[quote="Little Bastards"]Just got a new drum set (my first one) and I'm trying to get it tuned to something I like. I've always enjoyed how Sato has tuned his drums, especially from the living field stuff.
Any drum experts here have any idea what his snare and toms are tuned to?[/quote]
On most of Kool Spice and Living Field, Sato's snare sounds very dry (i.e. quick attack and short sustain, akin to a whip-like "crack!" sound) and is usually high-pitched, which indicates to me that he was tuning his snare fairly tight. Jazz drumming puts a heavy emphasis on musical expression, so a lot of jazz drummers like to tune their drums very tightly in order to get a more nuanced response out of their drums. It's hard to describe in words, but if you listen to Sha-La-La-Lla and Happy Slave, you may notice that his snare playing is much busier than it is in most pillows songs, and the tight tuning is what makes this kind of busy, articulated snare playing possible.
On the other hand, his toms sound fatter, and generally are much lower-pitched and have a longer sustain (which is a fairly standard style for rock drumming). They are likely tuned on the loose side, but not so loose that they sound floppy and have a very dull response. While it's practically impossible to tune drums to an exact pitch, the general rule of thumb most drummers follow is to tune their drums so that they roughly align with musical intervals. In Sato's case, I'm fairly certain his rack tom and floor tom are tuned to a fifth. (For more on tonal tuning, Bob Gatzen has some [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJD_ZggLwTs]nice[/url] [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsqdi5Lzl-4&feature=relmfu]videos[/url] on YouTube.)
That being said, to spare you much frustration and disappointment, let me warn you: you will not be able to ever really match Sato's recorded sound. In fact, you will not be able to match [i]any[/i] recorded sound, for that matter. There are just too many variables to factor in when tuning the drums themselves (size and material of the shell, quality of the bearing edge, material and coating on the drum head, the relative tuning between the top and bottom heads, etc.), and this isn't even accounting for how the drums were recorded in the first place.
Let me know if you want any other tips on drum tuning. It's pretty difficult, and it takes a lot of practice just to get them sounding good in the first place.
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