I know this is a blog that is primarily dedicated to triathlon, but I have some non-triathlon related stuff I want to get out on the interwebs and this is my best outlet to do that.
About 10 years ago I was part of a small marching percussion
ensemble that played a few gigs outside of Comerica Park in Detroit during a weekend
series between the Tigers and Yankees.
As part of that gig I composed a few pieces for the ensemble to play,
two of which I would like to share. Both
pieces are arranged for snare drum, tenor drum, and bass drum. We were a small group so the bass drum part
is written for a three piece bass line, but it can easily be arranged for more
or fewer if desired. Both pieces are
written at the level that could be played by an advanced high school or
collegiate line. The two pieces are
titled “Ball Game” and “Electric Watered-Down-Chair”.
I had a very short lived career in composing music for
marching percussion ensembles. That
being said, I am pretty happy with how these pieces came out. I am sharing them with the hope that someone
finds them on the internet and uses them. There is no copyright and I am not at all
asking for compensation. If you are an
instructor, feel free to pass these pieces out to your drumline and give them a
shot. If you could send me a video or
recording of them being performed that would be awesome!
Ball Game
This piece was written based off of the tune “Take Me Out to
the Ballgame”. In fact, the drum score
matches with and can be played along with the actual song. The melody is primarily in the tenor part,
but there is some melodic back-and-forth between the snare and tenor parts. The split notes in measure 4 of the snare
part are intended to indicate alternating left and right hands played by each
player in the snare line. This piece is
written to be played around 70BPM, so it’s not really a piece to march to. When we played this piece we played it with a
repeat at the end similar to the actual song.
EWDC
I am not claiming this piece as original material at
all. It is a rip-off of “Electric
Wheelchair”, made famous by the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum & Bugle Corps. I’ve been out of the marching percussion
scene for a while but I’d say this is one of the most often ripped-off cadences
(other than The Blue Devils “The Ditty”), and my rip-off is one of many. As the title indicates, this is a watered down
version of the original, mainly so that a group can get together with one
rehearsal and be able to perform it.
This piece should be pretty straight forward. Enjoy!
Tripp's Groove
The first four bars of this piece are again a rip-off of a piece called "Pete's Groove". After that I tried to open it up and groove hard. There is a reference to some old Cavaliers drum parts on page 3.
Here is a recording of one of the rehearsals for this gig. I admit the recording and drums sound like crap and the playing is pretty dirty. But, this is all I've got. It's been a while, but I hope we cleaned it up for the actual gig.
Ball game starts at: 1:48
EWDC starts at: 4:45
Tripp's Groove starts at: 2:48
