -for instance- the main/default kick’s note that will be tuned. I don’t know where I am and because of that I also don’t know where I will go. What is the best app (auv3) for detection the note of the kicks, snares or hi hats?
Thanks in advance.

[Deleted User]

I'd say that in general drums are designed to be unpitched, so they are not usually described as having a distinct note value. But sometimes a drum will ring at a certain pitch that may be unsuitable to the key of the song. In that case I guess you could just tune by ear till it sounds right.

I don't think most people using drum apps in a standard way use the tuning knob to get a specific note (which wouldn't happen anyway for most drum sounds), more for general lower or higher quality that gives the musical effect required.

So I guess I'd suggest just using your ear rather than worrying about a specific pitch, unless you're doing something more unusual.

Jamie_Mallender

All you need to do is put an app with a tuner in the fx chain. NuRack has a cool tuner or some of the guitar fx have them. Come to think of it, there’s still a distinct lack of iOS tuners.

RainyDayOnMars

@SimonSomeone said:
I'd say that in general drums are designed to be unpitched, so they are not usually described as having a distinct note value. But sometimes a drum will ring at a certain pitch that may be unsuitable to the key of the song. In that case I guess you could just tune by ear till it sounds right.

I don't think most people using drum apps in a standard way use the tuning knob to get a specific note (which wouldn't happen anyway for most drum sounds), more for general lower or higher quality that gives the musical effect required.

So I guess I'd suggest just using your ear rather than worrying about a specific pitch, unless you're doing something more unusual.

Thank you @SimonSomeone . On desktop, for example, if I used A minor scale, I was setting the kicks, snares and hi hats to note A (I thought frequency values come from kicks, snares and hi hats would be better if they were as same as song’s main scale). Is that information wrong?

0tolerance4silence

@RainyDayOnMars said:

@SimonSomeone said:
I'd say that in general drums are designed to be unpitched, so they are not usually described as having a distinct note value. But sometimes a drum will ring at a certain pitch that may be unsuitable to the key of the song. In that case I guess you could just tune by ear till it sounds right.

I don't think most people using drum apps in a standard way use the tuning knob to get a specific note (which wouldn't happen anyway for most drum sounds), more for general lower or higher quality that gives the musical effect required.

So I guess I'd suggest just using your ear rather than worrying about a specific pitch, unless you're doing something more unusual.

Thank you @SimonSomeone . On desktop, for example, if I used A minor scale, I was setting the kicks, snares and hi hats to note A (I thought frequency values come from kicks, snares and hi hats would be better if they were as same as song’s main scale). Is that information wrong?

It’s not ‘wrong’, but I agree with SimonSomeone. Use your ears. Typically drum or percussion that caries audible pitch is modulated so tuners usually fail anyway. To emphasise the tail of a pitched drum sound I usually put some heavy distortion on it tune it and then remove the distortion.

jonmoore

Fabfilter Pro Q is really useful in this department. Sometimes it’s useful to tune to the fundemental in others to later harmonics. Pro Q allows you to see either frequency values or a piano keyboard.

A really good exercise to train yourself to tuning electronic drums is to create yourself a tuned 808 kick patch (effectively creating a bass synth). As @0tolerance4silence mentions, adding distortion will help you and you can dial it back down afterwords if you so choose. But it must be said some of the best tuned 808 kick patches are created with oodles of high quality distortion.

RainyDayOnMars

@jonmoore said:
Fabfilter Pro Q is really useful in this department. Sometimes it’s useful to tune to the fundemental in others to later harmonics. Pro Q allows you to see either frequency values or a piano keyboard.

A really good exercise to train yourself to tuning electronic drums is to create yourself a tuned 808 kick patch (effectively creating a bass synth). As @0tolerance4silence mentions, adding distortion will help you and you can dial it back down afterwords if you so choose. But it must be said some of the best tuned 808 kick patches are created with oodles of high quality distortion.

Thank you for your advice. Key detection apps, for instance, catch a kick’s tail, not its starting point, because of that it detects the key all wrong, right?

What app can I use for give the distortion to a kick for the right detection and how can I do that? Our main purpose here will equalize the tail and starting point of this kick, right? Is there a tutorial video you can recommend for that?

Samu

@Jamie_Mallender said:
All you need to do is put an app with a tuner in the fx chain. NuRack has a cool tuner or some of the guitar fx have them. Come to think of it, there’s still a distinct lack of iOS tuners.

Tonestack Pro has a nice tuner built-in.

Another method I personally like to get the pitch of certain sounds is to use Blue Mangoo's Oscilloscope & Spectrogram.
You can drag a line to the steady tone or overtone and it will give you the midi-note and tuning value.
(The oscilloscope can also be made to give a steady waveform cycle when the pitch matches).

Cheers!

jonmoore

Tonestack Pro is good for the price, and MixBox will allow you to set up a chain using their excellent saturation module Saturator X with an amp model and distortion module (the distortion on its own is underwhelming, but workable if you’re only using the distortion to help with tuning).

jonmoore

It’s worth adding as others said earlier in the thread, this is a skill that you should learn by ear, especially if you’re going to be reguarly tuning real drum kits.

There’s even an app (there’s a number but this one is well regarded) designed to help with tuning real drums.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drumtune-pro/id655607914?l=nl&ls=1&mt=8

Because it’s not a plugin, if you were to use it to help you with sampled/synthesized drums you’d need an iphone recording the output of a second iOS devices signal from a speaker of some sort (headphones won’t work). But it’s another tool that will help you towards tuning by ear evantually.