My old hs did that one year. It did not hurt them in comeptitions. One reason is that judges do their job based on what they see and hear, and not on what is typically there in a drumline. Another, as mentioned, is creative writing by the arranger.


Also, I saw a line one year that marched no snares. They marched 4 tenors, 5 basses, and 4 cymbals (I think) That was several years ago.

a few years ago my hs line marched 4 snare 5 basses and a huge pit.. no tenors. They were still VERY good.

as a lot of people said... they werent penalized.

this year we're marching 4 snare 3 tenors and 5 basses. The snareline has played together for at least 3 years.

last year at states i saw a line with no snares, they had a Dynasty wedge in their tenors. it was really very interesting to watch.

We pulled it off last year and came home with a few Best Drumline trophies. You don't need them but it definately sounds like something's missing when they're gone. Kinda made me sad... =(

WOW, my instructor decided that he'd rather have a full ensemble then a full bass line, hes writing the part for 4 basses and I'm the lone quad player =]. It's nice to be my own section leader lol.

That's cool. Being the only one, you could just improvise all your solos and the judges wouldn't know the difference

1. Um...he's the only player- the whole show is a feature.

2. Judges won't know, but the staff will- and I would promptly hand out a butt whuppin' to any of my kids pulling that crap.

2a. I would never have a lone quad player, so I wouldn't worry about #2.

I would NEVER do that, though it would be amusing . Also, why would you never have a lone tenor snare?

Should'nt the judges have a score?

Other than traditional marches at parade competitions, I don't know of any marching circuit where judges are provided with scores.

It's all a matter of preference.

At the corps level I wouldn't worry about it. However, with most HS circuits, lone quad players tend to get shafted in two unintentional ways:

1. They often are not so developed that they can produce sound quality sufficient enough to blend or cut (as needed) through both the battery or the entire ensemble by themselves.

2. Part of our judging our caption is the consideration of how well a section plays together. If you have one person playing an instrument (pits being the obvious exception), judges often remove that criteria and over evaluate the player in other areas. As a result, some teams have arrangers who will write quad charts as a split snare book, which really only takes away from your ensemble.

To be fair, there are some great arguments as to why a single quad player is perfectly ok. Multi-thomm is a big supporter of having that voice in his ensemble, even if it means one guy and if you've seen how he uses that player in his ensemble, you can't deny the effectiveness.

Unless I have an individual who is a monster player, I would rather take the time to have them learn snare or bass technique and improve the quality of the more populated sections.