Warmups...  

• We use many of the same warm-ups that other drum lines do.  What makes ours cooler is the names we make up for them.  Here are some examples.
   
   1. "Off the Bus"- This is the warm up we first do when arriving at a competitions.. right off the bus. It is a quick, effective exercise that incorporates many other exercises into a compact timely warm up.  It uses warm ups such as: 8-on-a-hand, Irish Spring, and Roll Timing.

  2."Red Beard and the Buzz-Cut"- This exercise was named after our principal, Mr. Cowell who has a red beard, and me (Dave)who has a buzz-cut.  This warmup utilizes concentration by adding 16ths one note at a time as a complete drum line.

  3.  The Diddle Circle - Exercise that passes single diddles around line in 16th notes.  Can be done with both right and left hands and also as double diddles.

  4.  Blue Beard (and the Buzz Cut.)     same as Red beard but using a triplet based pattern.

  5. "The Nemesis" (retired) This exercise was designed to help the line crescendo a 3-beat triplet pattern that happened frequently in a show of ours.  It has continued to be one of our favorites

  6. "Jack in the Box"  Jack-in-the-Box is a common exercise used by many lines that we just renamed.  It is based on 8th notes.  The first measure places the accent on the beat, the second off, and the last measure does the same thing only with 2 beats instead of 4.

  7. "Crazy Eights" Basically, this is just 8-on-a-hand.  The only variation is that one hand goes for 25 measures before switching to the other hand.

  8. "Napoleon's Narsissistic Nephew" -(retired) This is a triplet diddle exercise sometimes referred to as "Napoleon". Each measure the diddle moves to a different part of the triplet. Eventually it turns into five stroke roll triplets.

  9. "Heinz 57" (retired) This exercise is done as follows: 1 (+a) double paradiddle in triple meter. It happened frequently in last years Mexican show.

  10.  Flaminator - Flams at the beginning of 8's then 7's etc. down to alternating 16th note flams

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