Hi!
As a first year high school band director, I've been trying out some different things to make our drumline sound better. One thing that I would like to do is have more opportunities to make the bass line sound better. Unfortunately, we only own 3 basses. How can I split lines or make them sound more tonal without overbearing them with ridiculous amounts of notes.

Walking bass parts always work.

It's a whole lot easier with four or five drums because you can simply go down and up the line to fill a 4/4 measure with walking eighth notes: 12344321 or 12345432. Or even quarters if the kids aren't up to faster splits.

With three drums, though, you can't fill half a measure just walking down or up the line. You simply don't have enough different notes. So for easy three-drum parts, I often find myself subdividing 4/4 into dotted rhythms since those naturally lend themselves to three-note groupings. For example, if you look at a 4/4 bar as dotted quarter/dotted quarter/quarter, you can further subdivide that into eighths to get 12312312. Even, then, it can be tricky to make something musical out of such a finite palette of sound. There's definitely an art to it.

Don't hesitate to use unison notes, either. Or even partial unisons (like just drums 1 & 2 together). This gives you at least a few other sounds to make use of.

But the long-term solution is to buy, borrow, steal, or barter for another bass drum. Just one more drum REALLY opens up a whole lot of possibilities. What kind/size/color drums do you have now? (Perhaps someone here can help you find something to round out your line.)

I totally agree with Skydog here.

All I have to add is when writing splits.. little trick I used is to mix the run up a little bit more so if you were sixtuplet based in 4/4 I would go 111333222111333111222333 and then a unison release.. Its nothing new by any means but mixing up drum combos gives a flavor of having more drums then you really have..

the partial unison with moving notes under neath work too.. meaning one drum has a rhythm while the other two have a different unison rhythm.. hope that makes sense..

having three drums is a real challenge for arrangers.. but if you are smart and creative you can make it work... not to mention having three really strong bass drummers.. thats actually the key..

http://youtu.be/81VPbvcnslE
(Mission Impossible theme)

I had to write for 3 bass drums a couple years ago for the school I help out. Check out the video to hear some of the above ideas in action.

I'm pretty sure up until two years a go, my line had only 3 drums, and its not as bad as some here make it seem, although 4-5 drums is preferred in a HS setting.

If you have a pre-written part for 4, give the middle drum the middle parts.

If writing your own parts, then 1) mess around and try to find things that work. Do that correctly, and some sick beats should result. 2) Also, in some instances, unisons can work like a hit on the lowest bass in terms of impact. Keep that in mind when writing. Unisons in general aren't a sin, and you can use them.

well with what most people are saying here is Unisons are not a bad thing at all when it comes down to having only 3 bass drums. Me I have never had to arrange for a small bass line till this year dew to 2 Senors graduating and I cant find any one to do the 4th and 5th bass drum so info on here was very helpful


Thanks Guys

One of my favorite bass lines to have was a 3 man base crew. There are an infinite number of ways to skin a 3 legged cat, 3 bass's split so easily into most any time signature. Put the song on and some head phones and you will find inspiration in any of the instruments. Complement another part, ect. If you have a pit then you can utilize one of the pit to play 4th man out in a pasage that you realy want a 4 bass run.

Hey I had a line that had 3 snare, 2 tenor 5 bass and 3 for the pit and no cymbal players (made a Clara-Weasel play them, HA!) we started 4 weeks before band camp and by week 3 we were down to 1 snare, (one snare quit and the other had to go play tenor after we found out that the tenors (2) had faild the last year and were now unable to march in the band) 4 bass quit and I was down to 1 bass (freshman) and now 2 in the pit. We put the 1 bass man in the pit , made a rack to hold all 5 bass on their sides and let the kid play most of the 5 man part all by himself, the Judges loved it! One said it was the cleanist 5 man bass part he had ever heard, lol!

This is a different animal but John Bonham could put a triplet fill in any time and make it last 3 days....

It's easy, put the bass line on Paradiddles in 4/4 with only 3 bass's. B1-rh B2-lh B3-rr or for him left then right, see paradidles with 3 in 4/4 or poly-rythms anything split the snare part some then split the tenor part. Just don't think of this an anchor for you.

Think of this..?? You dont have to write a 5 man bass line, you can set back and let 3 have a lot of fun with this.

Remember, you don't have to have the drum change on every eighth note. You could write a run that goes 1 1 2 3 or 1 2 2 3 or 1 2 3 3 and cover two counts.

Remember, the basses do not have to play straight 16ths or 32nds or tuplets as they do their runs. You can have some fun experimentation if you break up the rhythms as it moves around.

It requires you to think about what you are writing, but keeps the part from going stale.

Tan

Tan and sirflamalot thanks guys I have a different out look on the way do do the splits on 3 basses also sirflamalot that was sweet the way you fixed your bass issue and made a rack for your only bass player to play the five base part big props on that

I have two yamaha's at 18" and 22" and a Pearl at 24" 9i think) and they are all white. they were bought before my time and I have been wanting to get new ones. The yamaha's are ok, but the pearl has just about had it and it just doesn't match well.

Thank you for the idea about the dotted rhythms, that is an idea I hadn't thought of yet.

the link didn't work for me, could you repaste it? I would really like to listen! Thanks!