I personally love Roger's timpani solo's in the jazz and the game tours. It looks cool and it is very energetic but I wonder if someone knows if he was really a good timpani player because I don't know much about that instrument. Is someone here who could tell me that ?
I played timpani in marching band back in high school, and while I'm certainly not a trained percussionist in any way, I know that Roger's holding the mallets wrong and doing little other than bashing holy hell out of the timpani while fiddling with the tuning pedal. Still, like you said, it looks and sounds really cool.
Roger would finish the regular drum solo to KYA then Brian May would hit the delays on his guitar and play a little doodle until Roger went to the tympanis then Brian would either go to the side of the stage or leave for a minute as Roger would go wild on the tympani. Roger's tympani solos were better than either John Bonham's or Carl Palmer's tympani solos. On the Jazz tour, it was a straight tymp. The Game tour Roger added the cymbal to the tympani setup.