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How do you get that good corps snare sound?


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What kind of heads did the Crusaders use over the past summer? They did not sound like kevlar or anything else that remo makes. i dont remember which skin company Boston marches for, but it sounded like they used mylar. :huh:

Boston is under Remo...I didn't see them in 02 so I don't know :(

They used and continue to use Remo Tendura marching batters.

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The key element is resonance. Find out which pitches the drums are suited to. The manufacturer has this info.

Back in the day, a lot of instructors my lines competed against wanted to know how I got the sound out of my lines and I've never told anyone until now.

Start with the bottom head, tune it to a pitch in the proper range. Make sure each lug matches, which means that some lugs may not be as tight as others, but only with minor differences.

Tune each gut to the same note as above. Tune the top head to the same note. Tune all the other drums to that drum.

The sound will carry, even at 4 inches off the drum, and it works regardless of the brand of head, or type of gut.

regards,

John Swartz

Oaklands 77-80

Staff:

Oaklands, Buccaneers, Glassmen, and others.

John, this is great info. I wonder what effect the newer "floating" technology would have on this technique. I noticed Glassmens' snares when using mylar recently sounded, well, modern. There was something of the timbre of the kevlar lines in their sound even though they were using mylar. I'd reckon some mod would be needed on the newer technology.

Edited by RickCogley
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I noticed Phantom's line - tenors and snares - was tuned a bit lower this year - I liked that sound and it was a relief, since I'm a fan of the low barky tenor sound they had in the 80s. Especially, the tenor sound in the Spartacus show. It sounds good when drums can resonate to their potential.

Also, on the opposite end of the spectrum was BD which might be just the diff b/w Phantom's Pearls and BD's Dynasty's. If you listen to the solos at the beginning and end of BD's 03 show, the snares are audible, but they sound somehow choked. It improves when they start playing together. Personally, that high pitched sound does nothing for me.

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John, this is great info. I wonder what effect the newer "floating" technology would have on this technique. I noticed Glassmens' snares when using mylar recently sounded, well, modern. There was something of the timbre of the kevlar lines in their sound even though they were using mylar. I'd reckon some mod would be needed on the newer technology.

Hi Rick:

The shell would still have a range that is most resonant. I'd go with that.

Regards,

John Swartz

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I noticed Phantom's line - tenors and snares - was tuned a bit lower this year - I liked that sound and it was a relief, since I'm a fan of the low barky tenor sound they had in the 80s. Especially, the tenor sound in the Spartacus show. It sounds good when drums can resonate to their potential.

Hi Again:

Man could those tenors bark and bite. I was astounded to find out that unlike the rest of us who tuned each size of drum to the same note across the line, Phantom just reefed the crap out of their drums without too much regard to having all the 10s, 12s, 14, and 16s tuned alike.

I also found out that in 86 or 87 they sprayed some fake snow like gunk on the under side of the heads, which deadend the ring.

regards,

John Swartz

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I LOVE SCV's tenor sound. mmm...anyway, I tune the drums at my school. We use falams on the bottom, and we used Premier Tenduras on top...however today we got a shipment of Black Max's. I'll have to mess with them...anyway, We have a very unique sound from most of the other high schools here in Arizona. Our snares are low and not cranked as if playing on a countertop, and our tenors are SCV style...low...mmm...also a lot of bass lines you'll hear have NO range at all...we're all about the range though. Yep...

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It's true that the "fashionable" snare sound has changed, but snare drums really haven't except from a technology and design standpoint. I don't know of anyone in the outside musical world who'd think that the sound we get from snares now is musically complex or interesting when compared to the lower tech versions of 20 years ago. Seems we're training the players to be better musicians (speaking as a 70s/80s dinosaurs myself), but giving them less sensitive instruments to play in the snare line.

To my ears, the sound of cranked Kevlar heads is not nearly as present in the stands as the less technological sound of high tension Mylar. It is, by contrast, rather thin, and all but disappears at volume levels of mezzo and below, showing up only at the ubiquitous syncopated rimshot cracks. When the heads are that tight and inflexible, the amount of air being disturbed inside the shell is necessarily restricted, and the snares won't make much of a sound at soft levels.

Would be nice to see a line in a DCI corps try an all Mylar approach again, just for variety, if nothing else. I've seen a few lines who tried to approximate the sound with Kevlar, but it's hard to do through tuning alone.

Then there's the issue of wear and tear on the lower arm by playing on too-hard surfaces, but that's topic for another day...;-)

I was with the Crossmen when we switched from mylar to Kevlar in mid-season 1989. The way we had been playing for the first 7 months needed to be completely adjusted, not only due to the hardness of the playing surface, but because the snare parts would stick out in the wrong places and be lost in others. We ended up putting a 3 inch strip of moleskin on the edge of the head so that we could hit the surface hard enough to get a snare sound, but not so loud as to over play the ensemble. It was a very difficult transition in mid-stream, and made for two very distinct snare sounds from the beginning of the season (mylar), as compared to the end (Kevlar).

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I LOVE SCV's tenor sound. mmm...anyway, I tune the drums at my school. We use falams on the bottom, and we used Premier Tenduras on top...however today we got a shipment of Black Max's. I'll have to mess with them...anyway, We have a very unique sound from most of the other high schools here in Arizona. Our snares are low and not cranked as if playing on a countertop, and our tenors are SCV style...low...mmm...also a lot of bass lines you'll hear have NO range at all...we're all about the range though. Yep...

Alex, glad to hear you're not just reefin' 'em just to reef 'em. May your sound be unique, because that's so what's needed.

We used to say "bone 'em up" on mylar, but even boned and double-rimmed, they were still lower than a low-tuned kevlar.

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Hi Again:

Man could those tenors bark and bite. I was astounded to find out that unlike the rest of us who tuned each size of drum to the same note across the line, Phantom just reefed the crap out of their drums without too much regard to having all the 10s, 12s, 14, and 16s tuned alike.

I also found out that in 86 or 87 they sprayed some fake snow like gunk on the under side of the heads, which deadend the ring.

regards,

John Swartz

That's cool - so they might have just been lucky. We used to want to crank ours up, but our techs were forever fiddling with them during our breaks.

I really miss the unique per-line sounds!

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I was with the Crossmen when we switched from mylar to Kevlar in mid-season 1989. The way we had been playing for the first 7 months needed to be completely adjusted, not only due to the hardness of the playing surface, but because the snare parts would stick out in the wrong places and be lost in others. We ended up putting a 3 inch strip of moleskin on the edge of the head so that we could hit the surface hard enough to get a snare sound, but not so loud as to over play the ensemble. It was a very difficult transition in mid-stream, and made for two very distinct snare sounds from the beginning of the season (mylar), as compared to the end (Kevlar).

Dave - just curious, but, did that change affect your scores?

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