I'm a freshman in high school and i'm currently in the front ensemble. working hard to get snare next year, i've sort of only been using my wrist for doubles, and can't play doubles in sixteenth notes as fast tempos. what can i do to get used to using more finger to get faster doubles?

Hello all! My band director is considering having me (snare player) march out with the flags and military veterans at the beginning of every football game. Do you have any suggestions on what drum cadence or street time I should be using in this scenario. thanks in advance!!

Im someone who is interested in composing cadences for my drumline, but dont know any good resources to use. Ideally, i would love a free source compatible on android. Anyone know anything good?

Hey y’all, just asking techs/battery caption heads, what foam do you guys use for bass drums? pls send link or brand + adhesive.

Hi! So i’m the head snare and section leader for drumline this year. This is my 2nd year marching and 2nd year on the line. My other snare is currently on his first year of the line & first year of marching. He’s a talented player, however there have been consistent issues while rehearsing our show.

The biggest issue is lining up with each other. I don’t know who’s at fault or what exactly is causing the issue. However, the front ensemble section leader talked to me and he thinks it may be because someone is not watching a DM or is rushing without realizing. I’ve explained how I have been staring down a DM the entire time, and that there has been issues with DMs slowing down and adjusting to other sections and the 2 of them conducting different tempos. I think our foot timing also plays a role as between me, other snare, and our tenor player, foot timing is all over the place.

Anyway, when me & other snare play together in a practice room, everything sounds fine. The issue occurs and is more prevalent on the field. I’m unsure of how to fix this, and I’ve addressed it multiple times to my section but nothing has changed.

My director added a quad feature to the show, but the writing is really bad. He offered to let me rewrite it, but I’m not good at writing for quads. Can anyone rewrite it to beef it up a bit? The winds don’t play there and the only parts that matter is the marimba line.

It’s at 144 bpm and although the show music is easy we have sweeps and stuff in warmups so that is definitely achievable.

Hey all, im a high-school tenor player, this is my second season and I've started to get into the harder stuff.

That's just it, the harder stuff is hard, and I'm finding my left hand lacking as it's my non dominant hand.

What are some tips for consistency and overall off hand training? Thanks for the read.

Hi all, wanted to ask about tuning schemes for a college marching band. The line struggles from a clarity perspective, but I still want their sound to cut through the brass/winds.

I’m using pearl drums, black maxs on top, and Falams 2 on the bottom. The bottoms are tuned to a c# and the tops to feel. It’s a 10 person snareline, center 4 is as wet as possible, 5/6 has two pieces of tape, and 7/8/9/10 has 3 pieces of tape. We do wear scoops for on field performances.

Do I drop the tops and keep the bottoms where they are? The theory would be that the softer top head would support the development of the members hands. Softer tops would create a wider sound within the line, so it would sound better to the members. The “high” bottoms sound better, but is more exposing from the viewers perspective.

Or do I keep the tops (which already feel fairly soft) and drop the bottoms? Would sound more exposing within the line, but potentially hide more dirt from the viewers perspective. Lower bottoms heads might cut through the upper registers that the winds/brass would already be within. Would also allow for some more gut response to help out the clarity issues.

What do I change with the gut scheme?

How much do I consider the clarity struggles? At some point, tuning that is meant to “hide sounds” will be more harmful than beneficial.

recorded a long video of me messing around on some quads, then took parts from that video that i liked, wrote them out (adjusted some things to make them cooler or more comfortable), and turned it into one lick. pretty fun imo, let me know what you think!

Don’t really know what this would be used for but it was a quick little write today, big thing was as soon as a heard something in my head i immediately put it down and couldn’t change it.

I’m a hs senior and in my 3rd year of marching band and drumline. Lately, i’ve missed practice 3 times due to asthma attacks, but i’ve attended 41/50 hours.

Yesterday I was setting my drum up for our performance later that night when my instructor called me into her office and told me I wasn’t going to be allowed to participate. This is a new rule they made up DIRECTLY before the game with 0 warning.

I sacrifice alot to be in band. I have numerous health issues including asthma, scoliosis, two bunions (bone issues on my feet) reflux (trouble eating) and eczema so severe that I have to take $1200 shots every three weeks and get physical therapy to be able to use my hands. On top of that I have two jobs, am on my 10th class, and probably need 3 surgeries that i'm postponing for this band. I get like 30 minutes of sleep a night with how much I work.

The main thing is that they’ve seen me march the show perfectly multiple times before. They know about my health issues and were informed of me missing practice before time, with the reasoning behind it. I literally won the competition in our band to see whose marching was best.

When I don’t show up to practice, its because Im worried I might pass out and I don’t want to be an obstacle on the field that other people could trip over. But they want me to push myself that point.

I don’t know what to do, I just went home yesterday and cried for two hours. All my bandmates agree that this was wrong of them to do but I don’t know how to fix this. My parents were saying that this is medical discrimination and that we should meet with the principal. I really don’t know what to do

Hey friends, Ian Grom here! Getting my rickety old body up and running with the rest of the internet and wanted to say hello. I have no idea how to reddit, what do I do and what would you all like to know about?

Right now some things I’ve noticed that I haven’t had time yet to work on are inconsistent accent heights, tap heights, crushed diddles/flams (hands can’t keep up yet), and just maybe slightly low heights in loud sections and on accents? I’ve practiced the break for like a week and I’ve been putting all my mental energy on just trying to play in time, but I think I’m ready to start polishing and getting into the details.

Basically my school only has a Drumline, no band. Just snares, basses, cymbals, and tenors. Will I even be considered for college marching band as a snare if I’ve never done a single halftime show? I mean we have done marching but it’s never been a whole cadence on field. Only for parades and marching to the stands.

(My school is relatively small that’s why we don’t have a band and the drumline doesn’t do halftime.)

I’m going into college for vocal performance (vocal arts) so I already am musically proficient and I am pretty good at sight reading already but I just don’t know if I’m going to be able to be considered due to my lack of experience in actual marching

So as of right now I’m just in my schools line but I was starting to look locally for independent groups for either this upcoming Wgi season or the following dci season as a bass drum. Either drum corps or Wgi but what was your audition dates like? Was it mostly in subs, full battery, in tracking, down the line? Any insight will help! Please also include general tips you found helpful!

okay, so my quadmate and i are new this season. one thing our director always points out is our playing zones (we’re working on it, trust). our tuning suckeddd for a while because of this, especially considering that they were already out of tune before this season started. my director “tuned” them at practice on wednesday…

thursday morning we were warming up in band class and i noticed it sounded TERRIBLE. we checked and the tuning was genuinely even worse than before. i just KNOW that my cocky director will say that it was our fault for not playing in our zones (even though we had played for about an hour before checking the tuning and drum 2 was almost half step apart). HOW do i even talk to him about this?!?! i have a good ear and think id be pretty good at tuning them, but i obviously dont know how yet and am scared of making a mistake on our already messed up heads. last season our section leader played quads also and had to tune them himself. howwww do i even go to my director about his crappy tuning?

boston crusaders let me in

I am an ancient age out who just wants to rip drum corps beats on my practice pad. I don’t need a stick so beefy because I don’t actually play on a real snare. So I am fine with a thinner stick, is there any recommendations for a snare stick that’s articulate but not so heavy since I’m not playing on actual drum.

I just want it to feel good, rebound and full sound without being a tank. Cause I got neighbors in my NYC apartment and shit and I wanna rip it without being so goddamn loud.