should you do drum corps? with jake nissly
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- Опубліковано 4 сер 2024
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i'm back with my friend jake "the tornado" nissly, principal percussionist of the san francisco symphony, who won 3 principal jobs since 2003. we go waaaaay back, and today we're talking all things drum corps.
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ABOUT ME
i'm a percussionist in the metropolitan opera orchestra in new york city, and i create videos and blogs to help you stop sucking at drums and master your craft. there's so much more at www.robknopper.com
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My take on this video, as somebody who is studying to make percussion my profession and has also recently marched drum corps:
With the way the activity is heading, many of the negatives you mentioned are starting to, or have almost entirely, filtered out of the activity. I was part of a front ensemble that was entirely Stevens players, but I am a cross grip player. I was allowed to play cross grip on xylo/glock, and gained a wealth of knowledge from my experience. I feel like you overly focused on the differences/negatives in the activity, rather than focusing primarily on the more musical and healthy direction that the activity is going in. You get out of drum corps what you put into it. If you go mindlessly beat a drum/keyboard the whole time, that's what you’ll get out of it. But if you go and try to build your chops and develop your ears, you can get that out of it and grow immensely as a percussionist and as a musician.
I greatly appreciate your videos, Rob, and am grateful for all that you have contributed to the percussion community, but I think this argument certainly could have been framed better from the start so that it didn’t seem so negative toward the activity until the very last second.
Yes,,, considering the sophistication and wisdom Rob demonstrates in his other videos, I'm surprised that he's so contemptuous of an activity he clearly hasn't bothered to research. Even his choice of guest, who's an incredible percussionist but marched 20 yrs. ago, seems lazy.
I agree that the DCI/WGI educational methods have become much less confrontational and the various stroke mechanics have all changed to be more compatible with an orchestral approach. However, there's plenty of aspects of even the most evolved approach to marching percussion that aren't idiomatic in an orchestral setting (especially in the field batterie).
I hope Rob learns more about the technical and musical considerations that are pertinent in the activity presently. Contrasting these with Rob's indisputable orchestral expertise would be very interesting.
thanks for your comments here. i had framed this video in the way that i knew about the subject. i figured it’d be better to just be honest about where i was on everything, but also open to learning something new - which is why brought in jake. although, i didn’t bring in someone who’s doing marching band right now... i of course would love to still learn more. i'm already learning a bunch of stuff about it from your comment and other comments, so thank you!
I’m glad you did a video about this, Rob. Your videos are always great and I hope to see more about this topic soon! However, it pains me to see the nonchalant and cynical attitude towards drum corps within the orchestral world when there is so much musical knowledge to gain from it. I appreciate your desire to learn more about it.
As someone who marched Vanguard from ‘15-17 I believe that in general, a lot of corps are playing much more relaxed nowadays compared to just a decade ago - as many people here have already said. I can’t take offense to your story about playing snare with the high school marching band because it’s exactly the same way I was taught back then - to use excessive downstroking. But in my experience with drum corps, the concepts of rebound, constant motion, technical efficiency, finger/wrist/arm use, height/velocity relationships, moving the way you want to sound, etc were commonplace. In my opinion it helped shape the way I approach playing or teaching any kind of percussion instrument.
I also believe that the activity can offer a ton of practice with things like rhythmic accuracy, metric modulations, general shaping, dynamic control, performance psychology, listening skills, mental stamina, and the ability to balance and play exactly with another person - all of which I think directly applies to preparing for an orchestral audition.
All of this "Down" "Through the head" "squeezing" stuff is obsolete now. If you look at top groups like BD, SCV, Blue Knights, Bluecoats etc. you'll see that their techniques are nearly identical to drumset at orchestral/concert percussion. In fact, modern marching percussion is the most rhythmically complex form of music today. With the invention of the Kevlar head and new ways of tuning, these instruments call for rhythmic and accuracy/precision that you will never see in any other form of western music. Not to say that other percussionists don't have the abilities of a top-tier marching percussionist, it's just that if you don't have these inhuman abilities, nothing flies in these groups.
I agree with everything Chris said. I marched drum corps for 6 years, then taught for another 3. If you have a smart and logical approach to playing there's no reason why it would effect your orchestral playing. I can attest since I marched while in college and was able to differentiate concert hall vs. football field.
I think a lot of the negative outlook on the activity comes from the 90s and earlier where it was a very rigid approach to the instrument. Anyone who is any good at teaching marching band or drum corps should know that the approach should NOT be downstroke downstroke downstroke!!!!
Personally, I teach a ton of rebound, listening, dynamics, and how you fit into the ensemble. Yes, there's a lot of loud playing, but not loud playing with bad technique.
And yes, you'll get monster chops, a sick tan, and be pretty fit by the end of the summer!
yeah, great points here! it sounds like there’s a nice consensus about how drum corps used to be and how it's evolved for the better. i did question the idea that it could “ruin your stroke”, though it's similar to me having played drum set growing up. that doesn’t mean i play all my puccini notes with a drum set style stroke, so i'm not surprised to hear that that's also true with marching band. thanks for your comments.
thanks for everything you do on your channel. Very informative! I sometimes find myself rewatching old videos just for the sake of getting more info. It's a fun approach with a ton of info without being dry or dull. Keep it up!
About the strokes: I was lucky that a lot of my drumline instructors were classically trained so they knew the right way to play without causing damage by over squeezing. I helped out a school by me a couple years ago and the main instructor was all about downstrokes and almost 0 rebound. I had to walk away.
Please for the love of all things musical, FIND SOMEONE WHO'S DONE CORPS MORE RECENTLY THAN 20 YRS AGO.
REALLY??
Hi Rob, you are amazing. you demystify so much about playing and bring an unheard of openness to your posts about percussion. thank you, David Cox
i appreciate it!
You said that in marching band they taught you to play tight downstrokes and "tense up" when playing. In all my drumcorps experience, we had spent an enormous amount of time breaking down and correctly understanding how to do a proper legato full stroke, and this technique was employed throughout all of the music we played. It was also instructed to us that the technique you seem to think corps are utilizing is actually harmful to your wrists and muscles/tendons in that region. To say that corps emphasize bad technique is completely false, and from my experience, I have been taught the same way that you seem to have been taught in orchestra. Having a guest who starts off by saying he "hated" drum corps really chips away at the credibility of this video. I enjoyed corps, and while it is a lot of hard physical and mental work, there is not much beyond those two things that I would say justify anyone to "hate" it. If you can't get down and feel the drive to put everything you've got into your musical passion, then corps is NOT for you. To make a video interviewing a clearly biased (for the most part) guest, and basing your assumptions regarding drumcorps technique on your HIGHSCHOOL experience is preposterous. This video seriously does not do drumcorps any justice whatsoever, and all that I've heard discussed in the video goes against how I've been instructed and what I've experienced, as well as it goes against what everyone else I know has been taught as well. It seems you've just had a poor (highschool) experience with marching percussion.
Watch any video of Blue Stars, for example, and tell me that they are using tense technique throughout their music. 2:24
Hi Rob. I would be interested to see you do an interview with a percussionist who is in full-time military band (United States Navy Band, United States Marine Band, etc), and does both orchestral and rudimental style of drumming in their daily lives
good idea! i'll think on that.
Drum corps snare technique and approach has changed astronomically since Jake marched. Some corps like the Santa Clara Vanguard play with an approach which is very similar to most concert percussion drums. DCI in the 90's was about playing loud and fast. DCI is now about rhythmic accuracy/cohesiveness and musicality, as well as composition (meaning how difficult the stuff you're playing is). I'd encourage you to take a look at some modern DCI ensembles. Based on my former experience, those top notch groups in the are so great because of how much those performers love and care about what they do, as well as the years of discipline put into it. I can guarantee you that despite years of concert/orchestral percussion experience, you as well as any other performer with your expertise would still have an incredibly difficult time mastering a modern DCI drum/percussion feature to the point where it can be intelligible within a 18-19-member drum ensemble.
This is awesome, thank guys!!!
I'm just curious. Have you been to a drum Corp show recently rob? Or have you seen any of the Santa Clara vanguard drumline recently? I love your stuff by the way and I'm always impressed with the quality of content that you put. I'm afraid your have been very misguided with the techniques that are used, and those techniques have changed DRASTICALLY in the last 20 years. I implore you to see a show or look up a video and really look at their hands. They can't play the way they do with the technique you describe. I'm sorry to hear of both of the bad past experiences you guys share and I hope you can look at the activity with an open mind in the future.
i've never been to a drum corps performance, but i would love to go one day!
Rob, tell me you edited this. This editing is hilarious and I love it. If you had a channel of just random bits and stories with this editing, I would eat that up!
What is Jake Nissly saying about hybrid rudiments? What are those?
You are completely wrong about the just tensing up your hand and hitting the drum. In marching band it's also about using Logato strokes and letting the stick bounce to play more efficiently and faster, it's not just tensing up your hand and hitting the drum, not to mention the playing style isnt the only thing people are attracted to, it's the community, the life of being on tour and staying in busses and all these other factors that you didnt even touch, and that bothers me because this video might have turned some great percussionists with great potential from doing drum ore and that's a bit saddening to be honest
Rob,,question re timpani grip... anything wrong with playing German grip.. and are there any players today using it... thnx.. gary Rynar
nothing wrong with playing german! in fact, there’s a whole country of germany where they use that grip. markus rhoten, timpanist with the ny phil, studied and worked in germany before coming to new york. i noticed a trend in timpani playing when he moved here... i started seeing more and more people play that way.
@@robknopperstudio ,, thanks Rob
We love DCI (we both marched snare, Phantom and Glassmen respectively). But there's the whole other world of Scottish Pipe Band drumming that most DCI folk aren't aware of. We play on similar snare drums (kevelar heads, high tension, carriers), however the heads and sticks are significantly lighter and thinner, and the technique is all about looseness, snap and using your fingers instead of just wrist and arm. If you haven't seen it, this stuff is super hot. Love your stuff Rob, keep up the good work!
i used to play in a celtic orchestra and we would go to scottish bag pipe festivals and watch bag pipe and drummers play in their very unique style. it's been a while but i love that style!
@@robknopperstudio Right on! Well, come on by!:) We think these chasms between drumming cultures need to be bridged. Come hang out with us ! www.Rhythm-Monster.com
Hey Rob!! I love your videos, and this one in particular got my attention. There are great comments already- but I wanted to echo the suggestion of Paul and Sandi Rennick as a great resource on this subject. A quick youtube video search will bring up the Santa Clara Vanguard Full Percussion performances from past years as examples of their work. Thanks for the amazing content!
thanks!
Not a fan of the editing. The cuts are jarring at times. Sometimes the text blends in with the lighting making it hard to read.
I’d like to see some folks like John Parks or Paul Rennick. In both cases, they play orchestral but also have a vast knowledge of drum corps. Despite that even, I think it would be beneficial to reach out to college professors like the ones I mentioned because those folks are giving private lessons to many of the people watching these videos and most of them play in a local orchestra or at least the schools that they teach at.
I would definitely recommend chatting with Paul Rennick. Paul always encourages proper sound quality and technique. Drum corps has only made my Timpani playing stronger. Also, playing Timpani for a good 900+ hours over the summer is always a great thing. I would take my etude books with me and practice my etudes/excerpts during breaks and individual time. I will always recommended at least a year of drum corps if a student is at all interested!
good points!
I have been thinking of my own answer to the main question of your video "should you do drum corps?" recently and I think that this video was a really disappointing answer. I don't mind that you had a guest that had a mixed experience in the activity, but I think it's really unfair to your viewers to only consider one first-hand, extremely dated experience. There are plenty of people who watch your videos, or respected people in the activity who don't, who would love to come on and talk about this difficult question for students asking themselves.
Jake is right about a lot of stuff. He says a lot of corps have different techniques, and that's still easy to identify today. Drum corps does seriously develop your practice habits and your work ethic if you commit to it, just like sitting in a practice room would (I think drum corps is more fun than a practice room though because you're with a bunch of friends and traveling the country). You develop your physical chops, your knowledge of the instrument, and confidence as a performer. And sure, playing "clean" often sacrifices personal differences in technique for looking and sounding exactly the same.
But the activity has developed even more than Jake has mentioned, in my opinion. BD and SCV and a few others are at the forefront of how "musical," dynamic, or nuanced a production can be, but almost all of the corps that I have seen in the past few years are much less rigid and down-stroke heavy than in 98 when Jake was marching. You can march a season or go to a camp at almost every world class corps and most open class corps and learn valuable skills for your future as a musician. Staff are often college faculty, high school band directors, or at least music school graduates on their instruments, and they know that they are teaching musicians and not just eternal drum corps members. And like Chris said in a different comment, if you have natural tendencies in your technique, most lines will encourage you to use your strengths. The only reason I ever got a spot was because I was the only person who could tune timpani reliably, and now, after marching (sitting) for two drum corps seasons, I have the technique and the pedaling skills and the work ethic to feel confident playing the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, or Schelomo, or the Carter etudes.
There are plenty of negatives to consider too. Drum corps is expensive, and it takes up your entire summer. It can be really hot and uncomfortable. A lot of nights you don't get enough sleep. Staff have been fired for acting inappropriately. Some corps struggle to make ends meet and aren't funded as well as the top 8. You make a commitment to participate, and sometimes you wish you could just go home.
Sorry for the long reply. I value your perspectives and really appreciate what you do for musicians trying to find their way, and I understand you can't cover every little detail in every video. I think there is much more to consider than the things you discussed in your video and I think it's a little weird to answer this question in five minutes.
I marched Madison Scouts 2015 front ensemble and now I work in symphony orchestra as a percussion player. From my perspective, it is totally different, different touch to the instrument, different listening situations, etc. It is not one is better than the other it is just different. What I see as biggest difference, and lets be honest guys, I have never felt in drum corps that it is more waiting as actual playing...so from time spent on rehreasal vs. Playing on instrument:
1:0 for Drum Corps
Rob you really did it in this video. Lol. The comments. 😄😄😄
I would like to view Ronni kot Wenzel and Rubén Zuñiga
this video ended up being a little controversial with the drum corps community, so i wanted to say something about it.
1. my goal was to learn about how drum corps could help or hurt orchestral players. and through jake’s answers and many emails and comments i learned a ton about the musical benefits.
2. there are many great orchestral players in some of the best orchestras on earth who played drum corps and treasured their experience.
3. about 30 people specifically told me to interview Paul Rennick from UNT so i am gonna reach out!
4. to those who became inflamed and sent me quite angry emails or comments with swear words…. thank you for your “passion”.
thanks for watching, guys, and i'll keep making more videos. some of them you may not agree with but i hope you can learn from each one!
As someone who has made a lifetime career out of writing and teaching front ensemble for the marching activity, I obviously sympathize with the people who have posted valid concerns below. The fact that a front ensemble or mallet playing was never mentioned in the video demonstrates just how far off target some of this got...BUT I also love Rob’s content so I can cut him a break on this since I too was completely unaware of what the activity was all about when I was studying music.
Here’s my issue - “should you do drum corps?” when framed as a question for the budding orchestral percussionist COULD have read “do you like making money as a teacher to offset your exorbitant costs of education and equipment?”
Teaching battery/front ensemble is the #1 easiest and quickest way for a college/recent graduate to start making money teaching. It’s less hassle than private lessons, it’s infinitely more consistent, you get an actual paystub which is helpful if you ever plan on being an adult with a credit score, and you often get money put into a retirement fund. You can also compose and arrange your own percussion music and get PAID!
However, all orchestral-only players FAIL MISERABLY at teaching & writing for marching band and subsequently get fired immediately. This is without fail, a 100% truth. You cannot teach or write for the marching activity well without some experience doing it at a higher level.
We are doing the next generation of percussionists a disservice by not making them aware of these opportunities to financially survive as they try to follow whatever road their long term goals take.
great point! it's hard to figure out how to pay for the audition lifestyle, so i appreciate this perspective.
Have Jason Haaheim on and ask him who his favorite Big Lebowski character is.
hahaha... take one guess!
Well, there seems to be an opinion here that more current is better. I played in the 1960s and we played with a ton of musicality.
No, we did not cover every nuance in music but what style of music does? I also instructed in the 1970s and 80s. Again,
there was a huge amount of musicality that can easily be adapted to other styles. Somewhere along the way. the snare lines
started striking with very high strokes. We didn't do that back in the day. Check out SCV in the 70s. Otherwise, it was a fine interview.
who edited this
? The Chop Meister! It's the 'new way' to edit films and TV shows with quick cuts. Rob is the man, though. :^)
sarah james! she's doing a little bit of editing here and on instagram. @sosaidsarah check it out :)
Yeah, I think the editing is pretty choppy, but definitely gets the point across as quick as possible
I think that the grid-drumming and the «count out loud» tradition is interesting, and the downstroke technique has helped me clean up some rythmical things on snare drum solos. I see it all as just another tool in the toolbox, which might come in handy some day.
The knowledge of rudiments and presentation is awesome of corp drummers..
Hi Rob! Love your videos and all the work you do! Just one thing that caught my eye:
Some of the editing in the video made the watching/listening experience a little jarring and felt very unnatural to listen to.
Keep doing the great work!
thanks for the feedback!
I loved topic and was listening with great interest, but the editing chops were to choppy. Listening wasn't as enjoyable as so many of your other videos.
Hey Rob, fan of your channel. I know your channel is geared towards people who want to audition for orchestra, but perhaps you should consider that the vast majority of percussion majors in college are going to be teaching band or teaching marching percussion. Drum corps is an invaluable experience that boosts the resume and provides a lot of great insight into the design of that art form and how to properly teach it. I would highly recommend talking with John Parks IV about this. As a side note: I think it's a little disrespectful to your guest to edit his talking so heavily and add so many sound effects.
Rob, Sorry to hear about yours and Jake's bad experience with drum corp/marching band. Here is a difference that I see between orchestral drumming and marching percussion in the orchestra you are a solo player with the freedom that comes with being a solo player much like the principals in the strings and winds. In a marching band the snare drum line and tenor line are likely not soloists and often section players(like the violin section.) When your sound is a staccato snare sound there is less room for inaccuracy as it starts to distort the rhythm. As for the technique that you were asked to use well it's too bad that you had to endure that experience. I know that many instructors today often teach a technique that more closely resembles Moeller technique or they teach Moeller technique outright. This is the "get out of the way of the rebound" technique. Please try to interview someone who is familiar with Moeller technique. Jim Chapin is the guru but a more contemporary teacher would be Jeff Queen. Thanks for the video and keeping an open mind.
Hey you know those cuts in the middle of sentences? Just kinda not do that at all. For the rest of eternity.
You guys are completely missing point of drum corps. It's not about all about playing style although it can partly be that. It's about being part of a family, working harder than you ever have in your life, learning what it means to suck it up, forging lifelong friendships with other members and instructors. Dude, if you didn't get any of that out of your experience then yep you totally missed the train. Sucks that you wasted your time but...
My instructor told me in DCI "If you want to be the best musician you can as fast as possible, go to a Stevens camp instead. Drum corps is about having an amazing experience traveling the country, working your hardest, blowing though what you thought your limitations were, playing for thousands of cheering fans every day, and being a part of an amazing family"
Marimbalogy where’d you march? Love your videos!
Rob...nice about drum corp... as a kid very good friend was with blessed sacrament drum Corp Newark n j.. was no 1 snare drummer in u s a dynamite chops.. rudiments.. ego and attitude horrible... when behind a drum set.. severely overplayed and even a ballad sounded like a march..
There are always those guys! Luckily, in my 3 years of corps, I met very few “high and mighty” players. Nearly everyone I marched with I’d consider a musician. Not a drummer. The activity is very different now. Most places take the “concert style” and apply it to the outdoor environment. I didn’t have to alter my playing at all. The summer simply expanded what I could do.
he did march in 1998, things like technique have changed a lot since then, y'know, compare lot performance videos from, say, the 80s to lot videos from the last 4 years of DCI
dude you're having this narrow minded mindset that the only percussion that matters is concert percussion and no other form of percussion, drum corps might not be the most useful thing I for concert percussion but it sure is very helpful for marching percussion. there's more forms of percussion than just concert percussion please don't have such a narrow mindset where the only form of percussion that needs to be performed and practiced is concert percussion because this video is saying marching drum corps is no good when it is good just for other forms of performance. please learn there's more than one kind of percussion that people are passionate about before shitting on them just because you're a concert percussionist. i have never heard of a marching percussionist say concert percussion isn't helpful. please understand this.