Eric Valentine breaks down his approach to tuning toms and snares to the key of the song, so the drums feel musically locked in. Instead of picking pitches arbitrarily, he tunes to strong notes in the key, usually the root, fourth, or fifth, so the drums move with the chord changes.
Toms have an obvious pitch, so getting them in key creates a settled feel, the same subliminal cohesion you hear on old Motown records. Snares are trickier because their overtones are messy, so he tunes by ear in the room first, then checks the mics separately, since the overtone that reads as dominant can shift once it's captured. If chasing that overtone is more trouble than it's worth, dampening the snare is the easier fix.
He also touches on drum head maintenance: he skips replacing heads on a fixed schedule and only swaps one out once it genuinely stops sounding good, treating tone as the deciding factor instead of habit or routine.