TommyP, What kind of compressor did he run his lines through if any ?

I don't believe I have ever seen/heard anything on the HOW of Buddy's tuning/tensions as he never really cared to discuss it... thus he didn't! LOL!! I will say again though: Best way to approximate his tuning/sound, is to listen to specific recordings where the drums are very exposed and recorded well. The main two are again: "Diabolus", and "Winning the West" as afore mentioned. Very easy to HEAR the pitches on these two arrangements, even Buddy's wood Dynasonic with the snares OFF on "Winning The West". It was very easy for me to zero in on his tuning/tension of the Dynasonic with the snares off! Also...

Ronnie Verrell was the drummer that "played" Animal on the Muppets. Many people agree... they thought Ronnie/Animal more then stayed up with BR on that spot. Ronnie Verrell passed away recently I want to add. I think in the last year or so actually. He was an excellent drummer for sure!

Tommyp

I`m one of those people who agrees that he absolutely held his ground against BR in that set !!

Very good observations Tommy!

Having seen Buddy between 35 and 40 times, I think it's actually 38 to be specific I can honestly say I never looked or thought of the "deflection/movement/depression" of his heads.

It's all in the ears and listening. And a very interesting observation about that particular tune, Winning The West, a tune that may not get mentioned too many times in Buddy's play lists.

But it true that it was mostly a snare based "theme" that he'd work from. And those snares were amazing, but you still needed the chops to pull it off and Buddy had no shortage of those.

But I still go back and forth as to which were his BEST sounding snares.........and those wood Dynasonics from 65' & 66' were incredibly.. .....dynamic shall we say, I guess that's best word for it. But then compare that sound, to the Fibes sound of the early 70's when Buddy went AWOL from Slingerland for the snare, and those are pretty amazing recordings, Live at Ronnie Scott's.

And now Tommy's thrown in Winning The West, so I guess the moral is get your ears on and listen.

Ronnie Verrell, a great player and very underrated player, I'd urge members to grab some Ted Heath recordings from the late 50's and in the 60's, you won't be dissapointed in Ronnie's playing.

On a another similar front Tommy, it seemed to me that I remember hearing that later years, after Buddy had acquired the Radio Kings from Joe McSweeney, that he used calf on his snare. Am I remembering a wishful story or did he really go back to calf in say the last 3-5 years?

Great thread!

BGT

I could understand where people don`t pay mind to head movement. If you hit it once, ya, not gonna see much. But this dude`s hit`n 3 or four times a second every other couple of seconds and when I do something like that I notice two things, the head bounce,..if you will,..and the tom tom shake.

I get divits,..he don`t. My snare sometimes looks like a soup bowl,..his don`t and he`s make`n big sound hit`n hard.

I think TommyP hit me with a good piece of advice, Buddy is pulling off the heads somehow and I realized it when I watched The Impossible Drum Solo tube when he went round the cymbals twice, no drum just cymbals. If that was me those things would be bounce`n around, but Buddy did it and they hardly move plus clearly project.

I understand what TommyP meant and I think I`m gonna stop useing my three fingers to throw the stick forward and learn to pull. (Thanx TommyP) That would be new for me !!

So maybe it isn`t his tunning ,..but his technique, and I`m look`n at the wrong things !!

It would also help to know the tensions, and I say that cuz most of my Toms are C-Toms, but not the Floor, Snare and Bass drums.

I use those three fingers cuz it moves the bottom of the stick two or three inches and the tip six to eight inches at the same time give`n the top the speed and the bottom impact force !!

Oddball - if you want to get a real feel for the technique, pulling the sound out, try playing fast double stroke rolls accenting the second hit in each pair. It forces you to 'dig out, lift out, pull out' the sound with the sticks. It's a different motion than you're used to. Try it. The side benefit of accenting the second hit is, it really smooths out your dbl.stroke rolls at higher tempos. Try it at 180 bpm... rR-lL rR-lL - pa-PA, pa-PA, pa-PA, pa-PA.... you have to 'lift' the sticks off the head in order to play it/make it sound right.

John

BGT here's a Buddy clip with his RK's. Looks like 84 timeframe. Would that be correct?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzIQYJ0bjFA&feature=related[/ame]