How It’s Done is a street beat that was originally written for a drumline with only snare, bass, and cymbals as the instrumentation. I have since added an optional tenor part, and you can compare the recordings with and without to see how the part complements the base arrangement.
It opens with a short bass drum cadence that includes a quote (top two basses in measure 3) from the classic SCV bass drum cadence that dates back at least as far as 1979. The main groove at rehearsal letter A does some sleight of hand, where the snare part of the first four bars of this phrase repeats, but offset by a quarter note, with the bass part slightly modified to prevent uncomfortable rhythmic clashes. A reprise of the bass cadence, colored by some different textures in the snare part, gives way to a segment adapted from a memorable lick from the 1999 and 2000 productions of Carolina Thunder (Independent World-Class WGI ensemble from North Carolina that was active for four seasons from 1998–2001, which produced a lot of the educators I learned from in my early drumming career). Measure 23, which is part of this larger lick, is itself a quote of the old SCV Lezginka lick.
For those unaccustomed to repeat terminology in drumline music: the music is performed from the top until the “D.S. al Coda” at the end of measure 26, at which point you go back to the symbol (rehearsal letter A) and play up to the “To Coda” marking at the end of measure 13, at which point you jump to the coda at measure 27 and play to the end.
