Fixing Bad Percussion Writing (part 2)

[@EMCproductions]

Which percussion instrument should I cover in the next video?

[@bumpus.-_-.2]

Drumset?

[@yaboi5932]

Glockenspiel.

[@fennec752]

drumset

[@jayco4763]

4 mallet stickings for marimba?

[@kevingeeter8172]

Front ensemble. Any part, mainly vibe or marimba. There are a LOT of winds writers out there who understand the melodic content they write but it makes NO sense physically.

[@ethanyeats5872]

One point - keep in mind that sometimes things are arranged for a specific group of students - that may be a reason why you’d see certain parts play more than you’d think they should, like when bass 4 got a bunch of extra notes instead of bass 5. If I know a group of students and I know that bass 4 is the most rhythmically stable, I might do something similar. Great video! I love this stuff!

[@blitzstryko6568]

Yeah I’m on bass 4 and I have a lot of extra parts lol

[@MaverickJ3W]

Yes, but if that's the case, he/she should be on bass 2 not 4. As you probably are aware, the best bass player order should go from best to worst: 2,1,4,3,5. That's typically how pieces are written, at least for up to intermediate levels. Once you get to the levels where all the bass players are interchangeable basically, then pieces are written specifically for the musicality or sound needed from the bass drums. But still even with dci or indoor, usually 2nd or at the very least 1st bass are bass line captains. Obviously all even parts/drums are off beat drums hence why they're harder. While I loved playing snare, and technique is harder and usually the pieces are overall harder to play musically, as in they have more technical rhythms etc (and traditional grip is obviously harder than matched) I don't think people realize that bass lines can be the hardest instrument to play on a drum line. Always splitting or playing partials is usually harder than playing the entire part in unison, like playing four 16th notes is usually easier than four people playing one 16th note each, all splitting it. Like he showed by having to rewrite those parts, and saying how tough it is to play the "e" and "a"s of the 16th note grouping for example. I mean in theory you could take a tenor part and hand it to a bass line to play, and it becomes exponentially harder.

[@MaverickJ3W]

My highschool bass line had 1st bass as bass captain and was usually the best bass player, but only because we had parts that required 1st bass solos, tap offs done by 1st bass, and needing 1st bass to also be the best marcher etc. That being said 2nd bass player was always just as good for the most part, but maybe didn't have quite as much experience or not ready to take that leap into playing the solos, tap offs, and leading the bass line when marching on the field or whatever it is that was required of 1st bass/captain. Looking back, I would absolutely change that role to 2nd bass.

[@sublime4984]

@@MaverickJ3Wthey probably where limited because of physical capabilities like the less fit people got higher basses and just didn't have percussionists to spare

[@MaverickJ3W]

@@sublime4984 yea that's probably true. Can't put a 90lb girl, even if she's the worst player, on 5th. The drum would be bigger than the little girl.

[@dukeingraham6530]

There is no way I would put that last piece of music infront of a middle school drumline.

[@ecksluss]

especially one that was described as basically fresh. MAYBE if they were all in their 2nd year of middle school band and showed promise, but I will wouldn't make them wave and play on one hand, besides the unnecessary difficulty, it's just dumb.

[@ultra9349]

@@eckslussour middle school drumline doesn’t even play splits

[@ecksluss]

@@ultra9349 yeah, a lot of em don't.

[@warrenmitchelljr.56]

I honestly didn’t know my piece (4:12) would be featured! That’s awesome! While I do appreciate the criticism, I will add that this was made in 2019. Since then, my writing has improved SIGNIFICANTLY. Thank you for keeping me on my toes! 🙏🏾

[@kwhitewinter7088]

bruh so another band teacher comes from another school once a week and helps out percussion and we could do split in the first 5 minutes of practice

[@thepieguy6352]

Couldn’t be me

[@just_ryan_no_b]

felt that

[@Iplayquad]

Percussion

[@Youwouldntbelieveit953]

@@Iplayquad nah, perception

[@julianh7967]

Prosecution

[@NATcha94]

the last performance really tripped me out, the lifeless stare and wave

[@RyanAlexanderBloom]

I teach middle school percussionists regularly. Ain't no way they're playing that last bass part. Not today, not tomorrow, not next year. NOT HAPPENING.

[@oakman978]

I love that you call people out when it's written well. Our bases loved to complain when they just didn't know how to play a piece or didnt want to play it

[@RobReder]

Don't blame Finale for bad stem directions. Blame the writer for not knowing how to make it look good.

[@0v_x0]

Yeah it was pretty easy to fix...

[@JoshuaWillis89]

That bass part was clearly written by someone who’s never played bass drum, possibly never played any drum whatsoever.

[@Nareimooncatt]

9:50 Everyone watching practiced their pageant wave as well. Anyone that claims otherwise is lying.

[@christianstainazfischer]

Not lying, I just didn’t, just sat there really confused for a phat second

[@connorbrown1895]

Bro he’s right the E’s and Uh’s are hard- have to play them more than I’d like, though I am bass 4/5 and captain. At this point gotten to where I prefer playing upbeats on splits rather than downbeats (especially for the spacing of 2’s and 3’s and 4’s)

[@thebrownshinobi9790]

That’s so strange. Where I’m from the best drummer goes on bass 2 and is captain

[@Ph0ton]

Yeah I thought bass 2 being captain was pretty standard

[@MongerOfStrings8222]

Wait do you actually have to play on offbeats in between other drummers? I'm not American so drumline doesn't exist. That sounds like trying to do delay without effects like Rob Scallon (Took him 60 attempts)

[@lonely_ghost9857]

IT IS STRANGE. Ive played mainly Bass 5 or 3. There was one year where I was bass 4 bc we only had 4 bases that y we and trying to subdivide Es and As are HARDDDD.

[@lonely_ghost9857]

​@@MongerOfStrings8222yes and it's rather common. If you have a Baseline of 5 chances are Bass 2+4 will play a LOT OF OffBeat splits and depending on the music definitely a lot of off beats/hand-to-hand splits between Bass 1+2(+3)

[@savannahwise7058]

My freshman year of college, I got put on bass drum and 4/5 of the basses had never played bass before. Thankfully, we all picked it up okay, but man. That was a big change

[@lonely_ghost9857]

I was instructing our Indoor Drumline Bassline and 3/4 of them are completely new, have never touched a drum before let alone read music before however they learned rather quickly. Imma be honest my experience with playing Bass was amazing but TEACHING splits let alone UNISONS was rough the first 3 months of our season

[@ChrisToe_Fur]

Not even gonna lie, The second one with the tap off was really cool!

[@johnnymitchellcollier]

the first one was my school's opener!

[@OGMarchingSwimmer]

Hey Eric! Are you in the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps? I was at my marching comp today and you guys preformed! Y’all were great :) my entire band loved it!!!!

[@evanmolavi5580]

commandant's own

[@evanmolavi5580]

to be fair im pretty sure theyre the same thing

[@OGMarchingSwimmer]

@@evanmolavi5580 yeah, it was commandments own. I just couldn’t think of the name after being on the band bus lol

[@evanmolavi5580]

probably him then

[@thunder_2470]

If you’re talking about the colgan classic, I got to talk to the tenor players while they were warming up and they said Eric had just recently transferred out

[@ralphbiggs4549]

Finale does do it and looks good. Most people however don't take time to learn....like click and dragging notes instead of the learning the much faster keyboard shortcuts.

[@LavenderSystem69]

Every bass 1 shot I ever came across was notated with an 'x' note head... just like every shot in every upper battery part I've ever seen

[@JoshPlan]

Signature stick prototype at 5:52? Congrats man!

[@bjorn_joseph]

Holy hell! I wonder if he realized he left them in the edit or not

[@Aruesx]

Mr. Krabs walking type beat be like: 0:20

[@JoshuaWillis89]

I was pleasantly surprised by the musicality of the part with only three basses. That’s a really awkward number to write for. Good job, OP.

[@keithbarnes9419]

I have gotten so I don't like writing for less than 5.

[@lonely_ghost9857]

I've seen Indoor Drumlines with only 2-3 Basses and idk HOW but depending on who your composers are, 3 Basses can definitely work

[@bestlaidplans4511]

"Whole Notes?!" 🤣

[@lonely_ghost9857]

Imma be honest I had to sit and think on that just because of my experience from Indoor Drumline and Symphonic Band. 😂WHOLE notes in a Concert setting for the bass drum makes sense but MARCHING? Nahhhh

[@VanVlearMusic]

Holy shit you have a channel with long videos. I’ve been watching EMCdump (thanks to the algorithm) for months and just now realized you talk and make longer videos what the heck

[@f196lmao]

5:27 I’m begging you, please clean your pad 😂

[@Spooky.Boogie.xj0461]

Bruh i got a soap ad

[@stillcrazyman4838]

My school has one marching bass 😂 our drumline has 3 people

[@ultra9349]

3:04 rim click Ik that because we have 4 drums and whenever our writer puts a note where bass 5 would be then it’s a rim

[@timbeer8266]

This is the content I've been looking for

[@quickwimnl]

Seeing this I wonder if you would be able to play drum-music from Europe. We notate different and use a lot of abbreviations. Most of the sticking is done by just knowing the rules we apply to it.

[@evan4781]

Bro wtf that first one is from my schools show

[@jackmakackov7077]

Last one was written for the Juliard middle school I guess....

[@jamesgarrison2158]

YES! HE POSTED ANOTHER!

[@BrandonGarcia-qn5ww]

EMC can you make a video on how to use musescore

[@ralphbiggs4549]

using the unison mark over the stack unfortunately changes the playback because it uses all the drums most people don't have. So the stack can often be more realistic to how it sounds in playback

[@nuro_gtag]

“Three bass drums in this line, that’s fine probably a smaller school” *my school with me being the only base drum*

[@paulblichmann2791]

@14:00 You know it's about to get serious when they grab BOTH sticks.

[@matthewolive1262]

3:06 id assume that’s a rim hit. Some people writing for bass write stuff like that for rims

[@calebmooneyham287]

Setting beams to flat would also Greatly improve the look of the music in finale.

[@sniperaaron]

All good! Keep up the work!

[@andrewstanfield4825]

Okay so just to let you know, in the first piece of music, the things you thought that were unisons in the original music before you rewrote it, were actually rim clicks. My band director does the same thing and he’s a percussionist 🤦‍♂️

[@lonely_ghost9857]

Brother ewwww😂😂

[@xnader3107]

8:30 LOL, also these are great videos, and I'm not even a percussionist myself. :)

[@HmmmmmLemmeThinkNo]

In my music (bearing in mind i'm a violinist), I prefer stem direction variation, as it helps me keep my place in the music with my dyslexia lol

[@stephenbyrnes7205]

Video 39 of commenting until EMC makes an entire battery percussion section out of stocks and 8 inch splash cymbals

[@justinpak334]

I’m new to drum line, how can I improve/get faster at my diddle rolls

[@EvanAintDead]

I play bass so I can’t give you good advice, but I’d say just practice doing the diddles

[@spenceralger3600]

Practice check before the rolls to make sure the diddle are in time

[@Noctem_pasa]

Play lots of double beat exercises (sixteenth note plus eighth note) on a loop. Start slow and build up speed as you go on. Once you get fast enough your double beat will become a diddle. Make sure the shape of your hands does not change when you go from more controlled speeds to faster speeds if you want to keep your diddle clean. Practice this with both hands for a couple hours and you'll be golden

[@EBG...]

Spam them until you notice you do the rythm too much when free styling. At least thats how i learn stuff.

[@johnnymitchellcollier]

practice it more. thats it

[@jacobdancey145]

"All left hand sticking" provededs to ad right hands

[@calebbeal3759]

The high school was written nearly a corps level book… needless to say it was almost all watered

[@sybilreichlan6117]

Finale is significantly better for orchestral/classical musicians than Musescore. But Musescore has significantly better percussion support (although Musescore is quickly becoming the go to in general)

[@crimson-foxtwitch2581]

muse group blackmailed someone over making an open-source version of a feature that became paid

[@sybilreichlan6117]

@@crimson-foxtwitch2581 What I said is still fact. You can dislike the company all you want, it is quickly becoming industry standard.

[@SaneTheBro]

loopy grandma has not been let down

[@Stretchwiz]

9:02 personally I would let bass 5 join in on those stacks and make them unisons

[@jacoblykins5511]

You should check out my 2021 high school ryle high school drumline best drumline at that school by far

[@warrioroflight99]

Deep inside my soul....

[@rrracing8118]

Great stuff, wish we had you tube (and the internet...lol) when I was in high school.

[@carsonpike3150]

Just got back from midsouth( a marching competition) we got all superiors

[@Ouvii]

7:26 Can someone please explain this? It seems like bass 1 is playing r l... So what is the problem with playing another r right after? Please explain it to me like I'm a singer who doesn't understand how bass drums work.

[@Kris_T_]

I've played various insruments for over 25. I've been considering learning to drum for a while. Would you recommend that as someone starting from scratch, albeit with some music theory under my belt, rather than buying drums, I start out with a bunch of practice pads?

[@SeanLaMontagne]

When you have to hope and pray you don't see your name somewhere on this list.

[@RyanJonkerMusic]

Alright middle school drumlines, get to work on that last one 😂

[@TheMokeleMbembe]

"Okay, definitely... not this..."

[@ultra9349]

I feel like it’s either to do a 3 strokes then 2 so that i start on right and end on right

[@bandslam33]

Next marching snare or flub or the toms

[@SP-ny1fk]

You could teach a school music class if the military thing doesn't work out and if you get sick of talking to a camera

[@hughgrubbs3191]

Actually, you can change the stem direction on Finale :)

[@samloan1829]

7:26 why? You kind of just went “if you know, you know”

[@Ouvii]

Yeah, would love an explanation.

[@yesimspxd9098]

can you please review my whole drumline parts they are weird we don't really like them, and they were written by a trumpet player... from pr...

[@jackchampion990]

Hey EMC I have been watching your videos for a while know and I was wondering I'd you could review and give Comments on are high school band performance, It would really nice if you did. I play bass 5 and I can send you a link with a video of it and give you sheet music thanm you.

[@hiro-mk4jn]

Crazy what kind of music some band directors give middle schoolers . In my middle school, I don’t even think we had basses and we just used some trash drum kit snare to play mostly. We only marched like twice with the WORST marching snares. Middle school was the worst for band. Luckily, high school is amazing and 10x more professional.

[@bionic2127]

We didn’t even march in middle school. Also high school is not very professional for me, like half the drumline doesn’t even know the cadences. We have a very passionate director, but that’s about all our school has going for us.

[@EvanAintDead]

Yes

[@josephcrowley7635]

Those poor middle school kids had to form a "spoon" with their hand and "pageant wave" to a crowd. 🤢

[@RokketterCouncil]

Make snare or cymbals vid please

[@tylerblevins5436]

My school has this drum feature in our show and the snares play on each other’s drums what do you think about that

[@drummer7808]

he is good

[@zo9ner]

Does he have an add on for musescore or something like that? I also use musescore but I havent seen notations like buzzes, diddles, uni's etc.

[@fluffyx2976]

can you find the most exotic drums?

[@ignazachenbach5406]

“I think my personal preference is the right preference” _says the guy who uses lower-case sticking on notes that aren't ghost-notes or grace notes_

[@optic3894]

I would be a perfect candidate for this video lol

[@marshallfehr9742]

Haha, me too. Writing makes the drum work by itself but in the context of the whole song, doodoo

[@ianbrowning7241]

what’s the program you use to write sheet music??

[@SolomonWyt]

EMC bro your bass drum tuning 💔💔 we can do better than this I expect more of u man

[@jackadair7188]

Bro you really just called the double sharp sign “x” there was another x option 😂

[@morganmeehan5199]

Clearview Regional High School Marching Pioneers Rule!

[@SerenityMusic3]

Love this, you're Awesome 😎💥 We're not worthy.....

[@tubadinozzo]

Fellow MuseScore users, how does one get the unison note head like at Measure 14 of the first example? I can't figure it out

[@kid911]

How do you feel about Virtual Drumline? Is it worth it?

[@Tina-dc3pq]

I’m going to tell you right now, it’s such a powerful library that aside from writing for battery, I have used it for film scoring and other music projects as well. All around a great VST. Don’t even question it. Buy it right now!

[@Max-dd4ow]

What software do you use for writing sheet music?

[@e.antony01]

I have a question, why did you delete some of your videos

[@jeepingib5135]

All the “face reveal at ___ followers” always makes me laugh

[@EvanAintDead]

Bass 2 is best

[@Statzer999]

Bro your first piece is literally half of our movement 1….

[@artoismta]

What music software is that?

[@sussybaca5270]

what is the app that you use

[@andrewkemp6477]

How did you do the bass unison symbol in musescore? I can't figure it out.

[@PalgamingHD]

You need mdl

[@diegoayala8603]

PRACTICE PAD TIER LIST

[@christiancole1128]

Is it just me or does bass 3 sound funny in the all left hand lick?

[@monteboy87]

When did "leaving the player who finishes a run out of the unison" become a thing? That's a fairly new concept to me and apparently I'm such a crotchety old guy that I just don't like it. I want to hear all the drums on a unison. Get better at adding that release. :) Ok, I got that out of my system. Side note, glad none of my beats ended up on this video.

[@devinllopez]

Are you still in the corps

[@aiden0809]

what is that app called?

[@WolfPackAlpha-sn2sw]

Even after edits that’s a little much for a beginner line. Maybe if it wasn’t just on the left but as written that’s a big yikes.

[@lordgucci9210]

At least all of these parts have 4 lines for the staff mine have three it’s impossible to read

[@elijahzinn1410]

This has nothing to do with the video, BUT ME AND MY BOI CLARENCE WERE REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU PLAY AT COLGAN HIGH SCHOOL WITH THE COMMONDANTS OWN we were so sad to hear that you weren’t there 😖😖😖

[@ka1ebsauce]

hello, opposite of percussion tuba player here

[@htattack8491]

Your neat!

[@RedDogMamaHD]

So, did you get a set of Tonal Bass drums kzbin.info/www/bejne/m4Knk4eLp8eBbLs ? Looks like there's no was to display them the way you could at the Barracks.

[@courtneyteichert8303]

My sophomore year of hs, we got a new band director who doesn’t know marching band one bit, even admitted that to us. My Junior year she wrote our show. It was called Bachx. The show was 4 movements about Bachx. Third movement was percussion only. Worst movement. 1,000,000% terrible. Sounded awful, didn’t even sound like Bach because it was supposed to be like a “dj messing with the record”… makes NO sense.