[Music] Marching Bands and Cadences

[Tsunokiette]

To be honest, our drumline at school is... uh... not as good as it could be. It's got definite potential. Our band combines highschoolers and middleschoolers (unfortunately). I was watching the middle school concert band perform and I noticed one kid in particular playing the snare. He was actually pretty BA. (In other words, as good as if not better than the sophomore we have on snare). To be honest, I want him on quads... but that's enough of that.

What I'm trying to say, is the drumline has the potential to be great. We have somebody who works with it, but it's not full time. It's only during band camps in the summer.

Anyways, this brings me to my point (sorta). Our cadences have pretty much sucked up to this point. They've gotten better over the years, but nothing that makes me go "Wow!". I can't help but feel that if the drum line gets a better (and -admittedly- more difficult) cadence, then I will kill two birds with one stone. (The cadence won't suck *lol* and they will *theoretically* challenge themselves to improve, thereby improving their playing overall, which should carry on to the field.)

Obviously, I don't really trust anyone at my school to write a cadence, so I want to write one or two myself and show them to my band director.

My problem? I don't know the first thing about cadences.

If anybody can help explain the basic structure, characteristics of each piece of percussion, etc., then please do. Any and all help is appreciated lol.

Oh, and if you feel that this is a pointless venture, feel free to say so lol.

[Holkeye]

I wrote cadences for our drumline when I was in marching band. I don't really know how to explain it, though. Ours were usually in two sections, and were pretty repetitive. I still have them burned into the back of my mind, even if it was so long ago. I'll have to make you a midi or something.

[haloOfTheSun]

Cadences are the least important aspect of a drumline. Many of them waste too much time practicing their cadences rather than practicing their music. Not to mention a lot of high school cadences suck, and mostly all are just reworked versions of the exact same thing.

A good cadence should, obviously, be catchy and sound cool. But it shouldn't just be some dumb beat that anybody could just walk up and start playing. It should really showcase the talents of the drumline. Typically the basses will keep the groove going, the tenors will be the melody, and the snares will just be accentuation. I also prefer cadences with a little solo section for each instrument.

It's really hard to get into specifics. Ultimately it depends on the talents of the drumline.

I'll edit with some examples shortly.

EDIT: A poorly recorded cadence which I actually wrote for my drumline my senior year, and another recording of a cadence, this one ended up being turned into a drumbreak in one of the shows I worked on, so the .MUS file contains the pit parts as well.

EDIT AGAIN: I don't think I really made my initial point clear. It's kind of silly to watch a show and the drumline is horrible and while they're leaving they either:

A. Play some stupid *BOOM* *CHICK* *BOOMBOOM* *CHICK* cadence like, "YEAH WE JUST DID AWESOME WE KICK ASS YEAH" when really they were horrible.
B. They play a great cadence which is actually pretty good, but it's harder than anything they just played in their show and you can tell they spend almost all of their time practicing the least important aspect of marching band. Judges hate this, and here they've been known to lower your score when this happens.

If you want them to be challenged and to improve, their show music is what should be doing this, not a cadence. Perhaps the problem is with whoever is writing the book.

But still, I suppose they have to have something for parades and such, so~

[Tsunokiette]

Thanks for  all the help!

I'm downloading and listening now.

Also, I'm gonna be the head drum major next year (whoo...), and I'm not really sure how I should approach this topic with my band director. We need all the people we can get, but there are just some people who don't care. It's not that they are bad, they just don't try. I don't mind having some people who can't play as well, as long as they focus on improving themselves, but when you have people who don't give a (well... you know), it hurts the band more so than anything else, and I'm all for "cutting the fat" so-to-speak. we actually had a judge tell us that we needed to do this -_-.

[Kokowam]

Also, I'm gonna be the head drum major next year (whoo...)

Finally, eh? XD I remember you making a topic about being a drummer in the drumline or something like that before.