The drum tuner
Hit a drum, see the pitch. Match your lugs, land your toms in the right range, and save your kit's tuning so you can get back to it after a head change — all in your browser, using your mic. Nothing is recorded and no audio leaves your device.
Grant mic access, give a drum a single clean hit near the rim, and the pitch appears here.
Set a reference below, then follow the glowing lug around the drum.
Create a kit below to save this tuning and get straight back to it after a head change.
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How to use it
- Free listen — hit the drum once, cleanly, and read the fundamental pitch. Quiet room, mic close to the drum, moderate hits work best. The level bar shows what the mic is hearing, so you can tell straight away that it's alive.
- Lug match — the secret to a clean-sounding drum. Pick how many lugs your drum has and how close you want them — Standard suits most drums, Fine is for a quiet room and a studio sound, Relaxed gets a kit even and playable fast. Then set the pitch: tap your best-sounding lug and make it the reference, type a target, or use a saved kit pitch. From there just follow the glowing lug — tap about an inch in from its tension rod, turn the key by the amount it asks for, and when the lug lands inside the green band the tool moves on around the star pattern by itself, no need to touch the screen. It will ask for a second tap before it ever sends you to the key, because one hit on a drum head is a suggestion, not a measurement — and the turns it asks for start small and get more accurate as it learns what a turn is worth on your drum. Tightening one lug shifts its neighbours, so it loops back for another pass until every lug reads true in one clean go. Matched lugs = no weird overtones.
- Target range — pick your drum and aim the fundamental inside the band. The ranges are typical starting points for a musical kit, not rules. If it sounds great outside the range, it is great.
- My kits — once a drum sounds right, save the pitch to your kit. Next head change, tap the saved pitch and the tuner flips into lug-match mode aimed at exactly that frequency. Kits save on this device for everyone; create a free account and they follow you everywhere.
Typical starting pitches
The same ranges the Target mode uses, printed for the drum room — batter-head fundamentals for a musical, all-round tuning. Start here, then trust your ears: if it sounds great outside the range, it is great.
| Drum | Fundamental | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 14" snare | 170–250 Hz | F3–B3 |
| 8" tom | 160–230 Hz | D#3–A#3 |
| 10" tom | 130–180 Hz | C3–F#3 |
| 12" tom | 100–150 Hz | G2–D3 |
| 13" tom | 90–140 Hz | F#2–C#3 |
| 14" floor tom | 80–120 Hz | D#2–B2 |
| 16" floor tom | 65–100 Hz | C2–G2 |
| 20" kick | 55–80 Hz | A1–D#2 |
| 22" kick | 50–70 Hz | G1–C#2 |
Resonant heads a touch higher than the batter (a semitone or two) gives a controlled, slightly descending note; reso lower gives more boom and dive. Kick numbers assume a port or light damping.
How to tune a drum, start to finish
The tuner tells you what pitch you are on. It cannot tell you what order to do things in, and order is most of the job. Here is the whole routine.
- Get the head seated. Finger-tighten every rod, then press down firmly in the middle of the head with the heel of your hand. You will hear a crackle. That is the head settling onto the bearing edge, and doing it now saves you chasing a drum that keeps detuning itself later.
- Tune the resonant head first. The bottom head sets the character of the drum and you will not want to touch it again. Flip the drum over, lug match it, and leave it alone.
- Then the batter. Same process, and this is the one you will come back to. Use Target mode to land in the right band for the drum size, then lug match until every rod reads the same.
- Set the interval between drums. Tune the whole kit before you judge any of it. A rack tom that sounds odd on its own often sounds right the moment the floor tom is under it. Musical intervals — a fourth or a fifth between toms — are the usual starting point.
- Play it, then adjust. A drum tuned in a quiet room on single hits is not the same drum at gig volume. Save the pitch you landed on, play properly for ten minutes, then come back.
Tuning a snare
The snare is the drum most worth tuning properly and the one people rush. Turn the snare wires off first — the buzz confuses the mic and your ears equally. Tune the batter to the usual 170–250 Hz band for a 14″, lug match it carefully, then set the snare-side head much tighter than feels sensible. That is where the crack comes from.
If your snare rings in a way you hate, it is almost always uneven lugs rather than pitch. Lug match before you reach for a dampener. Beyond that, our snare buying guide covers what different shells actually do.
Batter or resonant — which head am I hearing?
Both, always, which is why drum tuning confuses people. Mute the head you are not tuning with a towel or a hand and the tuner will lock onto the other one much faster. Tune each head on its own, then take the muting off and listen to what the pair does together.
A few honest tips
Drums are not guitars — they are pitched, but their overtones are wild, which is what makes them drums. Single hits give the tuner the best chance of catching the fundamental; rolls and rimshots confuse it. Fresh heads tune easier than dead ones, so if your drum will not settle anywhere, it might be time for our head-buying advice or a browse of the drum heads section.
Want the sound without the tuning? See exactly how the pros set up in the Rig Vault, or ask the Gear Guru what heads suit your kit. Kit tuned and filmed? Drum Filtersmakes the phone recording sound as good as the drums now do.
Drum tuner questions
Is this drum tuner free?
Yes, completely, and there is nothing to install or sign up for. Open the page, start the mic and tune. A free account only adds saved kits that follow you between devices — the tuner itself is free either way.
How accurate is an online drum tuner?
Accurate enough to tune by, which is the only bar that matters. The pitch you read here is the head’s fundamental, caught by the same autocorrelation maths a hardware tuner uses, and it lands within a couple of Hz on a clean single hit. What matters more than the last decimal place is that every lug on the drum reads the same number — and matching lugs is exactly what this is good at.
Why does the pitch reading jump around between hits?
Because a drum head is not a guitar string. Hit it harder and the head stretches, so the note starts sharp and falls away as it rings; move the stick an inch, or the mic, and it shifts again. Two taps that feel identical, on a lug nobody has touched, can honestly read ten or fifteen cents apart. This tuner is built around that rather than pretending otherwise: it reads the settled ring instead of the attack, throws away any hit whose own pitch will not hold still, and never sends you to the key on a single reading — a lug has to say the same thing twice before it asks you to turn anything. If it still wanders, hit lighter and more evenly, keep the mic in one place, and let the drum ring.
How far should I turn the drum key?
Almost always less than you think, and the tool does the working out. A quarter turn is a big move on a drum that is already close — enough to sail straight past the note and leave you chasing it back the other way. How much pitch a turn actually buys depends on the drum, the head and how far up the tension curve you already are, so the tuner starts by asking for deliberately small turns, watches what each one did to the pitch, and calibrates itself to that drum. By the second or third lug it is telling you what a turn is worth on the drum in front of you. When it says a sixteenth of a turn, it means a sixteenth of a turn.
How close do the lugs need to be to each other?
Closer than most drums ever get, but not perfect. The tuner offers three settings: Fine (dead on inside 5 cents), Standard (12 cents) and Relaxed (25 cents). Standard is right for most drums in most rooms — it is about what a hardware tuner resolves, and inside it a drum sings. Fine is worth it in a quiet room with a good mic when you are chasing a studio sound. Relaxed gets a kit even and playable fast on a loud stage. Chasing five cents on a head that reads ten cents differently stroke to stroke is how a five-minute job becomes an hour.
Can I use it to tune a snare drum?
Yes. A 14-inch snare batter usually sits somewhere around 170–250 Hz, and the lug-match mode is where a snare really benefits — an uneven snare head is what gives you that ringing, choked note nobody wants. Turn the snares off while you tune so the buzz does not confuse the mic.
Do I need a special microphone?
No. Your phone or laptop mic is fine. Get it within a foot or so of the head, keep the room quiet, and hit the drum once — cleanly, about an inch in from the rim. Rolls, rimshots and a noisy room are what throw it off, not cheap microphones.
Does my audio get uploaded anywhere?
Never. All the pitch detection runs in your browser through the Web Audio API. Nothing is recorded, nothing is sent to a server, and the mic stops the moment you leave the page.
What pitch should my toms be tuned to?
There is no single right answer, but there are sensible starting points: roughly 130–180 Hz for a 10-inch tom, 100–150 Hz for a 12, 80–120 Hz for a 14-inch floor tom. Tune each drum inside its range, keep a musical interval between them, and trust your ears over the numbers.
Should the resonant head be tuned higher or lower than the batter?
Both work, and they do different things. Reso a semitone or two above the batter gives a controlled note that falls away neatly. Reso below the batter gives you more boom and a pitch that dives. Same drum, two completely different voices — try both and keep the one that suits the music.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, on both iOS and Android. One thing worth knowing on iPhone: if your ring/silent switch is set to silent, flip it back — iOS mutes browser audio in that mode, which affects the click but not the tuning.