r/drumline

I'm a senior in hs this year and would like to play something challenging since its my last year. I chose Tornado last year not knowing of its infamy and barely got a II (closer to a I than a III). I feel that it would be boring to choose the same thing to try and redeem myself so i'd rather play something that's similarly challenging. Suggestions?

I’m like 5’1 and my school doesn’t have a tenor harness that fits me properly and my section leader thinks I just need to get used to the pain, but it’s been a month and it’s not any better. idk what to do 😿

A few months ago I bought a used Yamaha SFZ marching snare drum from Guitar Center. I do like how the drum sounds, but I can’t turn the lugs at all. Does anybody know how I can fix this? Thanks in advance!

My school’s bass drums are tuned so incredibly terribly. Bass 3 is somehow much higher than 2, and both sides of the heads for all of the drums aren’t close either. Nobody in our drumline has really said anything about the drums, but it bothers me so much, lol. So, I would like to tune our drums, but I don’t really have any knowledge on how to do this at all.
As for where we play (I assume this would determine some things due to acoustics?), we don’t really march as we are fairly small (3 bass players, 2 quads, 2 snares), but we play in the stands for football games. Also, if this would change anything related to the tuning, since the bass players are younger, we don’t have them play splits. We usually use basses 2-4, but we sometimes use 5 on special occasions, such as school chants.
I’ve watched EMC Productions’ video on YouTube on bass tuning, but he was more specific to actual drumlines who play splits, so I didn’t know if anybody else would have other advice in my situation, or if his advice should work. Thanks for the help!

If a percussionist wants to move to snare drum from another instrument (keyboards, rack, bass drum, etc) , where would you start teaching them? Besides the obvious things like grip and timing, in what order would you introduce fundamental topics like stroke types, crescendos, doubles, rolls, etc.

Also, what does the ideal person learning snare drum? What should they already know or be familiar with to make learning snare drum technique and music not so overwhelming?

I play bass drum in my schools marching band (going into my 4th year on it) and I am heavily considering doing DCI/WGI in the future. I am battery section leader at my school but I’ve never felt like I was that amazing of a player, just the best out of all of us (along with other reasons I was chosen to be a leader). Because of this, I hadn’t considered band after graduation, but I’m realizing that I would really love to do it.

I’m trying to grind and workout some of my flaws (ex. reading time signatures, conditioning) and something that is really holding me back is hand speed, especially in my left. I think naturally my left hand is much weaker since I am right handed and we most commonly play important notes on our right hands, but it’s holding me back!

What are some good exercises or ways to fix this??

Which heads should I get for my pearl marching snare, and how should I tune them?

Hi everyone, I am an assistant director of a small marching band and am trying to help our drumline. We cannot afford a drum tech and I have no experience with percussion besides a few basic rudiments.

This all being said, I still want to give our drumline the best shot at playing music that will challenge them and help them grow over the years.

Are there any resources for writing drumline music that is both fun and accessible? Or tips you have from experience?

We compose our own music (stand tunes and field show) and the snare lines all sound the same. We are more a HBCU style band. We have cadences from the old program that are fine.

Thank you!

So I have a Xymox Pad and a Ram Pad. I do not like the feel of the Xymox pad. The ram pad is great but it provides a little too much rebound help, is a small diameter, and it quite lightweight (great for travel, not great for bouncing around on a surface).

I’m considering biting the bullet for a Rudimental Drumming pad (rdPro drumcorps pad). I’m curious how you all think this pad compares to the others. I have also played on the off world pads and didn’t love it. A bit too much of a gum rubber feel for my liking.

I don’t just want another xymox feel pad. Obviously the holy grail would be something as close as possible to a real drum but that’s not really possible in a true pad. I’ve watch some you tube reviews and they seem very positive of the rdpro (like from SnareMan).

I’m marching snare this year, and my current earplugs are the free ones from the expo tent at WGI finals. They work, but they muddy my snare line’s sound a bit and make it harder for me to listen in. What earplugs are out there that don’t block out those higher frequencies? What ones do you guys use?