PercussionMafia

My best experience was in Seattle after the 2004 show. I got to play shopping spree on BD's Nate Alford's snare along with him. Ahhh, yes. . . good times.

Two different entities, IMO. But, there are still some problems with his reasoning. First of all, Abe and Glennie are mostly soloists. They don't have to worry about listening back or watching a DM. In those cases, technique very much DOES matter in order to keep the ensemble together. Dynamics matter because you are playing with people all around you and audience members at varying distances. Any top instructor (drum corps related or not) will tell you that PLAYING THE SAME WAY IS KEY TO PLAYING TOGETHER, especially with the short notes in percussion. Second, the comparing of the sound is not fair. When's the last time you heard Evelyn Glennie on the sideline of a football field, in the wind with thousands of people cheering? As we can all relate to, the sound quality of a football stadium will never be as good as say, Benaroya Hall. Thirdly. . . he called it marching band. <**> He was right about one thing. This is a junior activity and let's face it, not everyone in it is going to be a professional musician. Everyone is still within the first 21 years of their life and comparing them to some of the world renowned top mallet players is not a fair comparison. Believe me, Evelyn Glennie and Kaiko Abe took lessons on technique when they were that age. I know for a fact that Glennie began her musical experience in middle school band. There is also a fine line between finesse and "floppy hands". I wonder about his opinion on batteries because Travis Barker, Tommy Lee and others have publicly stated that marching band and drum corps gave them the tools (ie chops/technique) to do what they do today. I wouldn't ever call those guys "amateurs". EDIT: And let's not forget the root of the activity: The military, which=uniformity=everyone doing the same thing. While it has evolved from square formations for all 11 minutes, there are still some aspects today. Drum corps percussion, especially the battery, is all about cleanliness and in order to acheive that, everyone has to be on the same page. There are a lot of other things I can think of, but I believe you get the point. When that poster leads his "Glennie/Brown" style pits to a world championship, maybe I'll change my mind.

At auditions, it took too long to rotate everyone using carriers, so we used stands on all the drums. During purely musical rehearsals (no drill), whole line gets stands. Warming up in the lot, snares on carriers, tenors and basses on stands. Drill practice, well, obviously all on carriers. Snares are light enough to not require stands all the time. Unfortunately, snare stands seem to be in more plentiful supply than the other drums. The guys I play with are all pretty built up and experienced, so there are not a lot of endurance issues to worry about with "over-standing". If you do use stands, make sure to keep the body position relative to the drums the same as on carriers, or else the players will start playing too far up on the drum (been there, done that).

Oooooooooooo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) And one side can play "left hand traditional" and the other "right hand traditional" Which do you play? b**bs

Quad Logic is awesome. Not much more to say, but just wanted to back up what Mike said.

hehe. . . horn players b**bs If they're playing matched grip, the drums won't be tilted at all. They'll be like everyone elses' (or at least most of them).

I like Martian Mambo and DB, but Ditty is awesome too. 13th hour will always kick you in the balls. Funny thing is that MM sounds more "double beat" than Double Beat does. BTW, some of you may not know, but Scott told the crowd at PASIC, that that would be the last time anyone would hear Ditty from a BD line. They're retiring it. . . again. Of course, we all remember what happend in 2000.

Vibra-slap!!!!! b**bs

Well, as you said, Premier has been dying in the drum corps market, but some corps still use them (Cascades '04, for example). The biggest thing hurting them is quality of products and availability of parts. They tend to fall apart and becuase they're over in the UK, parts are hard (and expensive to get). For a corps on tour, this presents an obvious problem. With Dynasty growing and Yamaha and Pearl holding their strong ground, it will be hard for Premier to make a comeback. Plus, Yamaha and Dynasty also offer package deals on the horns they make. Premier (and Pearl, for that matter) don't have that edge.

MTX. . . . .

If you don't want the handle, just mount the block onto the butt of a broken/mis matched stick. That's what my tech does and it feels better than holding the bracket.

The Pearl S800WL and Yamaha SS735 are good snare stands for a marching drum because they're double braced and the Pearl has a wide base. You don't really need stadium hardware, unless you're not strong enough to wear a 13" drum for a couple hours in the stands. If you don't use stands in the stands (no pun intended), just stick with a concert-type snare stand. The Pearl is about $80 at columbuspercussion.com and the Yamaha about $73. You might be able to get that lowered, if you buy a few and it's for a school. Hope that helps, PM

That may be the case. I was just relaying info that was told to me by a guy I know who's a Remo endorser and is very familiar with the manufacturing process. Look, I can't really back up my claims, but I myself can't tell the difference for two reasons. One, to be able to hold the sound in your head of one line playing Black Maxes and compare it to another playing White Maxes, doesn't really work. Two, to be able to quickly determine the difference in sound between the two is not a fair contest because rarely will you have two lines that have the same drums tuned the exact same way. Choice of sticks and tension of the bottom head and snares will also drastically change the sound. My .02 PM

Yeah, nothing wrong with those one's from Ayala. That's actually a custom color that Yamaha dubbed "Ayala Orange" (or something like that). I'm not sure, but I think they held onto it as being a custom color for anyone to order.

The White Max you had had just the mylar (that plastic coat you mentioned) on the top whereas the Black Max you had had the mylar on both sides. That double-sided head is designed for doube snare systems (such as the MTS) and, yes they do sound different than the mylar-only-on-top Maxes. The mylar on the bottom protects the snares from chewing up the weaving on the head. Both heads can be ordered with mylar just on the top, or on both sides. All else being equal, there SHOULD NOT be a distinguishable sound betwen a White and Black Max, excpet for the problems encountered when in the sun, like mentioned earlier. The heads are made the exact same way, just the strands are died different colors. At least, I can't hear it.