Marching Band anyone?

I was in a drum line for many years......played snare

This is my 3rd year in high school drumline, I'm on center snare. We've got a pretty small line, but I've come to really enjoy the stuff we play. And we've gotten 1st place percussion for the past 2 years. We're an older line so everyone just sort of gets along and nobody is remarkably better than everyone else, so we can all keep our drummer egos in check . I'm going out for a corp this year, probably Impulse, just for fun if I can rake up the cash for it.

I was in the HS drumline as well, quads. I even played for a short time in a very short-lived drum & bugle corps., the Nighthawks, but that was so long ago.

Sasquamo wrote: Ah, drumline.  The place where you shed all individuality, creativity, and musicianship you might have in the quest for technical perfection and machine-emulation.  Where there is only one correct technique, and all others are wrong no matter how much more efficient they might be, because everyone has to look the same.  It's not even music, it's a sport.  What garbage.  I can't wait to quit next year so I can focus on jazz drumming, which is creative and not filled with BS.

That about sums up my feelings about marching band drumlines.  It's a nice place to learn technique, but even then that's largely dependent on the quality of instruction.    After 3 years of  HS marching band (2 pit, 1 quads) I was ready to move on to more creative avenues--jazz, rock, North Indian music, etc.  Fortunately there was no marching band at my university, so I didn't have to deal with it anymore.  On the other hand, I had to do a lot of orchestral/symphonic stuff--perhaps there's a bit more "musicianship" (i.e. "the ability to play dynamically"), but it in the end it really boils down to, as anyone who has auditioned for a professional orchestra can probably attest, "technical perfection and machine-emulation."  No more of that stuff for me, thanks.