Ideas to help with percussion in the beginner band

By Kevin Tuck

The percussion section can be the band directors worst nightmare - particularly if the band director themselves doesn’t know a great deal about percussion. It can be very tough to get the “drummers” all contributing actively to the band, so this article outlines a few strategies that you can use to get them involved.

Don’t let them be “drummers” only - be “percussionists” instead

This is the most important thing to realize - that band students are often attracted to percussion so that they can play the drum set. The drum set (or drum kit) is often used in the school band, and often is very important, so students feel that if they are not playing it they have to sit there and wait.

The band director has to find a way around this situation - if you only have one drummer, then great! They can play the drum set and away you go.

The problem comes when you have two, three, four or eight drummers in the band - and that happens!

One way you can do it in the real beginner band is have one player playing snare drum, one player playing Bass drum, and one player playing Cymbal - even if you have a traditional ‘drum set’ part written out. If you have this type of band I recommend having this setup at all times, and making the students stand up to play the snare drum. You then have the bass drum and the Cymbals alongside, designed to be played by three players at all times.

Have an Auxilliary Percussion Table - and make them stand up to play at all times

There is nothing worse than vaguely hearing a shaker or tambourine in a school band, and struggling to see the person sitting on a chair behind the drummer!

When playing tambourine, triangle or shaker - these instruments are often more critical to the sound of the band than the snare drum or drum set, so therefore they must be taken really seriously.. by the band director as well as by the players.

So always have a “traps” table with everything in easy reach. Its not expensive to set one up or buy one of the available professional models.

The players must always stand up to play, and have their music stand set up so that they can look immediately over it at the band conductor.

Warming up - please don’t ignore us!

I’ve been a percussionist in a school band… there is nothing more frustrating that spending your time sitting in the school band room while you wait for the wind players to tune up and warm up. Often the band director will spend up to half an hour warming the players up - and expect the percussionists to remain quiet during that time.

How to deal with it?

If youre going to warm up for half an hour…. Tell the drummers to come half an hour late! - it makes no difference to you and its better than them being a distraction

Why not send them into a different room for their own section rehearsal during this time? Get a specialist teacher or assistant to work with them on their parts

Use predefined warm-up routines that go along with what you are doing with the wind players. (doesn’t always work, but can do depending on the materials you have)

Be prepared to supplement the band book

When I helped out with beginner bands I found it necessary to supplement the band books that the students were using with additional materials - often the materials are not interesting or they don’t have enough variety to keep the students engaged in the materials.

They’ll need lots of work on basic rudiments and rolls - often the band books don’t address those things early enough. So therefore you should be able to supplement it with additional material available from other books and online.

Everyone playing mallets?

I’m going to leave this up to you - it depends on the different personalities in each of the bands you have. One popular series of band books the “standard of excellence” has snare drum/bass drum on the left hand pages of the book, and mallet percussion on the right. Another type the “essential elements” has one snare drum and one mallet percussion book.

I think that percussionists should rotate and do as much as possible, and if that means that they each need two books, whereas every other member of the band needs only one.. then that’s the way it should be!

There are no magic pills to make percussion easier in the beginner band, but hopefully the strategies in this article will help.

The Author, Kevin Tuck has numerous free resources available for percussion at his blog http://www.percussioneducationonline.com

Background of the Author

Kevin Tuck has worked as a private music teacher and as a classroom music teacher, but has also had significant experience in business. Kevin has run his own very successful music school, and now runs The Fun Music Company, an internet publishing company helping music teachers and authors publish music and educational materials on the internet.

There are heaps more articles available for percussion at his blog http://www.percussioneducationonline.com

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