Thanks Thorsten !
Yes, tight marching is part of being the best
There are 4 judges, two "in the field" and two at a table at the edge of the hall. 2 judge the marching, 2 judge the music. The marching is one of our strongest points.
You have to perform "corners" where you simply take a left or right turn.
Then you have to do at least one what we call "English counter", which means that the rows all simply turn "together".
The other counter that needs to be performed is the "American counter" which is what you described. This looks more spectacular and is a bit more challenging to do.
We have no "special" tutor for it, we are in the lucky position that our drum band instructor/conductor also gives this marching exercise AND is tambour-maitre (this is actually a very rare thing, often these are different persons).
This kind of drum band and the music played is called "traditional" or British style. Some bands are more influenced by American brass-band style/show bands in music and uniforms. We like the traditional stuff though
However, our drums _ARE_ from the US and are so called "high tension" drums. The "skins" are made of kevlar, the same stuff as used in planes, bullet-proof jackets and quality speakers (like my B&W's
). Since this is a very stiff material, the tension needed to get the skin "tight" is very high. This requires a special construction of the drum so it can handle this force.
The result is a very crispy, high toned and short sounding snare sound. You may recognize this sound from Scottish bagpipe bands drummers, although these are even more high sounding (double snare).
There are three sections in the band:
1) The "heavy" section as it is often called, the bass and the tenors, walk on the last row and provide the "bass line" and rhythm.
2) The "dull" (don't know how to translate properly) section, which has the must players, walk in the middle and play the same drums as the snares but usually with the snares disengaged. They are also tuned more deeply to get a lower tone
3) The snare section. Usually the front row only which always play with snares on and play the most difficult patterns.
Good marches "play" with those three sections to come to a nice sounding piece.
Although inspired on British/Scottish march music, most of the works we play are composed by Dutchmen or Belgians and are especially written for these kind of drum bands.
We also play much more rhythmic/ up beat stuff inspired by f.i. famous drummers like Krupa, Hammond or more Brazilian/Carabian STYLED music (but never really like f.i. Anthinlian bands that are pretty popular in Holland now, who mainly play basic rhythms).
And on the other side of the spectrum we also play "classical" pieces with a high difficulty. Those last two are only played during concerts etc. thought where we don't march.
About the band you saw in Kaiserslautern, was it only drums too ? Usually these kind of bands are not that much bigger than ours.
Anyway, glad at least someone appreciated it
