This is the kind of blog post that I can whip up in about an hour when I’m feeling really motivated. As such, this is also the kind of blog post that sits in my drafts folder, waiting for one of those weeks where I’m too busy or too uninspired to share anything else.

As I was graduating high school, some of the other seniors and I mused about writing a victory cadence for our drumline to play after winning football games. We were going to call it “Diablo”, named after the nearby Mount Diablo. And unsurprisingly, it never got finished; in fact, the project was abandoned pretty quickly once we realized that there was zero chance any of the underclassmen would be able to play the licks we were coming up with.

For use at some point in the cadence, I came up with this little six–bar snare drum groove built around flam taps. All of these years later, I still play it when I’m warming up, or when I just feel like farting around on a practice pad — unfortunately, it seems like I can only play it well with traditional grip!

Honestly, it’s not that crazy, except for maybe the first two beats of the third line. Nonetheless, it’s still a fun little étude to play. Enjoy — just in time for marching band season to really start up.

(I guess I’ll call this a “Mini–Etude” since this one is pretty short, but I want to share more of these in the future)

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