Rudimental Drumming

I probably wrote this exact post years ago, but after watching some of the latest winners, it seems that the vast majority of I&E solos, at least for snare, is all just a bunch of easy stuff played really fast, with a few stick tricks and implement gimmicks thrown in. I realize that saying something is easy is relative, so I’m talking about flam drags, inverts, various cheese, etc, so that level of playing. I also realize that adding speed automatically increases difficulty, so I’m not taking anything away from those performances, except that in a lot of ways, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen most of them. Has anyone seen any solos drastically different from this?

Nice to see I'm not alone. I saw a solo in the 90s from a guy in SCV that had some nice moments. He played the usual stuff, but then went into a pipe band-style solo, which really added some flavor.

Keith,

I hear crickets chirping. I think there are only about 3 or 4 of us on the forum any more.

How's your school year going? Semi-retirement is great so far. I travel to work at four
different schools teaching drummers from middle school beginners up through high school
seniors. Great kids and great work hours. I've set up my schedule so I'm off on Fridays.
Still drumming about an hour a day to keep my chops in semi shape and looking forward
to the fall weather.

Stay in touch.

Dennis

Hey, glad you’re having a good time. I agree - not sure why it’s so quiet these days on this forum. It used to be a busy place, sometimes quite animated. Oh well, maybe one day it will pick back up, with the right people who don’t act like angry 12-year olds, and I’m talking about more than just you know who! There were several trouble makers before him.

Anyway, the perc at the hs is going as well as can be expected, given the bad middle school years and demographics of the area. I just picked up a new kid yesterday and he has some great promise, just like a girl who signed on at band camp, and they’re both seniors! For the smallest band in the county, it’s amazing how many times that’s already happened in 3 years. I’m up to 6 in the perc now, with one more girl who also joined and said she would help move equipment (they call them pit monkeys) but is too shy to actually play. Oh well, that’s better than what I started with. None of them can read and none of them have any marching experience. In 30 years of teaching, this is the first time I’ve ever had this happen. But we’re making progress. Too bad the judges won’t know how far they will have come when contest time is here, but at least we know. This is one year that I must resign myself to truly not care at all what rating they give us. When I was thinking about last year and how we went to that one competition at Chocktawhatchee, and how this well-known judge (most or all judges were flown in, which speaks volumes about why I tried to talk the head director to not sign us up for that contest) gave my 5-person perc section a bad rating, I did a little math in my head and I realized that anytime I had a drumline with at least 4 snares, We never got less than a superior. 3 or less has always been hit or miss. And they say size doesn’t matter!

Our McDonald’s All-American Band reunion is about to happen in St. Louis, so I’m happy about that. I’ll let you know how it went when I get back. We hired a videographer, so there will be some good footage!

I agree generally about several points here.

First, regarding the solos, I generally agree that flash and visuals have too prominent of a role, but generating effect through those means must be, ahem, effective if that's the norm. I'm not going to fault the competitors for apparently playing to the rubric on which they are graded. Brandon Olander's solo is really cool. The fellow who placed third played very well and had a drum that was tuned appropriately for the venue, at least from the video I saw (maybe just the video, but this guy's drum made everything clear).

But, you guys didn't discuss Jeff Michael Prosperie's solo, and I thought this would be a topic of conversation here, not because of the young man's name but because of the content he played. He's played this solo previously as can be seen on the USARD site. It appears to be composed of a combination of original content plus portions inspired by or lifted from Marty Hurley's Phantom solos (which I am aware contain parts from Phantom drum solos from the field). JMP placed second. I'm not going to comment on the total number of competitors as that has been an issue for long enough that it doesn't matter from my perspective. The interesting thing that seeing JMP's solo place well is that on this very board over the years the question has been posed whether someone could play an old school solo and compete. Well, JMP just showed that you can. While he incorporated other things in the solo and structured it in a modern way, it was clear to my eyes and ears that his solo had much more and varied rudimental demand than many of recent years and content and phrasing directly from those Hurley solos.


Second, regarding the traffic here, It's never been as slow as this. The facts that members of yore have moved on (for various reasons), that young people apparently don't frequent forums (other than reddit, to the degree that's a forum), that this forum isn't on a "mobile friendly" platform for easy viewing and posting from phones, I'd say are contributing factors.

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Marshall Digmon
N.A.R.D. Member 10042

And word on the street is that JP's dad will step down from judging as his son JP will be
marching World Class this coming season. Could JP's dad be taking on an instructional role
with Phantom? They need someone like him to resurrect their drum line IMO. Anyone know?

I didn’t know there was a discussion about if old school solos could win these days. I knew there’s discussion about drum corps shows as a whole, old vs new. I guess I never really thought about the I&E snare solos being that different. To me, with only a few exceptions that I’ve ever seen, they’re all pretty much as I described, no matter what era. Some notable exceptions would be Robbie’s solo, because his rolls sounded so good, probably the same with Carson, Pete Castellano’s solo, with those great singles, also Mazur, Rick’s solos, and Danny Raymond’s solos. I’m sure there’s a few more, but those come to mind, and some of those were DCA solos.

It was always in the context of what makes a good, great, or winning solo, always a common thread among posts from 10+ years ago when the board was largely anonymous. There would be posts on whether, say, Tornado could win today, or if Lazur Beam were relevant, things like that. While JMP's solo isn't note for note a solo from years gone by, it has a great deal of content of the type that made those solos competitive. I think it's noteworthy that JMP competed well with a solo that is undeniably rudimental in nature and content and did not overtly rely on tricks and gimmicks. He plays well and, I believe, will continue to do so if his past is a prediction of his future. If he does indeed move on to a different corps, it would be interesting if he competes with a corps that allows I&E, as I would love to see how his soloing may evolve.

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Marshall Digmon
N.A.R.D. Member 10042

Keith, is the solo you mentioned above?

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Marshall Digmon
N.A.R.D. Member 10042

Also, regarding my prior post on playing a traditional solo, please see this old thread for a reference:

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Marshall Digmon
N.A.R.D. Member 10042

Yes, that’s the solo. What’s his name? I never could understand what they said at the beginning.

I think the beginning just says Santa Clara Vanguard, the name is cut off. If it is indeed 1999, I think it would have to be Ted Wheeler. It's not Ercan Erhan, the winner. Also, Jeremy Whiting played Bolero for Ed in 1999, which is in the book Violent Ice Cream, and the solo in this video is not it. Those are the SCV snare soloists for 1999 from what I can see.

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Marshall Digmon
N.A.R.D. Member 10042

Funny thing is that I had a former student march SCV snareline in 99 and 2000 but this is not him. I think the only I&E he ever entered was with the cymbals from SCV.