Online Tenor - Homepage

Marching and Discipline

By Bas den Burger, 25 October 2011
(Articles)

Tenor drummers can make the difference.

We must not forget that pipe bands originated from the Scottish military tradition and out of respect for this tradition we are bound to follow some rules. Our outfits must be clean and in perfect condition. Uniform means that we must wear our outfits in the same fashion. Same height of the hoses, same direction of the flashes, shoelaces tied in the same way and so on. The marching itself must be tight. In a competition the performance starts at the line with assuming the attention position and pipes up for march. Subsequently the band marches forward into the competition circle and forms a circle. After the mark time everyone has to come to the halt as one. Finally the march off after finishing playing. To win the marching and discipline prize all the above must be observed, but what if more bands give equal performances? Then we tenor drummers can make the difference. The best presentation for tenor drumming makes your band win the prize for best marching and discipline.

Beating the drum

By Bas den Burger, 18 October 2011
(Beginner)

In tenor drumming, as well in all drumming, we must not think too lightly about how to beat the drum. The beating must be well pronounced, without becoming dominant. A short and pointy hit. Especially when using different tones the so called projection is very important. An adjudicator may judge the tenor drummers without looking, so fancy flourishes will not help them there. Of course all tenor drummers in a group must strive to achieve the same projection.

Attaching the strings

By Bas den Burger, 04 September 2011
(Beginner)

Before you really can start with tenor drumming you have to prepare your sticks. In this tutorial I’ll explain how to make your own set of strings. Also we discuss the different materials you can use to make your strings.

For this example I use shoelaces. This is a commonly used material for tenor drummers around the world.

Online Tenor Statistics First Week

By Bas den Burger, 19 August 2011
(Articles)

We just celebrated the first week of the website and we are quite satisfied with the results. We are confident the number of visitors will increase as more articles are presented. We use Google Analytics for our analysis of numbers of visitors, page views and average time on site.

Google Analytics also tells us which keywords leads people to the Online Tenor website. When you search "colored tenor sticks" we get a top ranking in the major search engines.

Basic counting in tenor drumming

By Bas den Burger, 19 August 2011
(Beginner)

To read Music and to learn a score you first must be taught to count. How to count this standard setting for a 4/4 March for instance.

4/4

Or this 3/4 March.

3/4

The basics of tenor drumming

By Bas den Burger, 19 August 2011
(Beginner)

The basis of tenor drumming is and will be hitting the drum. The musical piece for the tenor drummer nowadays is equally important as the snare piece, with the only difference that the tenor drummer gets less notes. The Tenor drummer often plays on the accents of the snare piece, but also can play on the embellishments in the bagpipe tune.

Beside hitting the drum a tenor drummer makes movements and flourishes to support the music visually. Well executed the movements help the drummer in playing and understanding the music.

The Worlds 2011

By Bas den Burger, 14 August 2011
(Articles)

Use of tones in tenor drumming at the Worlds really adds to the experience and we have seen some great examples in Grade One Bass and Tenor sections. Some tenor groups however lost themselves in the complexity of their drum scores which led to a lack of accuracy in their performances. We have seen this especially with the morning qualifiers in their MSR performance and it is well possible that bands did not qualify for the finals because of it. In any case the use of tones seems more difficult in MSR in comparison with Medleys. When you want to start with tones in a Grade Four band for example, keep it simple at first. It still can be effective. I think the approach of the Manawatu Scottish Society Pipe Band can be set as a goal for bands starting with the use of tones.

Tenor drumming comes in colors

By Bas den Burger, 10 August 2011
(Articles)

The flourishing from the tenor drummers is invented to catch the eyes of the pipe band spectators. Even behind a full piper corps tenor drummers are visible when they stick up their arms high in the air. For an even better visibility the tenor sticks nowadays come with heads in striking colors. Tenor sticks come in almost every coloration you can think of, to match with a band appearance, or just for fun.

About the community

By Bas den Burger, 10 August 2011
(General)

The Online Tenor website will be developed to contribute in bringing tenor drumming to a higher level overall. This blog based website must prove itself essential for the self-consciousness of tenor drummers and make good exercises accessible to everybody who wants to become an excellent tenor drummer. The initiators of the website have the intention to build a community where tenor drummers from all over the world can share experiences and help in achieving the website goals.

When you like to write for the website or can lead us to interesting articles on the web please let us know.

Older Posts »