The heart and soul of an marching band begins with the drum line. The drum line better known as the percussion section is a musical pulse. Without this pulse, a marching band is dead. A percussion section working together is what brings the spirit, life, and motivation, into a band which usually results in the band being number one.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, a drum is described as a musical percussion instrument. Many people think of music as being melodic notes coming from a piano, saxophone, or some kind of other brass/woodwind instruments, but never a drum. Like the many other melodic instruments, drums are also fine tuned with care. The difference between drummers and a percussion section is that drummers make noise and a true percussion section makes music.
The drum line consist of five types of drum which include the snare, cymbals, tenor, bass, and quints. As you can see, a percussion section is a drum set broken up into parts. Each part represents one of the five types of drums. With a drum set being in mind, every percussionist plays his or her drum to sound as one unit. The snare keeps the two and four beats, the bass adds the bottom, the cymbals give that exclamation point at the end of a phrase, and the tenors and quints work together to help fill in the “holes.”
The drum line is usually the section in the band that has the most fun, but at the same time, stay in the most trouble. Despite having fun and staying in trouble, when game time comes around, the percussion section is the most serious, dedicated, and dynamic section in the band. Also unlike other sections in the band, the drum line can perform alone. They create a mixture of different beats and visual flashes to put together solos which can be used to challenge an opposing drum line. The drum line is the most recognized and responsible section in the band. It is the heartbeat of the band and without the drum line, the band is dead.