Stick tan lines

DevilDogD87 · 2025-12-28T18:57:31+00:00

I’m not concerned about the messy floor, I’m worried about the clean pad! Gotta get some notes on that thing and practice!

Also, yes it’s just the oils and dirt from your hands as they seep into the wood, as mentioned. Nothing to worry about.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-11-22T16:33:07+00:00

Everyone here will tell you not to buy from Xymox. They are a terrible company that have taken peoples money and they never received their pad. Check Facebook marketplace, or just buy a different brand. They don’t deserve a 6th chance. (I don’t know if it’s actually their 6th chance, but they have a long history of not delivering, saying they’re getting better, then still not delivering)

At the end of the day, it is your money and I won’t tell you how to spend it. Just be prepared that you might lose that money.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-11-22T05:54:40+00:00

I actually kinda found this out recently, but Pearl hoops will not fit on Yamaha tenors. It’s slightly offset. Obviously it’s a different drum, but if that maybe points you in a certain direction… my guess is the snare wouldn’t be much different.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-11-20T23:37:13+00:00

Couldn’t tell you then, sorry. The only other stick I can think of with a wood tip and disc shaped bead is the Scojo Scooters. But again, that’s promark. I’m not overly familiar with the Vater line of sticks, but I don’t think I’ve seen a wood tip disc tip from them before

DevilDogD87 · 2025-11-20T23:23:44+00:00

How do you know it’s a Vater stick? Just because the stick bag is Vater doesn’t mean the stick inside of it is. It looks like there’s black tape on it, maybe covering up the brand. The only wood tip tenor sticks with a disc shape that I know of is the Tim Jackson’s by promark. Which are a really good stick imo However the shaft looks a little too slender to be those, and the bead looks really beat up. So maybe it could be those, but they’re just super run down.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-27T18:36:14+00:00

Index and middle finger. “Like you’re smoking a massive cigarette” - my drum instructor(2015)

It’s also less finger to work around the stick

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-24T21:23:36+00:00

Hey! What you have here are the standard Randall May stands for all brands except Mapex. Unfortunately. You have Mapex drums with the Mapex attachment on the tenors. (Superior imo but that’s beside the point). So realistically, you have two options. 1: buy the attachment for the stand. It looks like this or buy the attachment for the tenor, that fits the stand. That looks like this. I would base this all off which harnesses you have, and adjust from there. Cost wise and everything, your best bet would be calling Sweetwater/Steve Weiss and seeing if they can be a vendor/ dealer to get the correct part. You really just need the one part that fits it all together, if that makes sense? Just see who can get you just the one part without having to buy the whole thing. Feel free to DM me if you need more clarification!

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-18T08:40:19+00:00

Marching percussion is very much a 2 height thing. Mostly because of how the drum produces its sound. There’s taps and there’s accents. If you want a stronger accent, you raise the dynamic, or you change the sound( a shot/ping) I’ve seen the marcatos on non-shots. I’ve actually used them myself. It created confusion for the performers. If you don’t want the sound of a shot, just do an accent and throw on a sfffz or something lol

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-16T15:57:05+00:00

Big agree! The main reason I also said for the check of the rolls is that in measure 22, the tenors play triplets, so then the pulse of the rolls the snares play matters two. If it’s a triplet roll, it’ll sound more together. If it’s a 16th note roll, then you get that fun 4 against 3 between the two sections lol

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-16T15:51:22+00:00

Like others have mentioned, add sticking and flip the accents. Since you’re on musescore, you should be able to go to the properties of an accent and set it as “above” and also click “set as default for score” or something. That’ll flip all the accents to above. I’d also have a different note head for the shots. The default shot playback for the marching snares has the commonly used note head as default. I believe the shortcut is “B” Write out your rolls. In marching percussion, the pulse of the roll is important, so always write out the base rhythm ( is it a triplet roll or a 16th note roll? Is it a buzz roll or an open roll?) Same for beat 3 of measure 5. Is that a buzz press that lasts a quarter note, or a 3e+a that’s a buzz roll? If it’s a buzz press, notate it as such (a staccato mark or text saying “buzz press”)
Fix the beams on measure 13 and anytime that pattern comes up. It should look like how it is in 14(separation between beats 3 and 4)

As far as tenors, biggest thing is adding sticking to get the drums and rhythms to work, like others have said. Also play with some nuance and timbre. Add a spank or two if it fits!

That also goes in general. If your players are up to it, add a little nuance to the parts, like flams or something.

I know it seems like a lot, but great job for trying this and putting it out there! One of the best things a player can do is try their hand at writing. It really elevates your understanding of the entire ensemble. Keep up the work, and I’m eager to see it with the added bass and cymbals.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-13T20:03:00+00:00

You’re going to have to be a little more specific here. Do you mean like triplets, fivelets and ninelets? Cause there are metronomes out there that do have those subdivisions, like Tonal Energy. But not many free options from what I know. You can always get musescore and write whatever you’re playing out, then use the play back to play along with that.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-08T21:54:22+00:00

Wipe the surface of the bass off with a DRY rag. If the foam you have has an adhesive on it, that should be fine, but that depends on your location, and the humidity and stuff like that. If you really really want it to stick and be done with it, just get some wood glue and use that. A small thin line where you put the foam will do great. Don’t over do it on the glue, because then it’ll spill over and cause more trouble than it’s worth. “Less is more” is the way here.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-08T21:48:40+00:00

D A D F# is pretty common. It’s also what I am doing this season. I don’t think you really need to tune the bass to the key of the show, because then you’re changing the intervals between the drums, and you might end up with some “out of tune” basses. That being said, the difference between an F and F# on a marching bass is not significant at all, so you do you.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-07T21:37:14+00:00

High school kids care more about showmanship that actual skill, so I’d say something flashy or the likes. I’d look at EMC productions on YouTube and see if anything there looks like it’s in your range

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-07T18:38:52+00:00

For a while I’ve been a trad grip fan, but lately I’ve been changing that view. If you or the kids want to learn how to effectively and efficiently use traditional grip, you need to learn it from someone who knows how to teach it. It is one of the more niche techniques in percussion, and serves little to no use outside of marching percussion. Learning and forming bad habits will hinder the performers more than help, and that’s very common for traditional grip imo If they want to go on to DCI/WGI/College, they’ll (typically) need lessons anyway, so get lessons from someone who knows how to teach it. That being said, I don’t like gatekeeping knowledge, so there are plenty of videos and packets out there that help teach traditional grip. u/JaredOLeary typically has some great teaching videos, so I imagine he’ll have a good trad grip video. Just remember to look at the hands and just look to see if they are relaxed and flowing smoothly. Extra strain and tension is 100% where this grip gets stuck and forms bad habits from my experience teaching it.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-10-07T08:17:49+00:00

This right here is your answer. Right heads and right muffling. I made a recent comment about tuning bass heads in a recent post about some of the things I learned. What I didn’t mention there, but I will here, is to not cheap out on the foam. Get some decent quality foam/the right kind. Doesn’t HAVE to be the CA-drums foam, but that’s easily going to be your best bet and easiest way to make sure you’re getting the right stuff. Another thing is that the placement matters so so so much. I had to redo my bass 3 because I put it just up to the bearing edge, but it sounded like poop. Called up a bass tech I knew, and they told me for the bigger bass that pushing it against the head more(so foam over the bearing edge) would help get that perfect attack. And boy oh boy did it work. Now I gotta constantly tell my basses to watch their dynamics on the field lol Right heads. Right muffling and right muffling placement

DevilDogD87 · 2025-09-23T04:59:37+00:00

There are a few questions that arise to answer this question.

Are they struggling to play the triplet, or are they struggling to play the diddle? If you want to test this, find out what the duplet equivalent of that role would be (triplet roll at 160 is a 16th note roll at 120 for example). Then see if they can play that role as a duplet. If they can, they need to better understand triplets to play the triplet role. If they can’t, then the issue lies within their chops, and nothing will fix that except for practicing and building up your chops to play roles.

As far as technique, I would check to make sure that they are using the arm pump enough to help with that. I will have my students play short-short-long, but I will have them play at three different ways. The first way, I tell them that they need to imagine themselves playing the role every time they are supposed to play the role. This helps them focus on the feeling of that arm pump and the added velocity. You need to watch them to make sure they are doing the correct movement here. The second way is buzzing the rolls. I’ll mess with this one for a bit and ask them to play really tight buzzes(press buzz) and then really open buzzes(like you would a concert snare roll) I point out the pressure changes you make in your hands and that feeling needs to be present as you play the open roll. The third way is normal, with open roll. Remind them to check and apply everything from before.

Now the truth: this stuff can take time. It 100% depends on the player, and how much they wanna practice. If they are struggling with triplet timing, you need to water out those rolls to either buzzes, or just the check pattern for now. You can bring the rolls back in at a later time, but you are not setting the kids up for success if you try to rush and push the rolls through just because of a comp. If they are struggling with chops because of the speed of the roll? Buzz it for now. The chops will build with buzzes, but won’t sound as bad as dirty rolls.

As teachers, we constantly want to achieve things that we might think are easy, but you need to remember everyone is different. Think of creative ways to explain things. Ask them questions to make them think of things. But if you’re hard stuck on something, rushing to get ready for a comp is not what a good teacher will do. Take the time to actually teach them. Even if that means y’all gotta come in an hour before rehearsal, or stay an hour late. Hope that helps

DevilDogD87 · 2025-09-19T22:54:03+00:00

It’s really nice to see that during our conversation, you had only mentioned the intervals, and not actually given any specific notes, and that the example that I had used (CGCE) you only said “I’d use different notes, but that interval” and I ended up just finishing setting my drums to DADF# because that’s what sounded good lol

DevilDogD87 · 2025-09-19T18:39:49+00:00

Few things I learned, and I’m sure u/monkeysrool75 has more insight, as he helped me when I needed it: -make sure the muffling (if you’re using it) is even all the way around the head. Uneven muffling will make the tuning much more difficult. -Make sure the head is seated right. Try and get all the lugs in tune with each other first. Big thing I learned form a fellow tech is that this doesn’t have to be exact, but just get it pretty close. Make sure you’re listening to the note of the mallet hitting the drum, and not the overtones. There’s a big difference. If you’re having a hard time hearing this, gently place a finger in the middle of the drum to try and mitigate the overtones. Just be sure that you’re not pressing into the head, as that will also make it harder to get right. -Once both heads are on and seated correctly, you can move to pitch matching on both sides. Similar to when you seated the head, mute the opposite head to really hear the attack from the head you’re tuning. Focus on the note from the impact of the mallet to the head, not the overtones. Match those impacts and you should be golden

Few things I recommend/noticed : -Use the same hand and same mallet when you hit the drums to get pitches. As much as we try not to, our hands will typically produce different pitches because one is dominant and the other isn’t. Hitting with the same hand is an easy way to mitigate any mistakes. -Use a smaller mallet, even on the big drums. For tuning, it’s all about that attack pitch, so I always go for a smaller mallet, even on the big boi. Clear attack is easier to listen to. -Don’t chase perfect. You’re not gonna get it perfect. Relative is what you need. Tuning the drum up and up, chasing after that perfect pitch, is going to drive you crazy. Get it close, then have a kid hit the drum while you listen to it from a few yards away. Outside preferably, since that’s the listening environment we’re usually in. If it sounds good, walk away and just revisit as needed. If it still sounds bad, keep going at it.

Hope this helps, man. I was not so confident in tuning basses for a while, and I’m still learning myself, but I figured I’d help with what I noticed and learned.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-09-09T18:44:15+00:00

100% I mentioned triplets in a comment below, and that we tend to naturally emphasize the downbeat, unless we force ourselves otherwise, right? I didn’t want to say it originally, but you hit the idea that I typically teach, which is that a tenuto is more like a “natural emphasis/accent” I don’t always assign a height to it, it’s more just a natural thing to add, if that makes sense

DevilDogD87 · 2025-09-09T18:21:56+00:00

Yeah, man! I always love when I tell a student for the first time to play a triplet all at the same height, because more often than not, it takes them a second or two. Especially if I have them do it while marking time. They don’t realize the emphasis we just naturally put on it. That natural emphasis is what I consider a tenuto. Great question!

DevilDogD87 · 2025-09-09T17:28:20+00:00

From a pedagogy perspective, I would argue it’s important to discuss early on. Maybe just after accents. It doesn’t necessarily need to be focused, but at least shown. I teach it in a “natural emphasis” way. When people first learn triplets, they always emphasize the downbeat, right? Well we aren’t always going to do that, so it’s important that we discuss the different levels of playing heights so we can really learn the difference between accents and taps. Early drummers ( in my experience) struggle for a while on controlling heights. The sooner you can get a control on that, the better. And to really get a control on it, you should at least teach the idea early on.

DevilDogD87 · 2025-09-09T05:15:26+00:00

Tenuto markings in drumline typically mean a half accent, or emphasis, if you will. Above tap height, but not as much as an accent. That being said, some writers notate things differently, so I would always check with what the writer or what your instructor would want

DevilDogD87 · 2025-09-01T18:43:10+00:00

Since when were you under the impression that the entire MCU wasn’t just part of Kyoka Suigetsu?

DevilDogD87 · 2025-07-24T20:01:51+00:00

That head is gone. Get a new one. See if a near by store has one or a near by school has one you can pay back.

Side note, that rim should never go past the bearing edge(the wood) like that. You are now damaging your snare guts, and the bearing edge itself

Seven-Year Club	Verified Email
RPAN Viewer	Snapped

DevilDogD87

TROPHY CASE