by Andrea Culver

Created on: March 01, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

Like most musicians that were not drummers, I considered the drum line to be nothing more than a group of loud people banging on drums. I was completely wrong in my assumption.
As I am an oboe player, I had to find something else to march (most bands do not march oboes as it is hard to play with a good sound while moving). My band director suggested drum line. I had my choice of pit or cymbal line. I chose cymbals, thinking that it would be fun to at least be on the field. I assumed that cymbals would not be hard- how could it possibly be hard to bang two plates together? Again, I was wrong. Cymbal line turned out to be the most physically grueling activity I had ever taken part in. We started training before marching season even started, and I discovered that each set of cymbals has its own unique sound, and weighed between ten and twenty five pounds, depending on size. The cymbalist has to keep this load up at chest level with no help from harnesses, using only their arm muscles. I also discovered that cymbals are very visual instruments, meaning that the folks that march cymbals are usually flinging them around in intricate patterns. There are several ways to play cymbals, one can't merely bang them together and hope for the best. Bottom line: don't mess with or make fun of those that march cymbals, they're in better physical condition than you, and they'd probably like to see you attempt a perfect vertical orchestral crash complete with slice or figure eight. They'd get a kick out of watching you fail.

One of the most important things that I learned from my years on cymbal line is that drums are not just loud things to be banged to the beat. Each drum has its own unique sound. You can play entire songs without a band as long as you have a decent section of marching drums. Did you know that marching snares have to be tuned regularly in order to sound identical to their neighbor? I didn't, either. I also didn't realize how hard the drummers had to work. Yes, the drums are the backbone of the band, but in order for them to do this successfully, they have to take many things into account. Most importantly of all of these is acoustics and sound travel. The drummers have to watch the drum major, know how fast the sound travels, and how it's going to reverberate through any particular stadium in order to play on time. By playing on time, I'm not meaning on the beat. Sometimes drummers go a tiny bit faster or slower, depending on the acoustics. This is because while the band watches the drum major, they are actually marching in time to the drums. If the drums are off, the whole band will be off. In order to keep the sound exactly on target with the drum major's motions, sometimes the drummers have to play faster or slower. It's an amazing feat, and not very easy. The mark of a skilled drum line is to have this ability.

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