Adding Contrast to Your Accent Patterns With drum corps and winter-percussion audition season upon us, I wanted to bring light to a concept that comes up fairly often. In my 20 years of teaching high school and college marching ensembles, I find many players’ hands haven’t developed to fully execute a true downstroke. A downstroke is a note played that does not fully rebound, but instead stays an inch or two above the surface after striking. To get from an accented note to a tap (non-accented note), a downstroke must be used to eliminate the stick from rebounding, so you can reattack at the proper tap height. If an upstroke (an uninterrupted rebounded stroke) or anything in between is used, the next note will be higher, and it won’t have the contrast needed to play the tap at the correct volume and height. Here are some exercises to practice going […]