Basic Routine Construction blog 1

I know it's been a while since I made my last post. I've just been super busy, and to all my subscibers on youtube, sorry for taking so long with the latest video. For the past three months I've been juggling school work and marching band stuff. So now I'm trying to get back on track. Also on a side note, I'm also trying out for Drum Major at my college so wish me luck!

Anyway with that aside, I wanted to describe about the concept of basic routine construction. Now a lot of drum majors have their own techniques of creating routines but hopefully I can help all you guys on how to create great routines that will earn you points with the judges.

The analogy I like to use when creating a drum major routine is a "cake". If you look at a cake, it has two basic parts to it: there's the main body of the cake which I like to call the "Foundation", and then there's the frosting and decoration.

The Foundation is just that, the "foundation" of a routine. It is pretty much the fundamentals of marching and deportment. For every routine, you need to have a strong foundation. Certain criteria which fall under the foundation are: Posture, marching technique, free hands, beating of time, and all that jazz. All the stuff they teach you in the first day of band camp make up the criteria of the foundation

The Frosting and Decoration is everything which you do to make your routine great. This includes: spinning, tosses, etc.

Going back to the cake analogy, you want to have a good balance between your foundation and frosting. If you don't you could have either one of two outcomes and I've seen it all too many times before.

(Too much Foundation, not enough frosting)--These drum majors are in a word "BORING". These drum majors present good knowlege of marching fundamentals but yet they don't spin their maces as much or take any risk. Usually these drum majors keeps spins simple as they either may not know how to spin well or may be too afraid to drop their maces on concrete.

(Too much Frosting, not enough foundation)--These drum majors (Tsk Tsk) I see all the time. They are excellent spinners; they can do all these complicated moves and are not afraid to take risks. However these drum majors lack technique in basic marching fundamentals. During their routines, their are either out of step or their feet phase in and out of step; their posture is atrocious and they present so much body movement when spinning.

So when you create your routines just remember the "cake analogy"
-A cake with out frosting is just plain boring.
-A cake without a foundation is just a very beautiful mess.