Just found out my kick drum's tuning was off by 30 cents on every track

I was going through stems for my new EP last night in San Salvador when I decided to run a frequency analyzer on the whole D11-04 session for the first time. Turns out my kick drum was sitting at 49 Hz when I thought it was tuned to 45 Hz, that's nearly a 30 cent difference right in the low end. I've been producing for 6 years and never once checked the actual pitch of my drums, just relied on what sounded okay in my headphones. I pulled up the tuning guide from a producer forum I lurk on and sure enough, my ears were lying to me the whole time. How many of you actually tune your kicks to a key in your tracks, or do you just eyeball it like I did? I'm thinking about going back and re-pitching all the drums in the album now, feels like a huge mistake to leave it.

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piper_dixon4518d ago

Ever read that study about how the human ear struggles to judge pitch below 100 Hz? It said most people can be off by 20 to 50 cents and still think it sounds right, which honestly explains your 30 cent gap. Re-pitching those drums is a solid move if the whole album is in a specific key, but I would start with just the tracks that clash the most and see if your ears agree with the numbers on those.