Hi! I'm Wes Crawford and now we're going to discuss tensioning the snares. We've already put our heads on and assume that we have heads all tensioned the way we want with the tones and the pitches we want and now one adjustment that a lot of people dont consider strongly enough is how to tension the snares to the proper sound that you want. All snare drums are a bit different, but basically you're going to have some type of knob here that will adjust the tension of the snares and by this, I mean the actual wires, the strands of wire is on the bottom, you can adjust how tightly they are pulled against the bottom head and this will affect the sound to greatly, vastly different sound if they are very loosely touching the head versus very, very tight against the head and Ill demonstrate this. Ill tap the snare drum and that's what its going to sound like if the snares are very loose against the bottom head and I'm going to gradually now tighten by turning this knob clockwise as I hit the drum and you can see the difference in sound. What I did, I tightened this knob so that you could hear the difference between the snares very loosely against the bottom head all the way to what I consider to be too tight. When its too loose, its all rattling, it doesnt sound too good, when its too tight it sounds choked and just like bound.

So, you want to find generally speaking, unless you're trying to get some kind of special effect sound, you want to get an in between position that's right for you. Also, I want to emphasize this, with tuning and particularly with this snare tightening topic, you want to get somebody sometimes to play your drums and you stand up front and hear what they sound like. Right there, you still have a nice snappy kind of attack sound with the snares, but you also have a little bit of body because the snares dont stop immediately after hitting the drum. It just gives a little bit of fatness. You can make it a bit fatter by loosening the snares a little bit more. By fat, I mean a wider sound, it doesnt go away quiet as quickly or you could actually make even more attack and snap here by tightening it up a little bit more and from my position and my ear, all those are acceptable sounds on the snare drum, but again you really need to see what it sounds like up front. I have also seen peoples snare drums up close that thought, wow, they really sound horrible but then miked up and out in a PA, they sounded really good. So, that's also a consideration just as much as what we're hearing right here with the tension of the head and the tightness of the snares themselves and interweaving variable is distance from the drum. You want to see what that effect has and being miked and going through a PA. So, all these are considerations for getting the snare drum to sound that you want.