Cadences are my favorite part of drum line. They sound so cool and you can add a lot of neat visuals once you nail the music. Cadences are short drum line features that use the drums for more than just keeping the beat. If you’ve ever watched the Cadillac Marching band, you’ll recognize some of the cadences our drum line plays. You’ve heard them before football games as we make our way towards the stadium and in parades between songs. Let’s talk about how you read cadences.
When reading a cadence, you follow the line specified for whatever drum you play. If you’re on snare, you follow the line labeled “Snare drum” or “S.D” and so on. Snares and cymbals have all their music written on one line. For snares, the notes will either look like a regular note or have an x in place of it. The x is for a rim shot, when you play on the rim instead of the drum. When the notes have a line through the stem, that means to roll it. If they have a z through the stem, that means to buzz it.
Tenors and basses have it different. They have different notes on the staff. We’ll discuss everything today with quads and four bass drums, just to keep things simple . There are four notes for basses and quads, each in a space on the staff. The one in the bottom most space is four the lowest drum and the one in the highest space is for the highest drum. For bases, these are called splits. A bass drum will only play the note that goes with their drum. Bass one will only play the note in the highest space just like bass four will only play the note in the bottom space. Quads have four drums all on one, each bigger and deeper than the first. Just like with bass splits, a tenor player will only play the smallest drum for the note in the highest space and the lowest drum for the note in the bottom space. Similar to snares, tenors can roll and do rim shots. The notes will have an x for a rim shot and a z to buzz it.
Now that we’ve talked about how to read music for the drums, lets get into some of my favorite cadences to play. Here’s my top ten, #1 being my favorite:
1.) Raptor
2.) B3
3.) Vomit Comet
4.) Earthquake
5.) Boom Boom
6.) Cargo
7.) Kadence
8.) Mohawk
9.) Navigator
10.) Tadpole
Of course this is all personal opinion but these are my top 10 cadences in order. B3 was written for my school’s drum line by a drum instructor/ MSU student so I can’t leave a link to it, but here’s links to the cadences I think sound the most hype.
Raptor- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=foM9_qePIq8
Vomit Comet-https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DW4PEGj7j84
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