Marching Gear

Bubbacritz

Member
Alright so my high school decided to buy a ton of marching gear this year and we just got it. Being the best tuner in the band i got assigned to job of tuning most of everything. I have never tuned anything marching before and i think i pretty much can handle the snare but I've ever even touched quads or marching basses let alone tuned them so i need some help. They are small block tenors (8, 10, 12, 13) and i know my teacher wants them in minor thirds and then the bass drums to be 4 more minor thirds lower than those. What note would you guys suggest i start (8" quad) and end at(lowest bass drum, i think it's somewhere in the low 20's)? any other tips would be appreciated.
 
Marching drums....hmm.....just crank 'em up! I'll bet if you made them sound good to your ears, the teacher will not notice what interval they're at. He's too busy (or should be) looking at the big picture of the entire band....

I was the first bass drummer in a group of six when I marched in a drum corps, and with those, I cranked mine as high as it would go, and the sixth one as far down as it will go, and then just adjusted the other four in the middle to nice intervals. That method worked really good in the '80s. I don't know what the corps-institutions like to do today...
 
The only truly 'tuned' percussion in the drumline is the tenors, and even then the theoretical note that's heard when they're struck doesn't have enough tone to produce harmonics, mostly because there are no reso heads.

My advice for tuning is just make sure that they are definitely not too low. Part of the tenor player's abilities rely on rebound for scrapes, sweeps, etc., and if the heads are tuned too low the rebound is gone. Also, it's considered fairly tacky nowadays to have lower-tuned tenors.

Make them sound good, that's all that's needed.

I can't say much for tuning basses, as I play tenors myself, but it's technically the same idea. Marching bass drum heads are often muted from the factory, and that also tends to eliminate any notated tonal quality. There is only "lowest", "low", "middle", "high", "highest"...

You get the idea.
 
There is not correct tuning really. Just whatever notes that you deem correct. When I played tenors we used to do minor 3rds until got new drums and that orientation of notes just didn't work. We went with at pentatonic scale starting on A. So (starting with the lowest drum) A,B,D,E. For our spocks well we just cranked them. Lower(or bigger) one lower in pitch than the higher(smaller) one; If you don't have two then just crank one.But of course, tune to what you think is correct. Ask your band director for some chord structure help if you need.

For bass drums you SHOULD tune to specific pitches. This will ensure that when you do runs the intervals will sound good. Unison notes will also sound better if you have set pitches. It all depends on what you want and/or what your music demands. For example one year we had a show that was almost always in a minor key. So we tuned the basses in minor intervals. My advise to you would be search online. There are quite a few guides out there. Yamaha has a good one http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...pNEvCL&sig=AHIEtbRRVwItbpaFZC5iraDHdWgtT1rR7g Again. It really is up to you how you want to tune. Good luck, it is a tedious process...
 
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