Tag: drum line

New Section for Drum Line Cadences – Downloadable Sheet Music

James Christian

A new cadence section has been created in the Free Stuff section at the top of the page.  Check out these new cadences posted for your listening and playing enjoyment.  More will be added in the future, but here are three to get you started.

Some of the cadences are free, and some of them cost a little bit. Overall, we want to keep these affordable and accessible for any drum line that wants to play them. Generally speaking, the free ones have a simple structure and are just fun to play. The ones available for purchase are a little more involved and took more effort to create. If you like this site and the music, please consider supporting it through purchasing one of the cadences. Thanks!

Great White – FREE

Great White drum cadence

Difficulty: 2.5 – This catchy cadence gets faster and faster on each repetition. This requires some control on accented singles, 6-stroke rolls, and syncopated 16th note rhythms. It should be accessible for an average high school or good junior high drum line.

Click here to download as a PDF.

 

Rocky Beat – FREE

Rocky Beat drum cadence

Difficulty: 1.5 – This simple cadence consists of a three-measure groove followed by a four-count solo, each time performed by a different drum line member. The solos here are just examples. They can be easy or difficult. It’s a fun opportunity to show off some improvisation and creativity! The snare line needs to be able to play a basic rock groove, which requires a little bit of independence coordination between each hand, but it should be fairly quick to learn for most percussionists who have been playing for at least a year. This cadence should be accessible for an average junior high drum line. (A high school can also have fun with it by making the solos flashier and harder!)

Click here to download as a PDF.

 

Bad bASS – $4.97

Bad bASS cadence

 

Difficulty: 4.5 – You may recognize this cadence as the “soundtrack” for many other videos on this site. It starts confidently with a hard-thumping bass groove and showcases some fun feature moments for every section. The snare and tenors need to be able to play their flam rudiments. Flam taps, pataflaflas, and flamacues are just some of the rudiments you’ll encounter. The bass line has split 16th note triplets and 32nd notes, some syncopated 16th notes splits, and double stroke rolls in the top two parts. The recording features five bass drums, but an alternative four-bass part is included with the purchase. (If you have six bass drums, just double the bottom part.) The cymbal part is written for two or more players, but one person can combine the parts if needed. This cadence has drive. It has attitude. It’s bad a$$. This cadence should be accessible for an average college or good high school line.

Click here to purchase.

Multi-Tenor Drum Etude #19: “Fibonacci”

James Christian

This “nerdy” tenor solo is dedicated to math geeks everywhere! This is multi-tenor drum etude #19 from The Art of Multi-Tenor Drumming. The main theme is derived from the Fibonacci sequence, and it focuses on developing sweeps, a.k.a. scrapes, around the drums.

Here are the performance notes from the book:

I originally thought of titling the next three etudes Sweep Fest #1, Sweep Fest #2, and Sweep Fest #3. (I ultimately settled on that title for etude #21 alone.) The idea was that each of the three etudes would focus on sweep patterns, but they would increase in difficulty. This idea still generally holds true, but a few ideas came to me based on mathematics, and they lent themselves to sweeps quite well. I think this gives the following etudes a very interesting structure, much more interesting than what I would have created if I was simply trying to write a sweep etude from scratch.

I was reading how the Fibonacci sequence is used in the music of Bartók, Debussy, Satie, and others. This gave me the idea to do a few experiments. The main theme of this etude, Fibonacci, is derived from the Fibonacci number sequence. In short, Read more “Multi-Tenor Drum Etude #19: “Fibonacci””

Two Exercises for Any Percussion Instrument: 8th Note Timing

James Christian
Click on the image to enlarge or click here to download in PDF format.

These two timing exercises are quite helpful for all percussionists, regardless of your specific area of specialty.  They seem simple at first, but they really great exercises for getting an ensemble to internalize the pulse together.  They are also useful exercises for individual practice (with a metronome, of course!).  They will help you realize how accurate or inaccurate your internal beat subdivisions are.  This becomes especially evident at extremely slow and extremely fast tempos.

I should state upfront that I did not write these two exercises, but I like them, and I wanted to share them here.  I helped teach at a high school drum line camp a couple of years ago, and Luke Holt was the front ensemble technician.  He brought out these exercises during the full drum line rehearsal (I’m not sure if they were original with him, but they’re worth passing along).  With all of the space created by the rests, it was a challenge for the entire group to play every note perfectly together.

I have since used these exercises at times to help my percussion group in the same way.  They are particularly good for bass lines, since each individual player often has isolated rhythms like this.

For individual practice, I highly recommend using a metronome with the eighth note subdivision turned on.  You will probably be surprised how easily you tend to rush or drag certain notes in the measure.  I would recommend practicing these exercises every so often at slow tempos (about 40-60 bpm or slower) and fast tempos (160 bpm or faster).  If you can play these two exercises perfectly along the entire tempo spectrum, you can be pretty confident in your sense of eighth note pulse.