Drumline Exercises
June 1st, 2009 by James Voss Grumish
Usually you see flam-fives broken down to the component rhythm. This new exercise is only slightly different, but much better.
Flam-Fives Sectional puts the flam-fives component rhythm in context which will allow you to work on the nuances like grace-notes and diddle spacing. The end result is simply a combination of flam-drags and cheeses where one hand is responsible for all the diddles.
If that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry. Just know that this exercise is the most efficient way to develop and clean flam-fives across an ensemble.
Print a couple of copies of Flam-Fives Sectional for you and your friends. If your line isn’t quite ready for flam-fives yet, try the Flam Accent Sectional.
The winter drumline season has ended and the results - and videos - are in from the 2009 Winter Guard International World Championships.
The 2009 WGI scores ended up reflecting the 2008 WGI results. Half of the champions were repeats - Rhythm X (PIW), Dartmouth (PSW), and Pacifica (PSO). As usual, here’s the collection of WGI videos that the drum and stick manufacturers create each year.
>> Links to 2009 WGI Videos
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May 5th, 2009 by James Voss Grumish
As far as drumline sheet music goes, there’s something nice about the simplicity of drumline exercises like the classic Triplet Diddle commonly associated with the Blue Devils. If you’re interested in more diddles and less check-pattern, download this alternate version of Triplet Diddle. This is intended to be a bit more of a finesse exercise, so play nice and low.
This release of Triplet Diddle is the first of a series of medium-difficult drumline exercises that will be published over the course of 2009. Keep coming back to get the others or simply subscribe and never miss out.
Also, how long before e-readers like the Amazon Kindle replaces our drumline music 3-ring binders?
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April 13th, 2009 by James Voss Grumish
[photo courtesy of Patrick Wright]
Dr. Paul Buyer, Director of Percussion at Clemson University, recently finished his new book, Marching Bands and Drumlines: Secrets of Success from the Best of the Best
.
Buyer consistently found a set of Five Factors Influencing Excellence by spending time on-campus with some of the best college marching bands in the country:
- Louisiana State University’s Tiger Marching Band
- University of Alabama’s Million Dollar Band
- Western Carolina University’s Pride of the Mountains Marching Band
- Michigan State University’s Spartan Marching Band
- “The Best Damn Band in the Land” at Ohio State University
- Green Brigade Marching Band at the University of North Texas
- “The Pride of Arizona Marching Band” at the University of Arizona
This book is more informative than any “What works for our group is…” convention presentation in a stuffy hotel ballroom. Instead, it’s Buyer’s perspective and analysis as an observer finding the common threads of excellent programs. The research and insights of Marching Bands and Drumlines might just be the next great resource for marching music educators.
Students, tell your band director about this book! Email your director this link or quickly print this Marching Bands and Drumlines Flyer and drop it in their office.
Want to know more? Buyer was kind enough to answer a few questions about the book just for you, the FreeDrum.Info readers. Enjoy the interview.
FreeDrum.Info: Aside from being great bands, how did you determine the list of programs you wanted to spend time with?
Dr. Paul Buyer: With over twenty bands on my initial list, I decided to choose seven schools based on their home football schedules, diversity in location, athletic conference, and marching band tradition, and reputation for having an excellent marching band.
FD.I: Although it examines college marching bands that are traditionally recreational in nature, how might your book assist highly-competitive high school programs?
Buyer: I use the term entertainment, rather than recreation, but my book emphasizes the importance of developing intrinsic motivation, something I feel is lacking in many competitive high school band programs. Rather than offering extrinsic motivation such as ratings, rankings, scores, judges’ tapes, and trophies to reward winning, students develop intrinsic motivation and values such as accountability, self-discipline, and pride. In addition, highly-competitive high school programs will learn life lessons that transcend the activity such as goals, expectations, leadership, teamwork, culture, motivation, practice habits, musicianship, and recruiting and retention.
FD.I: How much of the book is specifically about drumline? What areas of marching percussion are covered?
>> THERE’S MORE!!! Continue reading Paul Buyer’s interview >>
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April 3rd, 2009 by James Voss Grumish
[photo by Justin Van Rheenen is shared]
Some people call them sweeps, some people call them scrapes. Basically it’s just a double-stroke where the notes are played on different drums. This is a fundamental technique for playing marching tenors, so if you’re already a tenor player or hope to be one in the future, make sure to learn these simple scrapes/sweeps drumline exercises.
When playing tenor sweeps the motion during the double-stroke is created by using a small amount of elbow pivot and lateral wrist bend (side-to-side). Don’t just rely on either your elbow or wrist to move your stick horizontally.
Also, keep your shoulder relaxed. Stiffness will make consistent sweeps impossible.
Lastly, make sure the medial wrist motion (up-down) remains consistent during the double-stroke and that there are indeed two independent strokes (as opposed to a diddle).
Tenor Sweeps and Scrapes Exercises
Two really quick bits of FreeDrum.Info new for you:
- Later this month check out an interview with Paul Buyer, author of the recently published and soon-to-be-released Marching Bands and Drumlines: Secrets of Success from the Best of the Best. Paul was kind enough to answer a few questions about just what’s inside the book and why you should get a copy.
- In the past, FreeDrum.Info has offered premium drumline exercises for a small fee. These full-score exercises will be available for free later this summer, and we hope you enjoy them. Also, it’s free to subscribe to FreeDrum.Info articles to make sure you don’t miss out.
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March 1st, 2009 by James Voss Grumish
So you want faster single-stroke rolls. Okay. Here’s the very short drum lesson to help make this possible.
- Work on single-hand legato strokes. The idea is that each stroke should utilize both the wrist and the fingers for each stroke; don’t just rely on one or the other.
- The grip should be loose, but totally under control. There’s a small, subtle difference between the sticks moving freely and being moved freely. You’re fingers should be in contact with the sticks at all times.
- Don’t underplay and pretend you can go faster; don’t overplay and pretend it builds chops faster.
- Work towards consistency of sound between your hands. Practice double-stops on a pad and line things up. Practice exercises as both right-hand and left-hand lead.
- Use a metronome to make sure you are keeping things up to speed and not allowing your hands to drag.
- Subdivide the metronome click. Don’t just put eight notes in a beat and call it a single-stroke nine roll. Put the notes in the right place.
Enough lesson. Here’s some single-stroke roll exercises.
The last roll exercise is the best. It’s called “Fat Wallet”. Enjoy.
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February 2nd, 2009 by James Voss Grumish
You read that right. These are easy ways to learn a few complex subdivisions to add to your technique toolbox. First, read a little about complex subdivisions if you’re unfamiliar.
Complex subdivisions appear in music as numerical ratios above your notes:
Understand the meaning by replacing the colon with the phrase “in the space of”.
- Five in the space of four
- Seven in the space of four
- Four in the space of three
Lastly, look at the music where the complex subdivision is defined. Use the written note(s) to determine what type of subdivision you’re going to change.
- Five quarter-notes in the space of four quarter-notes
- Seven 16th-notes in the space of four 16th-notes
- Four 8th-notes in the space of three 8th-notes
Some of these you’re already familiar with, maybe without even knowing it. A triplet is technically a 3:2 — three 8th-notes in the space of two 8th-notes. A sixtuplet is 6:4 — six 16th-notes in the space of four 16th-notes.
It might sounds like a lot of math, and it certainly is. Give this Easy Complex Subdivisions drum exercise a try and see if you can’t find some fluidity in all that math.
Easy Complex Subdivisions for Drums
The basic idea is to take a tap-roll and evenly distribute the “diddles” between the accents. Hopefully it will come very naturally and quickly for you.
Please leave a quick comment if you liked this exercise!
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