Too high

There's this thing about the way drummers think: they're prone to feedback loops. They'll find something cool, and say “That sounds good! Let's do that, only more so, forever.” It's the same impetus that leads Metal musicians to say, hey, we liked it when Metallica started playing really fast, so let's just keep going faster. But you can't just keep going in the same direction forever; at some point the the thing turns on you. That bi-level haircut that looked modern and punkish in 1981 has morphed into a ridiculous-looking mullet. Or you run into natural limits. Like Too Much Coffee Man, you thought that since drinking a cup of coffee made you feel good, then drinking six must make you feel really good. So let's talk about snare drum sound.

Around 1980, inspired by Reggae drummers, Stewart Copeland was tuning his snare drum very high, and it sounded great, and fresh:




Some New York R&B guys, took this further with their little Brady drums— here's Charley Drayton, sounding great, but with a snare sound that is getting a little stylized:




A couple of decades later you have this. There was a period in the 90's when everyone was using piccolo snares with a regular tuning, but here we're in true piccolo range. The drum here shows off Eric Harland's snare drum work beautifully, but the sound is very insubstantial. The tune needs more power:



Continued after the break: