My philosophy on snare drum tone and tuning is that the snare drum heads should be tuned as tight as possible, top and bottom. The shell will provide the most responsive and optimal tone with the heads tuned “tight as a drum”. Buddy Rich said, "I don't tune them, I tension them. There's a great difference” and, of course, he had the archetypical snare drum sound, especially after the advent of plastic heads.
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