The Flub Drum Paradox - Finally Explained 

Are you Pro-Flub or Anti-Flub?

11:21 to clarify on this one-year-old video, those drums are what known as Traditional Tenors, and are common part of HBCU/show-style drumlines. They usually are near the high to mid-low range (like the quads/actual tenors), and can be held either like a bass or snare drum. The traditional tenors are used as accents for pieces, and help to add to sound of the drumline. The name can vary between traditional tenors, single tenors, just tenors, toms.

Thanks for the advice I’m the guy that feels like I’m not getting better in my schools flub line I actually just went over some of the snare line show music and i can play it pretty easily so i have high hopes for this fall season

I'm marching flub for a DCA corp. I'm 50 and disabled and they are creating a light drum for me. Such a great group 💓

The best flub set up I've ever seen involved a couple of roto toms, cowbell, and splash cymbal. Flubs actually contributed musically to the sound.

EC: No such thing as advanced gong playing. Chinese opera/Korean folk/gamelan percussionists: are we a joke to you 🤣

You should make the ultimate flub drum with a actual part of a tenor drum

In my indoor group, the flub line plays the same exercises as the snares and quads, so they have good fundamentals when they transfer. If there wasn’t a flub line, we would have to water the snare, bass, and quad music since we have higher level players on those instruments. The flubs add a lot visually to the ensemble, especially in a 35 person indoor group where every individual matters. If we had no flub line, you would have kids who are learning how to play a paradiddle in the same section with kids auditioning for drum corps. If you were to shove those kids on cymbal line, they wouldn’t really have the opportunity to learn about rudiments and such. I think they make a lot of sense for high school.

I’m an 8th grader and this is my first indoor season. They originally put me and this other freshman on flub, but but if we could play the snare book we could go on the rest of the season as snares. I barely was able to play it and still felt like a complete newbie but I got on the snare line and felt as if I dodged a serious bullet. It’s really difficult though and I didn’t feel ready at all coming from one year of band experience to being thrown into the snare line in one of the hardest indoor shows my high school has done. Proves good for marching season tho

I can say from my experience flubs can help people. I played bass my freshman year and wanted to play snare the next, but they didn’t feel I was ready. I then played flubs my sophomore year and felt like I was kinda of useless. This year they finally allowed me to play snare and I was the youngest one on the line. I now realize flubs helped me and my playing technique, and I’m proud to say I will be center snare next year! So if your playing flubs and feel like you are not important, just remember it’s training you for the future.

Video 26 of commenting until EMC makes a front ensemble out of spocks

i'm a year late but the chest tenors mentioned in the video are in my school's drumline. we tend to refer to the multi-tenors as "quints" and the chest tenors simply as "tenors" so there's no confusion. we tune the quints super high to fill out the space above snares, while the tenors fill out the space left behind. this gives our drumline a unique quality which helps us win competitions and make better sounds in general.

I like how the vid that intrigues me enough to come back to the channel is a fricking flub video

My school has a "Flub" section, but the "Flubs" are ergosonic bass drums playing a low bass part to add emphasis on the low part.

I just discovered your channel, and quite enjoy your grounded and humorous slant. In this topic, I did something a little different due to a very different scenario. I taught an alumni drum corps in Canada that had drummers of varying skill levels. When I took over the line, most couldn't really play the music and, consequently, were just making up their own parts. As such, I can say with confidence that this was the dirtiest drumline on the planet. To further complicate things, you can't just cut or reassign members of an alumni group whose focus is to have fun and just pretend to be able to play. I needed a solution so, instead of going the flub drums route, I took a page from the horn line (and *any* horn and string section of a band or orchestra). I created 3 parts for each instrument - such as 1st, 2nd, and 3rd snare... similar to what you would have with a trumpet section. The only difference in parts was the skill level - in that I would remove notes from 1st snare to create 2nd snare, and I would remove additional notes to create 3rd snare. I then matched people to the parts that reflected their skill level. The result was a much cleaner sound with the added benefit of improved accents and dynamics, due to the chosen notes for 2nd and 3rd snare. I did the same for tenors. Another added benefit... I got paid more per bar of music - just like the horn guy's do :) This likely wouldn't work competitively in Junior competition, but is something to consider for anyone writing in the alumni world.

I flub you too 😳 Also, the Flub is tuned to F natural

Garfield Cadets 1984 used flub quads for one short section: three of us broke off from the snare line, donned the flubs, and played a few licks alternating antiphonally with the regular tenors. Thom Hannum did call them flubs and would say things like "flub-a-dub dub, three men in a tub" in his inimitable, evil way.

Jacksonville State University uses them and used them when I was on the quadline in 2016. We had them with the 12", the 14", and the 8" spock (basically the left side of the quads but centered). They were tuned so that the 8" spock blended with the quads, and so that the 12 and 14 were a middle voicing between the quads and our bassline. They also had a splash cymbal on one drum and a gock block (the red jam block) on the other drum. One of our exercises in particular was 9/8 Bucks, with the first half of the exercise being unison and the second half dividing out the part into different patterns on each of the drums. The 2's pattern that was written by one of our quad guys has gotta be the most groovin' part that I can remember from our exercise packet at the time. They had a similar part but the accents were moved around a bit to basically be a sort of mirror to our split on the quadline. Edit: After getting to the part in the video that discusses an extra quadline, we uh... we actually did that as well, but the quad solo had an A-Part and a B-Part. The flubs got the other sets of drums, as they had just gotten new drums that year for the whole line. The old silver Pearl Championship drums got wraps and went to the flub line for the drum solo before they switched out to the flubs to finish out the show. It was after I stopped marching but I believe it was 2018 or 2019 that they did that. They also redid a drum break that we had with an extra set of quads and a set of stands for each quad member. The extra set was used for the quadline to bounce around and play splits from a different set of home zones to get wonky splits, with parts played behind the back and across all the sets as the solo progressed. It was pretty much a mini I&E show.

That Mary Had A Little Lamb sequence at 9:33 was 🔥. PS I almost 💩 myself laughing at the unexpected roll 😂

i was a flub drummer freshman year but played quads for half of the show and was center snare by my sophmore year. its all about dedication honestly if i hadn't made myself love practicing i would not have made it past my first fall season and i definitely wouldn't be where i am now. it really doesn't matter if you have a flub section or not because only people who dedicate themselves to learning to be better will succeed regardless of their starting point. had i started on cymbals, bass, or rack i would probably be in a similar position.

Jeff Prosperie imitation: 4:36 😎 I love it! 😂🤣🤣🤣

The only reason I can actually support flub drums is to include more people in the drumline. At my high school we had pretty much maxed out the size of our drumline with 4-5 tenors, 5 basses, 6-8 snares, 5-6 cymbals, and pretty much every well maintained mallet instrument our school owned in the front ensemble, but we still had enough people to have 6 flubs. The only other option was to not include them in the drumline which was never considered as a legitimate option. Therefore we had to either put less experienced players on instruments where they would hold the line back, or put them on flubs. But even then, in this extreme case where there was pretty much no other option, most of the people who were on flubs hated it. They knew that since they were on flubs, that meant they were not good enough to be on snare, tenors, or bass. Even if the people who were on those instruments were not necessarily better than those on flubs, they were much more important to the band than the flubs because they could actually be heard and they actually contributed to the show. That brings up the other issue of it being really boring. All of the flub parts were just easy versions of the snare parts with all of the fun stuff cut out. Even if they messed up nobody would hear them so they very rarely got any comments which made practice super boring. Overall it is just really discouraging to be told that every single person in the band has an important role and contributes to the show, but then nobody can hear anything you do and nothing you do matters. but to reiterate my main point, the only reason I can support flubs is as an overflow system, but even then I feel like there has to be a better solution.

There is *absolutely* such a thing as advanced gong playing.

I love the fact you brought up Flubs with Star. That is the first time I had heard of flubs (at least one of the flub players were in our line at EKU that fall (my freshman year), but possible both-I’m old 🤣) until I saw your first video that mentioned flubs. Then I went to one of our local HS football games in Northern Virginia and they had a line of about 4 or 5 players. Lol Every time you have mentioned flubs I see Star’s show in my head. Lol 4 of our members were in Star at the time. The flub players were in the front ensemble for most of the show. They were used to just add effect and sound, if I remember correctly. Lol

Took off the bottom head to… increase resonance? Huh?

“There’s no such thing as advanced gong playing.” Meanwhile on rack: *plays gong 1/128th note late.* Box: “yeah that gong was really late, you need to work on that”

“the spock roll was… CLEANNNNN” had me rolling 😂

Video 3 of asking Eric to review viewer's high school/college marching bands

sounded like an F#. Also, can't you attach like a cowbell, jamblocks, a tambourine, a ribbon crasher, and even tiny cymbals on a flub drum? That's why I lean more to pro-flub, because of the new additions you can get from the drumline.

i think there is some benefit in having more members visually but not audibly. it's extremely difficult to play at lower dynamics with a 10 person snare line but with half of them on flub, there can still be that level of dynamic contrast while still being able to fill out the floor with instruments.

i was at a band festival and i saw a flub drum. and at the battle of the flowers (today) i saw another legendary flub drum

We did the whole bass drum turned over thing at my high school my freshman year in 09. Conveniently they were called… “impact drums” and the battery would march to the front of the field where they were on stands and did impacts with the start of our book at the start of one of the movements. It was kinda cool! Also good morning and VERY NIIICE 👍

*Video 28* of Loopy Grandma asking Lil' Peanut dressed as a surfer dude to play -Wipe Out by the Ventures- *Any surfer song* !!! ... Great for another video using the kit!!! And I know you are very creative, so I expect something EPIC! (Wipe Out would cause video to be copywrite claimed!) ...

Sir, you’ve done it once again.

As an arranger back in the mid 90's when kevlar drumheads came out, I thought it might be nice for a larger battery to march a few snares that still had mylar heads to fill in a 4 part voicing with the mylar snares taking the alto voice. Snares with kevlar (soprano), Snares with mylar (alto), tenors, basses. then much later when i started seeing flubs, i was initially into it, until I realized you couldn't hear it. What a waste.

Can’t get enough flub drum content!

LMAO THE SPOCK ROLL WAS CLEANNNNN

The note your flub drum is tuned to: yes

Like anything else, you'll get out what you put into it. If you do flubs and have a habit of working hard, you'll go far. If you do flubs and don't push yourself, you won't. Flubs, books, educators etc are only there to put you on the path to success but you have to take that path yourself. @ 10:38 - For the record, I've taught a few amazing snare drummers who went out of their way to learn stuff like 09 Phantom beats when the high school parts I gave them were A class. There's really only so much an instructor can do in a few 4 hour rehearsals a week and can only differentiate a lesson in so many ways. Whether you're on flubs, snare, or marimba, an appetite to learn and being a problem solver will get you farther than an instructor giving you every single step of the way. In addition, I teach many kids who think a part is "easy" when very often it isn't as rhythmically accurate as they think it is and lacking in sound quality and height control. The trick is not thinking in terms of easy or hard, but rather in quality or not.

About Star 93, they had a few of the tenors on flubs for the last movement to emphasize certain beats. It’s meant to be a subtle addition.

I’m a flub drum for my indoor high school season and my director said to me I am doing really well since it’s my first year ever playing drums. I tried out for bass and he told me he wanted me on flub to help my feet get in time and I’m set for next year. In the show we play all of the big impact moments.

If I wasn’t already subbed, the joke about making quads out of flubs would have convinced me.

8:47 My schools indoor program had a flub/cymbal feature in our show and made the parts blend with rim knocks, rim clicks, and buzzes and simple split parts. Our flubs interfere with the tenors sound at some points which can make matching my playing with the other tenor more difficult.

Your flub drum was a 20-cent sharp F Natural. Love the vids!

1980 Santa Clara Vanguard had two tenor sections. The lower trios could be considered “Semi-Flub.”

If i was teaching a line that had flubs I'd go about that in my own way. Keep in mind that this is my preference and you absolutely don't have to agree with it. But I'd use a setup of a 14" tenor as the main drum, a 6" spock drum at the sort of 2 o'clock side and an 8" splash cymbal at the 10 o'clock side. I'd use normal heads with their own tuning and essentially no muffling. I'd write their parts to be unique to the sub section rather than just impact notes. However their parts would be a little bit easier than the basses/upper battery. I'd incorporate some arounds (only 2 drums but I'd actually use the spock for something other than doubling the snare shots), passages in traditional grip, and some split parts on some of the longer runs. That way they're contributing to the ensemble sound, they have their own unique parts, and working on the demands of the other subsections

The beard is looking good man 👍🏻

bro 9:40 had me on the floor so unexpected.

Ayyy made it in the vid, let’s go 👏 👏

The Spock roll was… CLEEAAANNN!!!!!!

I personally am a flubie (someone who plays a flub) an I love it. My high school band rook trios and put a muffle head in place of the middle head. Also being honest i would almost prefer them as actual trios because the drums are so far apart but I do love having the practice pad.

THAT FLUB ROLL WAS CLLLEEEAAANNNN!!!!! Said no one ever

It’s my first year in high school and had no percussion/band experience whatsoever. Interested in gigline and i magically got on tenor. 4 months pass by and I got my spot on tenor for indoor. I’ve never even touched a flub before 😂

I marched for an A Class Group in 2018, and we actually did have flubs They were snares without the guts, and considering I was in front Ensemble (and I was new to the activity), I never knew why they used match grip, and why I couldn't hear them at all. We actually made finals and placed 14th because of penalties Actually here's a fun game: What group did I march for? (Hint: a director recently got arrested) *Side Note: Your Flub is tuned to an F4

10:26 Sadly, that's comes down to poor staff decisions. As educators, it is our job to direct the growth of ALL students to maximize their potential, especially as young students are the future of the drumline. I always tell people when they're entering a new program, "it starts with the beginners, not the vets" (aka: fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals!) To the student who left that comment: EMC made a lot of great points. Something I had to learn as I got better is that the best way to grow is to take the responsibility of bettering myself and put it onto myself and not the staff. Like I said, the staff is here to help push/guide you in the right direction and make sure you don't fall off the path, but at the end of the day it's your legs that have to walk. So keep your head down and put in the work. And trust me when I say that the staff will notice.

every single other style of the marching arts has some form of single tenor, we just don’t do it well at all in our own style so we act like they aren’t beneficial in any way and can only be relegated to education. Which by the way, I style hold is a useful placement in its own right for them. As a front ensemble person I kinda firmly wanna say, putting battery cuts in battery is actively detrimental to front ensembles trying to hike up their own proficiency, having rack seen as a instrument you can want to play would be super helpful and not just the battery cuts house. Also we aren’t gonna give them the skills they need to transition straight out really, still gonna have to get with the battery and work marching, drumline technique, and working in carrying a drum, thats like the majority of the gig, hands are a far distant priority, they can be fixed, but a weak back will put you out of a season. Also you don’t need massive flubs to tune low for impact, think more like a gospel tunes floor Tom, you can get a heavy metal sound out of a 13 inch

Flub

From an educator standpoint, matched grip for flubs since concert snare is matched grip, too.

my school had flubs for 1 indoor season. The only reason they did it was to try to get as many people as possible into the program that the staff could manage. We had 3 snares, 2 tenors, 6 cymbals, 5 basses and 2 flubs. For an A class group, that's a lot of people on the floor. Pit was pretty meaty as well, we had to double up 3 marimbas and there were like 3 people on rack. That was probably the largest our drumline has been ever.

The flub in my drumline are old concert snare drums with a spot for a Yamaha harness. They are louder than most flubs and are tuned to the same pitch as a typical 14 inch drum on a set of marching tenors (I don’t know what specific note that is).

I think a good flub line is having maybe like a mini marching drum kit, hi hat, a main larger tom, and maybe a spock drum that's cranked for when you wanna feature them. hell even a cow bell

A high school we have played against recently had a marching Tom among their bassline

here in new orleans lots of the public school lines usually have 3 bass drum 5s and a bunch of flubs instead of bass 1s then they have more tradtional sounding snares and lots of cymbals no quads

I tried out for front ensemble as a marimba which looking back at it was a terrible idea considering I was a beginning percussionist ended up in the flub only drumline our show was bad and half the people later admitted to never even wanting to be in drumline corresponding to them not even practicing but it was why I fell in love with drums in the first place

I played flubs my sophomore yr of high-school, but they gave me the snare part and wrote me in the drill as a quad, so yes I played the snare feature on a flub not even with the group, we had an extra snare too it was so dumb.

Was in a show style drum line for 3 years and basically every school I saw had the base line all tuned to the same low note and play the same parts, and the chest tenors are tuned the same as each other and also play the same parts. In my opinion the chest tenors were way more common than the tenors seen in the drum line movie but could just be bias as I was drumming show style in Louisiana as drum line was in Georgia

Here's a though, someone besides me must have thought, why don't we call them tenor drums (as in the old days) or middle drums and give them their own distinct parts. Tom Float always loved having a 4th section to write for.

We'll you can take a look at 1985 and 1986 Suncoast sound. Used very effectively for two of there musical selections. However I think the Flub can be used as an extra accent. Or it can be used also used as visual element as well. However giving kids an opportunity to build there hands as well as there feet. Might help the ensemble in there near future

Video 50 until he makes marching concert percussion (bass drum, concert snare, and more)

Re the single tenors in HBCU bands...that was the usual tenor drum in marching bands before muilti-tenors (tris, at first) came out....we got our first set of triples in my sr year, 1981....the the HBCU bands are just very old school about it.

I would have to disagree with the breakdown of skills of A, Open & World being basic, intermediate, and advanced. IMHO I would consider an A line one of "intermediate skills" (especially at the WGI level). Open would then fall into the Advanced skill-set, and World would fall into the "boundary-pushing" category.

i've been thinking about flubs and single tenors a lot recently after watching your videos. i strongly relate the drum to british (military) bagpipe band's tenor drums, which arent really heard at all. they dont play 99% of the time, and just do these really badass and fancy stick flourishes for visual enjoyment only. some say bagpipe tenor drums are there to accentuate the (usually singular) bass drum, but i honestly can't hear it. funny enough, when the british Royal Marines band plays with big groups (they are a brass+woodwind military band), they do have tenors, whereas the Army and Royal Air Force bands never have them.

4:40 that moment when the spok roll is clean

11:44 they are just tenor drums. Different HBCU band have different styles of holding their drums. From a musical standpoint. The single tenor is the predecessor and the simpler version of the multi tenor. Southern university for example has never marched a multi tenor line because of their traditional style. However, much like the multi tenor, the single tenor is shown off and used in a multitude of ways including tenor drum solos.

Our system is different, our flub players are playing an identical part to the snares. We just literally do not have enough snares or tenors for them to play so, they are basically forced to be flubs. Just simply put the freshmen on flubs.

Video 25 of commenting until Eric reacts to my former high school's drumcorps and Steven to react to those flub-centric corps in my area. Expanding my idea further: React to drum corps all around the world. Flubs are called double drums here in where I live. They're usually the corps that play for festivals are the ones that use these and they are bigger than the snare and the bass line combined.

Man it hurt for you to call my class "a" drumline "Basic" Our instructor is like among the most famous in Colorado

Very nice 👍

From my point of view, that of an Amateur Concert Band director in Spain, here the Bands are not in high schools or universities, they are usually non-profit associations. We usually have a second formation with musicians who are not yet at the level to participate in the main band, they can eventually participate when there are parts that may be at their level until they have the level to fully integrate. Is there something like that in the US?

yo dude you should cover "My Own Drum" from Vivo! It's just dying for a drumline/marching band cover

On the “I payed a guy $420…” video, is the tune on the thumbnail Mary had a little lamb?

I am interested in the fan club participation when you reach 200k subscribers.

Ngl when I try to write for Flubs I try to make it a mix of the Snare and Tenor parts but add a bit of originality to make it fit with the rest of the line and kind of make it it’s own part different from the others so it doesn’t clash with Snare, Tenor, Bass, and Cymbals

The chest tenor’s have heads on both sides if I’m not mistaken leg tenors will usually have only a top head this is from a marching hbcu baritone player so I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure I’m not

Yes

Good Morning! You may want to check out the youtube video "Bear Sound Testing Giant Gong for The Big Bang Experience." The dude plays the gong in ways I haven't seen used before, and gets some awesome sounds out of it! Might even make a good reaction video! During my time competing in WGI and BOA, there were groups using the ErgoSonic Marching Bass Drums. Similar to a flub drum concept in my opinion, but obviously favors a movement to marching bass afterwards. It looks like an improved version of what RCC did in your video! I can't remember which groups specifically used it, but it was WGI Indianapolis regional in the early 2010s. For the comment about the music being too easy while being on the line, PLEASE let your instructor know you are interested in learning snare, bass, quads, etc. They may have some suggestions on specifics to you that will help you achieve your music goals. With the group I teach, we've had numerous students say "I know I'm on this instrument now, how do I get to play that one?" So we'll give them resources, additional lessons, referrals, and more because at the end of the day we want to see these kids reach their goals. On the flip side, it's also up to the students to take the suggestions, resources, and feedback provided and put in the effort to improve. I've also had students that wanted to play X instrument and were put on Y instrument because they had not reached a level the staff felt comfortable putting them on the Y instrument. We are here to help you achieve, but at the end of the day, it's the students who are putting in the work to get good.

Didn't you answer your on paradox, by simply putting a space between tenors and bass you made room for a "tuned to be loud" drum, which could expand on the ensemble. Professional flub line would sound a lot like a bass 1 part.

thank you (:

I vote for Eric to shave his beard on video 69 of him growing out his beard.

I don't play march line but I do play samba which is a fast and repetitive style, I have a 8 year old little girl that joined and didn't know anything but we still sent her direct to snare cause then she'll learn a little bit of everything

I’m personally anti flub because nobody cared about us or gave us ANY comments this year on any judge tapes. (I played flub this year) I actually went from bottom bass to flub. Oh and the only thing interesting about our flubs was the hi hat we had, we did have a tiny little solo at the beginning with those

The spock roll was 'clean'

When I was a Percussion Instructor at a relatively small High School marching program (Less than 50 instrumentally), there was a student who was sick and tired of being on Front Ensemble. Every single year they would try out for Battery, and never get in. This was their Junior year going into Senior Year and they did not want to be stuck on Front Ensemble again. So, they asked to try out for Tenors. I gave them a packet of what was expected of a Tenor player at their school, and had them audition. I worked with them several times, they practiced hard at home, but when it came time to playing with a metronome at even 120 for eighth notes... it just did not work out. Triplets never stayed in time either, and an eighth note diddle was impossible. There were other students who auditioned for the same part, and for the sake of 4 months of telling them to stay in time and making them feel embarrassed every step of the way, I made the decision of not having any Tenors and made the school's very first Flub Drum (13" Tenor and Spock). How I utilized the part was as an impact drum. Their part was a combination of all sections, pulling from Basses when there were large impacts, unison hits, simplified rhythms from the Snares. Did this improve their playing? Yes, absolutely. While they may have never gotten to be on Snare, Tenor, or Bass, I finally got them out of Front Ensemble, on a drum, and out to the field where they finally felt happy to be on a line.

Day 4 asking for a video of you teaching us how to play traditional correctly/ rolling on traditional

Our school has 4 snares 5 basses 2 tenors 7 flubs (we call them Toms) and 8 cymbals. When we play pregame the flubs and cymbals play, they also play during parades and in the stands but at contests/halftime cymbals and flubs all play in the pit and I want to know your opinion on this.

Your flub drum looks like a HBCU leg tenor (usually played with mallet heads)

I'm playing flub this year and we literally play the same exact thing as the snares we might as well just play snare

The only reason I can think of to have flub drums is if you have large group and don't have any more keyboards available. other than that I've seen very few lines actually use flub drums and incorporate them into the ensemble sound. I would prefer to teach them basic keyboard parts and have them in the front ensemble if I had that equipment available.

Ayoo Middle Tennessee State University represent 2:06

at my hs our flubs are the 1st and 2nd drum from a set of tenors with a spock inbetween on the front that has a mesh head. the drums are muted at all