Trusting your Drumline

Written by Drumline Blueprint Media Team Member Trysten Collins

Congrats! You’re finally on the Drumline! Whether your marching High School or marching Drum Corps International, you’re apart of a new group of people that love what they do, which is producing quality music for viewers. But there’s an aspect that every Drumline has to take on and learn to handle, it’s trust. Many would say this is the second largest quality for a band after reliability.

Veterans will agree when someone says you have to trust each other in multiple ways on field. It could be trusting that you know where you’re going when marching, them knowing you won’t be out of step, or them knowing that you’ll play that paradiddle-diddle-paradiddle right. Credibility is essential when marching, and extremely important when you want to move up in the ranks to Center Snare, or Section Leader.

So how is this trust formed? Practice, humility, and a drive to be better. Starting with practice; those amazing drummers you see marching in DCI Corps didn’t just pick up the sticks and magically learn how to march complicated formations. They practiced for hours. You don’t have to practice every spare moment, go fifteen minutes a day and hit a rudiment you’re struggling with or a piece of the show music you’ll be introduced to soon. Ask for the audio files to it if your teachers or leaders have them. Listen and play along, and when you can’t figure it out on your own ask for help, be humble. John Philip Sousa didn’t become great on his own, and neither will anyone else. Once that help is received, put everything you’ve got into mastering it and you’ll now be better than you were the day before.

That’s all it is Use those three qualities and you’ll find that if you push yourself hard and encourage those around you that they’ll want to be apart of something better than the current state of your Drumline. It’s not complicated, so don’t overthink it. Just follow that path, make good decisions outside of the line, set the example, and you’ll find yourself leading the charge to a better quality Drumline.

Happy Marching! Good luck for your 2019 Seasons!