The YouTube snare drumming community is one of the strangest and most counterintuitive niches I’ve gotten myself into. I have never played the drums and haven’t seriously played any instruments at all after quitting piano when I was 11. Although I do like music and music theory, I haven’t thought about rhythms for a long time. The only other thing I can really trace this interest to, aside from the YouTube algorithm, is beatboxing (which I will write another post about shortly!). I guess I’ve also always liked music with creative and fast-paced rhythms.

Boy am I glad that I found this niche, though, because it’s the only way I would have found gems like Kiichi Kobayashi’s “Ridiculous” and some stick tricks by EMC Productions.

That’s all I really have to say. I don’t understand exactly what’s going on in those videos, so I think it would be best to let them speak for themselves. My main recommendations would just be to look into drumline performances at the national level such as this one. I can’t quite remember which video my friend who actually did drumline showed me, but this is hopefully close enough.

Further reading:

  • Kiichi Kobayashi for some chill & interesting snare patterns (not to undersell how ridiculously talented this guy is)
  • EMC Productions seems like a channel with good tutorials
  • From what I can recall, the drum corps in this list are pretty much internationally recognized, so that’s another good place to start