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).

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.

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.

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.