The snare and hi-hat sound on Level 42's song "hot water" is pretty cool.

Ball of Confusion from the Duran Duran album "thank you" has stellar snare, hi-hat, and bass drum recording.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOZz6EVWD-s[/ame]

The newer Battlestar Galactica has some pretty well recorded percussion goodness and it's fun to fool around trying to do it.......big floor toms and large mounted toms help for that.

After polishing up a chrome over wood 24 inch bass drum, I left the heads (no holes) really loose to do the "miami vice" bass drum.

Lots of inspiration out there but I only mentioned the sounds......and not so much the riffing.

Off the charts! How much fun is that?! It would be funny if you panned the camera around upstage and found a tidy little 20" or 22" kick inside there like Dennis Stauffer did.

I am in agreement with what many said here. I like all kinds of drum sounds as long as they are appropriate for the genre. Sometimes it is just a specific drum sound; a snare drum here, a 12" tom on that song, a great kick sound.

As an aside, I have made several not so positive comments about Don Henley's drum sounds in the past on this site. I still do not care for that dead 70's sound in any way shape or form, however, I had a nice critical listening to "One of These Nights" a couple of evenings ago and I will have to admit, to make sonic room for that 'orchestra' of guitars and the great vocals one needed a "smaller" drum sound. It all just works doesn't it?

Since Simon Phillips has been mentioned, I think my favorite tom sound would be his and those of that ilk. A great example of that is the intro to "I Will Remember" by Toto. I could listen to the first four bars over and over and over. That is a really great example of how drums become musical instruments.

Someone mentioned "there and back" and how Simon's drums don't show too well.

What I find funny is that Jan Hammer's drums in the first track (star cycle) don't suffer nearly as much......probably because he was in on the mixing process.

On vinyl, that first explosion of sound from Jan's cymbals almost defies the physics of recording and sound reproduction.

It's still pretty awesome on CDrom but it's missing the impact of the original vinyl much like "sunday afternoon in the park/one foot out the door" by Van Halen when you compare vinyl vs digital.

I really love how they recorded the Hi-hat on "sunday afternoon in the park/one foot out the door" but the star of the show is possibly Eddie's best solo of all time which I haven't yet ever seen duplicated by anyone else.

The intro to "My Sharona" and "she's so selfish" are also really good to establish a reference for your toms and snare sound.

The sound of Al Jackson on Love and Happiness slays me every time.

Aaron