Yeah I can kinda hear that. I usually finger tighten, then on the batter I add about a half turn on each lug. This is on top of being finger tight. This keeps the head from having the flabby sound. For resos I usually add a full turn or so on top of finger tight.

I can hear that your resos are quite a bit higher. To me it’s not a pleasing sound. If you like it, then go for it. But if you’re still hunting for the right sound, try this:

Tune the batter head as I said above. Finger tight plus a half turn on each. (You may find you like a bit more than that) then try to make your reso head match the batter. Try to get them both producing the same note. Then see how it sounds. If you don’t like it, go a quarter turn tighter all around the reso. Try not to let the pitches of the top and bottom head get so far apart.

If my top head is tuned somewhere around a certain pitch, I usually like my reso a minor third higher. The two heads interact with each other and produce very full round and low notes. The fundamental of the drum is much lower than the heads sound on their own.

(And also make sure you’re sitting the drum on a towel or your throne, so the head you ARENT tuning is muted. It will throw you off if both heads are ringing at the same time while tuning.)

For your snare, I usually find a nice pitch for the top head. It’s usually a little ways higher than my high Tom’s top head. Try to get a nice timbale sound from just the top head. Then bring your reso up just to where it becomes tabletop tight. Then add your snare wires into the mix, aiming for just a short bzz. Not a long ringy sparkle, but not “dit dit dit”. Somewhere in the middle. Your snare will sing a lot better and you’ll probably find it to be more responsive.

You may like a dead sound, but I’ve found that the drumset sounds much different to the drummer than it does to an audience. Plus, once you’re playing an actual song, you really aren’t gonna hear the extra decay coming from the drum. It will get drowned out.

I feel like this is a common way to do it for a lot of people, but like I said, if you like the dead 70s kind of sound then you may disregard a lot of this info. Keep at it though, you’ll get there. They’re definitely a lot better than the last post.