Hi guys. I've been working on a lot of house and some tech house lately and I find myself debating over which percussions i need to tune and what to tune them to. I understand that low toms and subby perc sound good when tuned to kick especially if they're being used as a bass, but I can't always decide if i need to tune mid range percussion like conga and bongos etc...And if I should tune them do I tune them to the root note of the song?. Since a lot of the low end usually gets cut on elements like this I shouldn't wouldn't matter much but I always seem to have trouble getting this kind of percussion to sit well together. Another thing is I use samples so it's hard to find percussions that are tuned to the same pitch. So I'm wondering what you guys do and if you'd mind sharing some techniques.

Thanks

tune them to ear, whatever sounds good. thats what i do and its been working for me.

I tend to like to tune it to the (pentatonic)5th of the root note of the song. It's harmonically neutral and won't sound like it's trying to be a bass like when you have it playing the same note as the bass.

It all depends how "harmonic" you want your song to sound

Thanks JL I'll give that a try, I'm thinking 7th could work as well..

I notice sometimes when I tune my percs they can sound smaller. Although it depends so much on the sound and where its coming from.

When everything is perfectly on key, it can tend to lack dimension or an outter wall so to speak. I just go back and forth on everything basically till I find combinations that work right. Maybe I will use a closed hat from an open hat, or an extremely short decay hi passed clap on the kick as the transient, and same but unprocessed clap every other bar as the main clap. May use just the bass from the kickdrum for when the bass of the track drops and a snare comes in, use snare for top kick for bottom, although the listener will assume its all the snare. Small little things like this I just go back and forth on untill it sounds right like others have said. Thats really what it all comes down too.

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Sequencers: FL Studio 9XXL & Reason 3.
Main Synth Bass GTs - Pro-53, V-Station, Sytrus, Subtractor, Trilian, Blue, Sylenth & Z3ta.
Main Synth Lead/Pad GTs - Z3ta, Sytrus, Sylenth, Vangard, Albino & Nexus.
Main FXs GTs - Waves Plugins, Soundtoys, Volcano, FL Native FX.
Hardware - Truths, Echo Audiofire, Virus Snow, & Novation Xio Midi-Synth.

unless you are using an 808 and somehow found yourself in 2003 when it was sort of still ok to use straight up unaltered 808s, tuning drums to the actual key is silly. I mean have a blast but your time would be better spent elsewhere. If drums have a pitch, they tend to become synth stabs and no longer drums. Now i'm guessing most use at least 5 layers of drums, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the issue with tuning to a pitch. IF anything you should be doing the opposite and making the drums have less of a noticeable pitch.

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