The Benefits of Creating a Bucket Drumline

A few years ago, I started including bucket drumming in my elementary music curriculum. This year, we expanded the bucket drumming into a drumline that has started each of our all-school monthly gatherings. Each month, we’ve had five to 10 students (and sometimes staff) begin our meeting with a cadence filled with call-and-response, dancing, and chanting. 

An Opportunity for Student Engagement and Leadership

The idea of the drumline started as we were looking for ways to engage a rolling start to our gatherings. Before each school gathering starts, we have over 500 students entering through four single-file doors. We needed an activity that was highly engaging, so that we could capture students’ attention as soon as they walked in the doors, and also flexible, so that students at the end of the line weren’t missing anything. We wanted students to have an appropriate outlet for their enthusiasm and excitement rather than trying to enforce sitting in silent anticipation. 

At the first gathering, the drumline was made up of teachers and staff. This was a great opportunity for students to see teachers outside of their regular roles. These teachers also gave me valuable feedback on how to make the cadence easier for students. While there were some nerves for the adult performers, it was also a great opportunity to create music together and beat away stress!

During each of the next gatherings, I took student volunteers from each class (starting with the highest grades) to perform in the drumline. This gave students additional leadership opportunities. Our school has a long, successful tradition of peer-selected leadership through our student council officers. The drumline has become one of several opportunities to balance that important leadership opportunity with opportunities for students to select themselves for leadership. 

This also reinforces the idea that leadership isn’t just about talking in front of everyone—leadership takes many forms. The student drummers were leaders without saying a word. 

MultiGrade Learning and Integrated Affirmations

The drumline cadence is one of several songs, dances, and activities that I teach to all students in kindergarten through fifth grade. As I go through the rotation of classes, it is really confirming when some students already know what to do because they have learned it from their siblings or friends. 

The Cassingham Cadence originally ended with a call-and-response that affirms our district’s mission statement—“Learn with curiosity. Demonstrate kindness. Embrace equity.” As the year went on, lines were added to promote additional learning behaviors that we want to build in our students.

We can do hard things

You never fly unless you use those wings

Sometimes things are gonna get rough

But that’s OK, we know how to be tough

We break it down piece by piece

It’s a piece of cake with some elbow grease

When we get it good, we make it better

Constant growth is our pace-setter

4 Ways to Focus on Energy, Not Technique

Drumline performances are often full of highly technical playing and incredibly precise movements. To keep the performances manageable and meaningful, we emphasized the energy and community aspects of the performance more than the technical prowess. 

I rehearsed the cadence with all of the students at the beginning of the year. All of the students played the drum parts differentiated for their level and learned all the verbal responses to the cadence. A week or so before each class is set to perform, we rehearse the cadence again in music class. The day of each all-school gathering, drummers come to set up and rehearse for about 10 minutes before the gathering starts. 

1. Less is more for rhythms and patterns. Videos can be aspirational—our actual performances have been much simpler so that students can feel very confident. An easy drumline groove is one leader with a bass drum playing a repetitive pattern with the other drummers simply keeping a steady beat. Once classes were consistently achieving this, we added a second rhythm for some of the drummers. Eventually, we may engage all of the parts in the demo video, but the focus is always on confident, successful performances, not complex and intricate parts. 

2. Less is more for players. While it’s exciting to see lots of students performing, smaller groups make the performance easier. The volume of one bass drum and a few bucket drums is more than enough to fill large gathering spaces. With fewer players per gathering and rotating players every month, many students get the opportunity to participate in these leadership roles. 

3. Manage rushing. When the students come together to practice right before the gatherings, there’s always a tendency to rush the tempo, which comes from the excitement and nervousness they feel. A quick solution has been to restart the cadence at a very slow tempo, then allowing the rushing to bring the tempo to the desired performance speed. 

4. Use the stops to reset. As seen in the practice video, the cadence was designed to have lots of stops. In addition to engaging the audience by having them freeze or respond during the stops, this also gives the drummers a chance to reset the tempo, feel, etc., if things are getting off-tempo. The performance doesn’t get ruined because of one off moment, and students learn to simply stop, pull things together, and keep going when mistakes happen. 

To create community and a shared identity, many cultures have experiences that blur the line between performer and audience. Through call-and-response, dancing, and chants, our drumline performances have blurred this line and been a successful way for our students and staff to experience unity and togetherness.