by Colin Michael

Created on: April 17, 2007

Marching drums (also known as the snare drum), are the backbone of any band.
A lot of people think they are easy to play and if you just bang your stick on a drum, then you are playing the drum. well all i can say is they are wrong.
There are a lot of rudiments involved in drumming, and must be learned to play the drum correctly. there are a lot of advantages to playing marching drums or snare drums, as well as playing with a band you can also play solo and there are a lot of competitions out there for solo drumming. Once you have mastered the rudiments and have learned to play drum beatings, then you can move on to other drum skills like stick tricks, there are a lot of these about from back-sticking (where you use the back of the stick as well as the tip) or throwing and catching the sticks while playing a drum beating or rudiment. I play the snare drum in a Scottish pipe band and have done for years, as i said before there are a lot of rudiments involved in drumming, so not as easy as some people think. Also when you play as part of a drumline or drum corps you all have to play the same beating at the same time, and make it sound like one person playing, so say that you have 9 drummers in your drumline or drum corps, you all have to play as one, which is not easy to do if one person makes a mistake everyone will hear it. A drum corps will usually have one person called a leading tip, they are usually in charge of the drumline or drum corps and all the other drummers follow the leading tip, sometimes the leading tip will play a drum beating and the rest of the corps will come in on certain parts of the beating. Again not an easy task to master but sounds great when played right, and together. There are a lot of world class drummers out there one of my Hero's is Jim Kilpatrick this guy can play a drum roll with one hand. Happy Drumming

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