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What issues have caused controversy in drumlines?


wbargeron

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There's that, too.

Playing on a Kevlar head is nasty, no give and no feeling to it at all (really, worse than playing on the kitchen table honestly). That plus it seems dangerous on the face of it...when you've got unbreakable heads and unbreakable drums, the only thing left to give is the DRUMMER. Yikes. :laughing:

I dont know. People seem to have differing experiences with them.

I have been playing on a kevlar drum since i started in HS band in 1992. Straight through drum corps, 8 years in the US Marine Drum and Bugle corps and then 3 years of DCA corps in 04, 05 and 06.

I have absolutely no issues with my hands whatsoever.

The Marine Drum Corps was also "Year round drumcorps". Not seasonal like DCI/DCA so you never really stop all year.

Of course i know people that have had problems, but very few. Alot of quad and bass drum guys get hand problems too and they play on low tension drums with mylar heads so again, i dont think you can blame the kevlar.

Also, I picked up a drum from "Back in the day" and the #### thing weighed a ton! lol

Gave me alot of respect for the old boys in the marine corps line that were shall we "Seasoned".

Quads have gotten heavier (more drums! duh!) the Dynasty drums i marched in 06 were a killer!

But snare drums if anything are lighter.

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You dont know enough people then.

Im glad you like the civil war sound bro.

And no.. its not my argument because i am not arguing that one is better than the other.

I am simply stating what many 4th graders know which is that in the artistic world, you can like more than one thing. You can also prefer one thing over another and not have it come down to "right or wrong".

Im sorry your "Puzzled". I know these are really difficult and complicated formulas we are dealing with.

Kevlar sounds like crap, what can I say? A few lines have managed to make it sound okay, but not many.

If you think all the lines that ever drummed on plastic sound "civil war", I want some of what you're smokin.

I can only assume that since you started HS well into the kevlar times, that you've never actually heard any of the top lines play on plastic live. Too bad, it was incredible. A poor substitute to be sure, but go back and find the live broadcasts of lines like Garfield 85 or Blue Devils 87 (don't rely on the DCI recordings, they're garbage), and then get back to me on your "civil war" argument.

Edited by WestCoaster
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I think the Kevlar heads have their niche in the highly competitive world of drum corps, where making mistakes more exposed puts pressure on the performer to do well. There is also a change occuring in percussion education. Most of the problems with hands and wrists are the result of players being taught by veterans of the mylar age, and were taught to stroke through. This is changing.

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This brought back a great memory - Marion, OH, 1983. After watching Garfield from the sidelines, the shock and awe of watching their show was followed by the shock and awe of their drumline playing their cadence as they marched on the track in front of me. It wasn't so much the cadence, or even the drumline as a whole, but the #1 bass playing that thing like it was a snare. As I recall, their cadence had extended sections where the #1 bass was playing solo. An indelible image.

Yeah, they did have the BOMB cadences in those days-very distinctive sounding. With the gold drums and the six packs they were an awesome sight.

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Very good point.

Thanks for reminding me of how old I am. :laughing:

Yeah, I know the feeling. Sometimes I can't even begin to fathom that it's been 25 years since I marched.

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Actually, I think that the introduction of composite heads (hybrid, whatever) has actually made a marked change in drum tuning on the field for the better - there *is* a happy medium to be achieved.

Mike

It has gotten better, but I think it still has a ways to go. The volume is still problematic and the feel of the heads still are a bit concretey. If I was Evans, I'd be working on an AWESOME hybrid head and steal Remo's market share.

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But snare drums if anything are lighter.

I don't know about this one... The mylar drums up until the TDR were definately lighter than even Pearl Articulites. I think CabsAlumni quoted about 7lbs in another thread. The Slingerland TDR came into vogue in the mid-late 70s and lasted into the 80s. It was a heavier drum, bad a great sound, as you can see in this discussion. http://www.bluedevils.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=17255

I have a vintage 15 inch TDR and can't seem to find my scale, so I'm only going to hazzard a guess, but I think it's a little less than my articulite but not by much. So it's bit less than the full sized Dynasty, Yamaha, and Pearl Kevlar drums,

Also, about the "Civil War" era sound. I think you have to historicize a bit. In the early to mid- 1970s, the sound in vogue was darker, fuller and more like what you would call "Civil War." On the other hand, those drums were extremely LOUD. You really had to experience it live-it would knock your socks off. By the early 80s, however, the sound was much closer to the pitch of Kevlar with a fuller body. We used to crank the heads down with an added metal head rim to get more leverage. That was pretty common in the TDR era. Eventually Remo came up with the powerstroke with the rubber ring around the rim to help crank even more. So there was a sound that anticipated kevlar's high pitch by the mid-1980s.

You are right about the tenors-not only more drums, but the "mack daddy" tenors are in vogue now. They just look a ton. But some of the early tenor (triples!) players playing timp-toms with either slings or very crude harnesses hefted some real tonage.

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I think the Kevlar heads have their niche in the highly competitive world of drum corps, where making mistakes more exposed puts pressure on the performer to do well. There is also a change occuring in percussion education. Most of the problems with hands and wrists are the result of players being taught by veterans of the mylar age, and were taught to stroke through. This is changing.

The veterans of the mylar age taught the veterans of the kevlar age. IF you trace any of the top instructors now there's a clear linage.

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The veterans of the mylar age taught the veterans of the kevlar age. IF you trace any of the top instructors now there's a clear linage.

I know my instructor in the early 1990's didn't change his approach when we switched from mylar heads to kevlar. Though his focus was with mallets in Suncoast ('83,'84) and Blue Devils ('85-'87...also the year he won individual with marimba I believe) but he was a great instructor all around. I just don't think he was aware of any major adjustments to make. He worked with Hardimon and the Blue Knights in '91 and still there wasn't a sense of any adjustments to the approach of snare drumming techniques with kevlar as far as my little world was informed at the time.

I mean, over the summers our high school line practiced on tables before ever moving to drums and even then ear plugs helped us clean our parts with mylar. Today you need earplugs with kevlar to keep your hearing intact.

About the double hoop comment, I remember those days fondly. The rimshot always sounded different as the head stretched and if you pulled your stick up too much you'd break it after putting in a second hoop. Or maybe that was just me.

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I know my instructor in the early 1990's didn't change his approach when we switched from mylar heads to kevlar. Though his focus was with mallets in Suncoast ('83,'84) and Blue Devils ('85-'87...also the year he won individual with marimba I believe) but he was a great instructor all around. I just don't think he was aware of any major adjustments to make. He worked with Hardimon and the Blue Knights in '91 and still there wasn't a sense of any adjustments to the approach of snare drumming techniques with kevlar as far as my little world was informed at the time.

I mean, over the summers our high school line practiced on tables before ever moving to drums and even then ear plugs helped us clean our parts with mylar. Today you need earplugs with kevlar to keep your hearing intact.

About the double hoop comment, I remember those days fondly. The rimshot always sounded different as the head stretched and if you pulled your stick up too much you'd break it after putting in a second hoop. Or maybe that was just me.

I kind of think b/c of the slow evolution of mylar that there relatively few adjustments to make. I believe that in 84, we got die cast 14 inchers that could take a major crank without bending the rims. The head really was the weak link and with the rubber piece around the rim of the head, you could really crank. Our mylar was very tight and had a lot of rebound, not as much as kevlar, but similar. The mylar cranked still had a bit more forgiving surface than the kevlar. So I think the adjustments were probably made slowly over a decade or so as mylar transitioned into kevlar. In the long run, I think kevlar won out more because of durability issues than anything else.

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