All I can say is with the Tuning... it's a pain when you do it in bad weather, changing a head right before a show, or when your instructor who plays snare says "Um yea... I can do it. It's cool"

Here's the method I prefer:
1. Take off the old heads and throw them away.
2. Wipe down the shells and bearing edge.
3. Put a little bit of candle wax on the bearing edge.
4. Put the heads on and hand tighten the lugs.
5. Make sure the distance between the shell and rim is the same all around.
6. Tighten going around crosswise, 90 degrees each lug. After each lug has been tightened 180 degrees (twice around), make sure the heads are cleared. Repeat.
8. Bring each head up to a major 3rd below the goal pitch. Wait a day with the drums in a warm room.
9. Make sure the heads are cleared, then bring it up to the pitches listed below:

Drum 4 - Eb
Drum 3 - G
Drum 2 - Bb
Drum 1 - D
Low Spock - Gb
High Spock - Bb

I have found this method to work particularly well. The heads stay cleared and ring well.

Right now, our tenors are tuned pretty much to "Jump On It". I don't think it was intentional, but I played it one day and noticed it was tuned almost perfectly for it.

Main melody:

4 - 1 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 3

Spock is just tuned to a fairly high, but not quite piercing pitch.

I think this is how we do it, I'm not sure though.

We get 4th to a decent pitch, then we tune third to a minoe second, then second to a major third above that, then first to a minor third above that. Shots just go wherever we want them.

How does one know what note a drum is tuned too? I'm confused.

One very useful technique for tuning tenors has not been metioned yet (that I could see anyway): pinning.

This is really only handy when using remo clear pinstripes, but it's a pretty commonly used head. Often times remo pinstripes will have a lot of air in between the two plies of the head, which ruins the sound of the head. If the (brand new) head is trued (cleared) and the drum still won't ring, it just has a very dead sound to it, chances are there's air inside. One way to check is to rub your finger hard against the head. You should see a rainbow effect caused by the oil between the plies. If you've determined there's air in the head, it's time to poke it with a pin. There are two ways to do this:

method 1: this is the "in a hurry method." Just poke the pin all the way through the head. You should do this close to the inside of the pinstripe, the opposite side of the head from the playing zone. So for drums 1 and 2, at the front of the head, and for drums 3 and 4, in the back. After you push the pin through, push on the head. Depending on how much air there is, you may hear it wooshing out. Run your hands over the head, starting opposite the pinhole, to push the air out. Hopefully after you push all the air out, when you hit the drum you'll be rewarded with a nice ringing tone.

There are two disadvantages to this method. Firstly, if the player plays on the pinhole, the top ply will start to break at the site of the hole, and eventually this break will spread to the entire head, leaving you with only the bottom ply, and then eventually the whole head will break. Second, now that there is a hole in the head, if you use the drums in the rain water will get inside the head and ruin it forever.

Method 2: This method is preferred but is a little tricky. Pin the heads in the same location, except flip them over, and very carefully push the pin only through the bottom ply. This is easier to do if you push the pin in at an angle. With the hole only in the bottom, water won't get in, and the top ply has no hole in it to cause a break

Both of these methods will reduce the lifespan of the head, so consider your head budget before you start poking holes in things. BUT, it will make a head that sounds dull and thuddy sound like it's supposed to.

correction: the rainbow isn't caused by oil, there is no oil. It's caused by the two layers of plastic being right next to each other

my line usually just tunes them to the sound we want and our desired pitch for the over all notes in the show

Pinning isn't really a tuning technique. It's more of a "making a head sound the way you want it to" technique.

As for my school's tuning method... First we make sure that the heads are cleared. We usually use Remo Emperor Crimps. Although this year we used evans MXT's because we were pressed for time and they were the only kind that Steve Weiss could ship us in time for the next competition. I use the standard Pearl high tension key on the Yamaha field corps small quints. Then we put the tenors on stands next to the vibraphone. We usually use the vibes or glock because they're a bit brighter than the rest of the band with A=442, which makes the tenor voice stand out a bit more. We usually tune drum 4 to a D, then go with the wholly diminished 7th chord method (D, F, Ab, Cb) Then we crank the spock.