Pitched Bass Drum in Marching Band Use
The "bass line" is a unique musical ensemble consisting of graduated pitch marching bass drums commonly found in marching bands and drum and bugle corps. Each drum plays a different note, and this gives the bass line a unique task in a musical ensemble. Skilled lines execute complex linear passages split among the drums to add an additional melodic element to the percussion section. This is characteristic of the marching bass drum — its purpose is to convey complex rhythmic and melodic content, not just to keep the beat. The line provides impact, melody, and tempo due to the nature of the sound of the instruments. The bass line usually has from as many as seven bass drums to as little as two. But most high school drumlines consist of between 5 and 3.
Read more about this topic: Bass Drum
Famous quotes containing the words pitched, bass, drum, marching and/or band:
“Love, why have you sought the horde
of spearsmen, why the tent
Achilles pitched beside the river-ford?”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“How are we to know that a Dracula is a key-pounding pianist who lifts his hands up to his face, or that a bass fiddle is the doghouse, or that shmaltz musicians are four-button suit guys and long underwear boys?”
—In New York City, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.... There are some things in every country that you must be born to endure; and another hundred years of general satisfaction with Americans and America could not reconcile this expatriate to cranberry sauce, peanut butter, and drum majorettes.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)
“A torchlight procession marching down your throat.”
—John Louis O’Sullivan (1813–1895)
“There was a young lady called Gloria
Who was had by Sir Gerald Du Maurier
And then by six men
And Sir Gerald again
And the band of the Waldorf-Astoria.”
—Anonymous.