A quick homage to my final days in a drumline from eight years ago.
As I was graduating from 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. 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. I don’t say that to be demeaning — I wouldn’t have been able to play it myself as a 14/15-year-old.
I came up with this little six-bar snare drum groove built around flam taps that was to be used at some point in the cadence. 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 warmup to play. Enjoy — just in time for marching band season to really start up.
(Maybe someday I’ll share more of the cadence, but I think I’ll need to be even further removed from my drumline days first…)
