Tony

Sounds good. Thanks for that great clip. I'm downloading it now.

Here's something that Tony
liked to do to torture me.
In order to get me to hold
onto the stick, sometimes,
while moving around the kit,
he'd set the toms, tilted
in the opposite direction.
Yes. That's right. The drums
were facing away from me.

He also set them up with
large spaces between them,
the cymbals way up in the
area, so I'd have to fully
extend to reach them.

He tried to keep everything
equidistant, at the same
time, out from the center
of my body. What a stretch.

We were heel-down in the
kick at all times, not the
HH, however.

[img]cool.gif[/img]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 06, 2003 10:02 PM: Message edited by: peter c ]</font>

The drummer on Mission
Impossible was NOT Billy
Cobham. It was the great
Shelley Manne.

[img]cool.gif[/img]

I bought Tony Williams records for ten years before I got to see him. When I finally did it was a trip seeing him execute all those Tony licks. I liked the way he sometimes rolled, each stick on a separate tom, then taking it down from high to low keeping the sticks on different drums the whole time.

Reminds me of the second
lesson (I think), when I
asked him about "Fred".

I wanted to know if he was
really riding that fast on
the HH or if he was just
depressing the HH for one
of the strokes. I think I
might have offended him.

He pointed at the kit and
told me to kneel down by
the HH and then he whaled
the pattern right there in
front of my eyes AND ears...

[img]graemlins/cry.gif[/img]

...He then stopped and said:

"That's why it's called BELIEVE IT."

[img]cool.gif[/img]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 06, 2003 05:28 PM: Message edited by: peter c ]</font>

Photos of Tony show him playing in leather-soled shoes as well as sneakers. Did he have any preference that you know of, Pete? He probably could've played in galoshes and we not be able to tell the difference.

None that I know of.

Playing heel-down gave
him the highest degree
of control. It was VERY
powerful. After seeing
him, I went heel-down,
just until recently and
even now, it's a variat-
ion of heel-down; not a
total heel-up approach.

Perhaps that's not a to-
tally fair statement. At
times, my heel will be
down on the footboard
or the floor, just below
the footboard, for the
double-strokes.

[img]cool.gif[/img]

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 07, 2003 11:05 AM: Message edited by: peter c ]</font>

The Bonham bounce'll do that to you. Maybe you should wear tennis shoes. [img]wink.gif[/img]

Game set and match'd grip there 5! [img]smile.gif[/img]

That's plimsouls to you, Me2. [img]tongue.gif[/img]