Tailgate Smoker

Tailgate Smoker is a collaboration between Fat Matt Drums and Drumline Hits, and I am especially pleased with how it turned out. My ideas in this thing kept feeling stale the more I tried fleshing them out, but adding some fresh blood to the mix really did the trick.

Organized into seven movements and clocking in at a whopping 2’24’’, this piece will give your line lots to say and plenty to play to bring that heat on game day! Weaving between intricate licks and heavy grooves, this cadence offers enough to satisfy any fan’s hunger for beats, and the structure affords for easy adaptation to suit any performance venue. Whether a passage is simple or complex, challenging or repetitive, the faithful execution of dynamics by the ensemble will be crucial to the effectiveness of this music.

Sheet music is packaged as a PDF binder including a score, printable battery parts, and optional parts for 4-drum and 5-drum tonal bass lines (original arrangement is for 6 bass drums).

Frosty Roofs

Frosty Roofs is an explicitly Christmas-oriented parade cadence that takes inspiration from a couple of popular Christmas tunes. There is a dedicated sleigh bell part for that festive holiday sound, and all the music is relatively simple, so you can squeeze this in at the end of the year as needed. The run time is fairly short, but different segments could easily be repeated as necessary to stretch things out.

Sheet music is packaged as a PDF binder including separate scores for 4– and 5–bass arrangements, as well as printable battery parts.

Kick Rocks

Kick Rocks takes a very simple syncopated pattern in the bass drums and layers it with some basic accompaniments in the snare and tenor parts to pack a big punch that nonetheless offers very limited demand for vocabulary and ensemble cohesion.

Sheet music is packaged as a PDF binder including separate scores for 4– and 5–bass arrangements, as well as printable battery parts.

Pound Sand

Pound Sand is a parade cadence that punctuates a round split between the bass and tenor voice with a recurring accent pattern in the snare drum voice. Despite its simplicity, it offers great opportunities to maximize dynamics and shaping, and everything should fit together nicely without too much investment of rehearsal time.

Sheet music is packaged as a PDF binder including separate scores for 4– and 5–bass arrangements, as well as printable battery parts.

Immortal

Immortal is an HBCU-style street beat that consists of a series of buildups that each feature a single section of the line, punctuated by hits or little licks in the other sections, and building up to release into the next section’s “feature.” Many of these little features are then reprised as accompaniment to other sections’ features. The final buildup takes us into the full battery groove at letter E, which hits you with everything I want in a cadence: a backbeat, nothing but rimshots in the tenors, sizz/sucks in the cymbals, and an excessive number of stick flips for visual flair. As described, it could almost be a parody of the way I like to write cadences, but I think quite the opposite—this piece is a quintessential representation of how I try to compose. Very old-school and very modern at the same time, with extensive focus on both groove and traditional rudimental fare.

It is arranged for 7 basses, but it is also not very heavy on bass splits, so that could easily be adjusted-for by any college line interested in this composition. The difficulty level may be pushing the upper limit of what counts as a “blue square,” but I truly believe that the rudimental content is far more reasonably achievable by college musicians than anything in the “black diamond” category.

How It's Done

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.

Zapatitos

Zapatitos builds out of the traditional taps from the anchor bass that most marching units use to stay in time (when they aren’t playing music or drumline cadences), and it also uses this idea as a musical motif to build up to the reprise of the main groove at the end. A simple walking bass line is coloured with texture from the snare drum before a lyrical melodic line is introduced by the tenors, and then more or less the same thing happens again. Nice mix of highs and lows here, and it should be plenty of fun without too much commitment of rehearsal time.

Grand Train

Grand Train is a show style-inspired cadence that’s all about groove; whether it’s loud or soft, whether the licks are dense or sparse, whether it’s a section feature or an ensemble moment, there is groove to be conveyed… therefore, your rhythmic precision must be impeccable! The challenge of the written music is to play it so well in time that all the parts fit together, which is a greater challenge than is suggested by the somewhat standard rudimental vocabulary, thus earning this piece a “Challenging” rating. Make no mistake, though; this one goes hard, and the payoff is in fat beats more than hot licks.

Big Game Hunters

Big Game Hunters is a groovy street beat that’s all about textures. Snares and tenors play splits as separate groups in a couple places, so watch out for that when reading the score (I tried to draw attention to it). Also, there is a lot of visual flair written into the snare part; it repeats, so just get the motions coordinated, and you’ll be golden.

I was inspired to write this piece after seeing a college line in Utah rocking it with no cymbals and whose tenors had multiple toys (Agogô bell AND wood block!), so I am providing the original arrangement in this style, the “Wasatch Front” arrangement.

But what about those big Southern drumlines with plenty of power and size, whose performers have plenty of fun in their eyes? Enter the “Tobacco Road” arrangement, scored for either 5 or 9 bass drums, tenors with only one toy (an Agogô bell), a couple of other subtle changes, and definitely yes cymbals!

EDIT 21 February 2023: Fixed some noteheads in bars 2-4 of the snare part

Powder Keg

Powder Keg is an explosive street beat full of motion, energy, and groove, with some tasty licks in between. The patterns should all feel quite good in the hands, and this piece, having a somewhat limited vocabulary, would likely suit any line willing to put in the work.

Robusto

Robusto creatively employs repetition and a fairly limited rudimental vocabulary to create many cool moments and grooves across the battery. Don’t get me wrong: there are many challenges here. However, many of these challenges are repeated so many times that a little bit of practice goes a long way for every performer. And for the most part, these challenges will be more mental (rhythms, dynamics, and ensemble cohesion) than physical (chops).

A college or high school line could enjoy this one while knocking it out of the park, although a high school instructor should be cognizant of the rhythmic challenges (particularly the syncopation in the bass line) and whether they fit into the wheelhouse of the performers who are earliest on their journeys as rudimental drummers.

Main Stage

Main Stage is a heartfelt homage to the heyday of Big Room house music at massive EDM festivals like the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas, EDC Chicago (RIP), and Ultra Music Festival in Miami. Simplicity commands immense power, and from 2013–2015, you could experience it in its purest form, louder than Hell, with top-shelf lighting and pyrotechnics, and a whole lot of energised people eager to eat it all up. With changing popular taste and the questionable future of big festivals in the United States, it is nice to look back fondly on a very special moment in time, exemplary of the zeitgeist and a generation coming of age.

From a more practical perspective, if you’re going to write a cadence whose main bass drum groove is just quarter notes, you should really only do it once, and you’d better knock it out of the park. So if anyone asks about that crazy beat your line is playing, just call it ID – ID.

Cottonwood Crunch

Cottonwood Crunch uses simple dynamic phrasing and a little bit of visual flair to bring life to a very straightforward rhythmic idea. Nice and accessible, this piece could easily be embellished with repeats, endings, and section soli content in order to bolster the composition while still playing to your performers’ strengths. Enjoy!

Relaxation Time

Relaxation Time is a straightforward street beat that was written for a parade band that included drumlines from three different high schools; accessibility and adaptability were the goals here, but this piece still manages to create some interesting moments and pack a nice punch too!

Strut

Strut is just what the doctor ordered! A solid one-minute street beat that’s reasonably accessible and gets a lot of variety out of a few simple ideas. If a pattern is tricky, it will appear a few times, so that a little bit of woodshedding can go a long way with this piece. A college or high school line could have a lot of fun with this one.

As a bonus, I’m including a score that has parts for differently-sized bass drum lines, since not everybody rolls with 5 basses. If you’re looking for more stuff arranged for differently-sized bass lines, my offerings through Marching Monk and through Tapspace include extra parts for differently-sized bass lines (2–9 basses, and 4–9 basses, respectively).

Hike

Hike is a university-level street beat that takes you on a syncopated journey through boisterous grooves and minimalist ditties based on a rhythmic motif that permeates your percussive adventure. High risk, high reward… nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Fox Hunt

Fox Hunt is a medium-level street beat that’s always in motion. A high school could rise to the challenges of this piece, and a college/university could play it really well without being bored. Lots of nice shaping in the tenors, with different textures used across the whole battery, creating interesting moments that either shatter or satisfy listener expectations. And, of course, it wouldn’t be a Fat Matt street beat without lots of power and excitement at the last rehearsal letter.

Bass Cadence

This Bass Cadence served as the introduction to NC State’s arrangement of Spider for many years. It has since been retired, so I want to share it here, since I have not written anything else quite like it. It is arranged for 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and 4-drum bass lines. The NC State version is the 9-drum arrangement, while the VDL recording is the 6-drum arrangement; I am providing both for reference.

Stop Breaking Down

Stop Breaking Down is a bass drum cadence with an optional full battery component, inspired by the Widespread Panic cover of that tune… particularly Dave Schools’s catchy bass line.

EDIT 21 February 2023: Fixed a typo in the flam taps in the tenor part of measure 16.

Emeritus

Emeritus is a slamming street-beat that adds low-humming tom drums to the typical battery instrumentation, inspired by the extra bit of punch that a lot of show-style drumlines bring to the table. Creative use of triplet feels and transitions to duple feels create suspense and release while maintaining a strong pulse to march to.

Fun fact: the snare part in the first measure of rehearsal letter C is stolen from an early version of Murray Gusseck’s “Electric Wheelchair,” which had that lick in place of the loud 32nd-note singles that you’ll recognise in every later version. Great choppy 90’s notes to set up the rest of that snare soli. If you’d like, you can also view the first two beats of the following measure as an homage to the old SCV “Threes” exercise.