Why Drumlines should write their own music

Ladies and Gentleman, we are less than a month away from marching season! Some of you have already begun the grueling, sweaty process of your band’s training camp. While it may seem like the heat is a killer and that playing the same cadences your drumline has been playing since you heard it in elementary is getting boring, fear not! We here at Drumline Blueprint have some wonderful news for all of you drummers out there! 

Repetitive cadences over the course of years gets boring, and they start to lose their pump up feeling over the course of time. This also flatlines your ability to read music well and deal with new styles of cadences when they are introduced to your drumline. Too this we say, have your drumline write it’s own music! Now some of you may be concerned! “What if I mess up? What if it doesn’t sound good? What if I need help?” These are all reasonable responses. 

Over the course of you writing your own music, occasionally ask your director(s) if they’ll listen to it and pitch in some advice. Ask your peers if they like the sound of it so far. Most importantly, ask your drumline and ask if that with a little practice if they could play that. You want to challenge them but you want to make sure that it can be learned in a decent amount of time to be used in the near future. 

This can also improve your abilities as a musician! By writing even a small five instrument cadence, you’ll start to understand how music is put together and how to play some types of music better because you already have that comprehension. But introducing new, well written music to your Drumline can give it more options and will help with morale getting something they feel is new and cool.

So download a composer app, Musescore is certainly a fantastic choice, and get to writing because this isn’t going to be finished in an hour! Good luck!

Happy Marching! 🙂