Evaluating the accuracy of musicians and sound engineers in performing a common drum tuning exercise

Abstract: A listening test was conducted with particular relevance to the scenario of tuning a drumhead to have an equal or even overtone frequency response around the perimeter of the drum. If the sound of one drumhead location is identified as higher or lower frequency than another, then tuning adjustments can be made to achieve a uniform response. A subject group of 24 experienced musicians and sound engineers were asked to compare 18 pairs of A and B drumhead sounds. In total, only 45.4% of A-B comparisons were correctly identified as higher, lower or equal frequency. The best participant score was 88.9%, though 7 participants scored just 33.3%, which is equivalent to the average score for randomly guessing the correct answer.