Battery Line and Front Ensemble Warmup and Fundamentals
Posted by Non-Percussionist on 3/24/2023, 2:07 pm
Percussion is not my strong suite but I know that our marching program needs major improvement in this area. We have a very green group returning to us the upcoming year. What are some go to percussion warmup arrangements for Battery Line and/or Front Ensemble.
Many thanks!
The Non-Percussionist
Re: Battery Line and Front Ensemble Warmup and Fundamentals
I made a collection of free stock exercises for drumline for exactly this purpose. Squarespace kind of sucks with the downloads, but the only info you need to fill out is your email to download it.
Take excerpts from your show and make those into warm ups. Look and see if they are playing any particular rudiments, scales, arpeggios, block chords, etc. and let those be the base of your warm ups. Aside from that, I use for the battery… 8 on a hand (as well as variants like 8-8-16 for the snares, triangles for the tenors, splits for the bass line) Double Beat (A/B), 16th note timing, and a diddle grid exercise. For the front I use the good old Green scale exercises, a Block chord exercise, individual mallet rotation exercises, and I’ll typically use our ballad as a warm up as well. All said and done, it usually takes about 10 minutes for the kids to go through everything.
Also, make sure they are doing their warm ups while marking time correctly or even while tracking.
