Me and my Snareline plan on creating the Cadence for our next season. Any tips?

A snares only cadence or a cadence for you whole line, written by the snareline?

It will be for the whole Drumline, written by us snares. We'd like a military style cadence, and everything will be based off of the snare part.

A good start would be to get your ears around as many military cadences as you can find. The Hellcats from Westpoint are probably the best place to start. The Army and Navy Academies drumlines tend to play some hybrids of what we do and military cadences.

The Downfall of Paris - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbgrXsaI-U&feature=related
The Three Camps - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIPVnpcBLxk
Connecticut Halftime - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zbMG7eMa3Q

These are the three staple military cadences, they'll be great inspiration.

Pay attention to phrasing. It's a very common beginner mistake to simply write one bar of notes after another instead of writing strings of measures that say something as a whole. It should be almost like writing lyrics -- string whole "sentences" or phrases of measures together to say something.

To take it a step further, if you're so inclined... You can do a little study on musical form. In a nutshell, form is how phrases are arranged within a piece of music to make the whole.

As for military style cadences, Paul mentioned some classics. Here's one more, but played in a few different styles:

Crazy Army by Ed Lemley, circa 1930's
as played by the Hellcats from West Point
as played by Santa Clara Vanguard in the opening phrase of Electric Wheelchair
as played on drum set by Steve Gadd

Here is the formula I use;

Gather together your entire line, set up 1 snare, 1 tenor, 1 bass (I prefer 2).
Now that you are all together to write the cadence, let each section leader play their respective drum. Now this is a democratic process. Find out the time limit with the Band Director and any prefrences he or she might have.

Now find a common snare lick your line plays, something with a good rudimental groove. Make up 4 measures at a time incorporating the last 4 measures with the next 4 measures.


Ok, now you have the first 4 measures for the snare, now let the tenors make up their own part that will work with the snare part. Continue down the line and complete the score. You can do 8 measures if you desire, but I would not write too much at a time.

Let the idea flow be creative. Find things that represent the drumline, make a statement with your cadence. Don't forget to write in small breaks for each drum. You also can put in a cheer that your school always uses. Make up a cool drum part with it so the crowd can relate to what you are playing.
Remember this is also the school's cadence and your bands. Whether you write it strong or funky or just some groove, make it yours.
This formula has never failed to produce a cadence. It's going to take some time, but pass the word to everyone what's going on and to write down their favorite drum licks. BE CAREFUL that you don't rip off someone elses cadence.

I tried to put this as simple as possible without a lot of music theory. This can be as simple to write as you make this. If the line will not co-operate, send everyone out but the section leaders.

Have fun!!

Yes, I have an old drum corps cadence you might like it has that type of sound you refer to. If you still need it let us know and we can write it out for you at least the snare part and then you can fill in the rest of the parts. This is old school when lines used single tenors so you can rearrange the tenor and bass parts.

Well, we've also been considering a Groove Type Cadence. Any tips for that? And @SCV75, could I get an emailed copy of that snare part?
Thanks

I think you will like that one, you now can fill in the tenor, bass and cymbal parts. This is the groove cadence so see how it works, measures left open for tenor or bass solos. Let me know.

Alright, thanks. I'll get back to you.

Hey, this is quite a bit late, but for future reference:


Here's how I, personally, go about cadence writing. My line likes ghetto R&B-type cadences. So, with that, I like to base the cadence off of a bass drum groove, and go from there.

Cadences don't always have to be structured, but depending on how talented your line is, you might just have to go with simple phrasing and rhythms (besides, this will make it easier for the rest of the band to march to, since that's the main purpose of Cadences usually).

So, a relatively simple structure would be four-measure phrases with fill measures on every 4th measure. Just like a drum-set groove. And some fill measures can be solos for snares, tenors, or basses.

I won't go into more detail about that with what I do, because what I do might not necessarily be what you're looking for since you originally were saying you wanted military based.

And with that aspect, everybody else that has responded, covered the military idea with expertise. So, I just wanted to give my hay-penny advice, after only a few years of writing cadences for my drumline. And it does help to know what your line likes, so that it's fun for everybody to play. I've learned that, for sure.

Happy writing! (Beware: it gets addicting.)