Personal Statement

Since 2007, FatMattDrums has been a repository for cadences, exercises, warm-ups, and other music for drumline, rudimental snare drum, and battery percussion. My experience with the marching arts and my relationship with the activity have given me so much in life; this website is my way to give back to the activity and pay forward the immense sacrifices made by the educators who showed me the value of greatness and the path towards it: especially titans like Will Goodyear, who introduced me to rudimental drumming, and John Antonelli, who taught me how to truly understand and help others excel at it.

Drumline education is a unique monster in the world of music. As a discipline, it is at least as demanding of specialised knowledge and informed pedagogy as the responsibilities of a full-time, salaried-and-benefited band director. And yet, the task is often the purview of inexperienced and undereducated young people, driven by admirable passion and hunger but armed with a pedagogy assembled piecemeal from DCI/WGI audition camps (if you’re lucky!). Often, after taking a few years building the culture, skills, and feeder network necessary to operate a powerhouse percussion programme, these go-getters get going on to something else with more economic security; vital progress gets regularly wiped away. Although some states and localities have an exemplary infrastructure for percussion education, the scenario I describe here is far more common.

How does one solve this problem? Beats me… In the real world, there are no solutions: only trade-offs. However, I want to do everything I can to improve the situation, and everything *I* can do is to give you free music and educational content. It is a tiny contribution, but it is everything I can offer. My role is to cheerlead… to bolster the young people making the sacrifice and the older folks who have managed to make it work... to educate those who want to be educated and to assist those who want to educate. Whether you’re in Texas, North Carolina, or México D.F., I want you to benefit from the sacrifices that so many great educators made for my growth, so that you and your students can reach even higher because of how hard you work.

In the words of W. Edwards Deming: “It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.” For all of you who are already doing your best, I hope to give you a better sense of what you should be doing your best at, so that even more greatness may come your way.

Welcome to the path to improvement. I hope you enjoy this website.

—Matthew Lemieux