The only drum with a note name — and the only instrument here retuned mid-piece
Timpani sit oddly among tuned instruments. A kettledrum has a definite pitch, which most drums do not; but which pitch is decided by the score rather than by the instrument, and it changes during the performance, by pedal, sometimes within a few bars. So “in tune” is not a state you set before the concert. It is something you re-establish continuously.
That is why this page has no preset chip bar under the dial. What the drum fixes is a range — a 26″ head speaks from about B♭2 to F3 — and presenting eight range endpoints as though they were eight target notes would be inventing a tuning the instrument does not have. The chromatic dial names whatever you have pedalled to, which is the right answer here.
These are the limits of each drum, not targets. Use them to decide which drum a passage belongs on.
Which drum a note belongs on
The four common orchestral sizes overlap deliberately, so most pitches can be played on more than one drum — and the choice matters, because a note near the bottom of a drum’s range is slack and dull while the same note near the top of the next drum down is tight and bright.
| Drum | Range | Best-sounding region |
|---|---|---|
| 32″ | D2 – A2 | the middle; the bottom is slack |
| 29″ | F2 – C3 | the workhorse drum for classical tonics |
| 26″ | B♭2 – F3 | the middle third |
| 23″ | D3 – A3 | avoid the very top — it chokes |
Ranges vary with head, tension and maker; these are the common American orchestral sizes and are approximate. Treat them as guidance for drum selection rather than as a specification for your own set.
Reading a struck head
A tuner has a genuinely hard job here, and understanding why makes it usable. Striking a membrane produces a burst of inharmonic noise — the slap — before the drum settles into the fundamental it is tuned to. Read during the attack and you are measuring the slap.
A timpano is also deliberately built so that its overtones sit in a near-harmonic series above the fundamental, which is what gives it a definite pitch at all. The side effect is that with a hard mallet, or a strike too near the centre, one of those partials can be louder than the fundamental for the first part of the note — and the dial will honestly report the loudest thing it hears.
The routine
- Clear the head first. Before any pitch work, check that the drum is in tune with itself: tap lightly at each tension rod, an inch or two in from the rim, and bring them all to the same pitch. A head that is not clear has no single fundamental for the pedal to move, and no amount of pedalling will make the tuner agree with your ear.
- Set the pedal at the bottom of its travel and confirm the drum reaches its lowest useful pitch there. If it is well above the range above, the head is too tight overall.
- Pedal up to a known pitch and read it. Soft mallet, quiet stroke, read the decay.
- Calibrate the gauge against the dial. This is the part worth doing with a tuner: gauges drift, and a gauge that has never been checked against a real pitch is decoration. Mark where the gauge actually sits for two or three pitches across the range.
- Check the top and the bottom of the range, then come back. Heads settle, and a drum taken to its extremes will need a moment before the middle reads true again.
Where the rest of the section is
Timpani are the only pitched drum here that is pedalled. For bar percussion — where the pitch is fixed at manufacture and a tuner is a diagnostic rather than an adjustment — see the marimba tuner, which also covers xylophone, vibraphone and glockenspiel bars. For clearing a drumhead lug by lug in a kit context, the drum tuner is about that job specifically.