One of the most impactful experiences of my entire life started when I was just eight years old in the third grade. I signed up for an “after school enrichment” program that taught me how to play basic multi-percussion on a tiny metal xylophone and a plastic drum pad. I had grown up watching my sisters go through their high school band program, and ever since I can remember, I looked at the cool kids on the drumline and thought, “that’s what I’m going to play when I get older.” Although I started learning percussion in the third grade, I didn’t really get a chance to start learning until I was old enough for middle school, but I attribute my early introduction to the activity as a huge factor in my success later on. 

Fast forward to my freshman year of high school on one unsuspecting day, when my band director gave me free tickets to a DCI show that same night. I had no idea what DCI even was, much less was very interested in attending the show, even if it was free. My friend convinced me to go anyway and as we found our spots in the stands of an old football stadium complex, I was not at all expecting what I was about to witness.

What I saw was my first Drum Corps International show, which would come to be a widely-shared memory within the DCI community for those who have been through the activity. If you’re unfamiliar with what Drum Corps is, let me give you a quick run-down.

Drum Corps International is a non-profit umbrella organization that hosts ~25 participating drum corps groups based all around the country. Each individual drum corps is comprised of 154 members who are each classified as members of one of three sections: the color guard, the horn line, or the percussion section. In short, a drum corps is basically a professional marching band, and DCI as a whole is known as “marching music’s major league.” Once you’ve made it into a group, all members will “move in” to a central location for a span of 86 days in the summer, and after learning an entire marching show, each corps begins touring around the country, playing shows and competing against other corps along the way. All drum corps end up in the same place at the end of the summer to compete in the DCI World Championship Finals Competition at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. 

When I was 17 years old, I was offered a spot to join the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum & Bugle Corps based in Santa Clara, California. It was my dream corps from the very beginning, and my experience with DCI to this day has been unlike anything else I’ve ever known. 

If you couldn’t tell from the way I described it earlier, drum corps is a crazy activity. For 86 days in the blazing summer heat, I rehearsed the same thing over and over and over (usually outdoors) for 12 hours a day, every day. I spent 85 nights sleeping on my air mattress in random high school gyms across America with 153 strangers. I learned how to sleep in the most uncomfortable spaces for extended amounts of time, starting with upright charter bus seats. But most importantly, I was able to learn about the true power of dedication, practice, and commitment to one thing at a time.

In this video, Annie Bolser and Don Greene discuss the importance of paying attention to the way we practice, and this is exactly what I experienced first-hand through drum corps. According to Bolser and Greene, the act of practice or repetition increases the presence of myelin in our brain, which then helps the brain communicate with the rest of our body. Myelin is similar to the insulation on electrical cables, so think of it as a protective layer along our neural pathways that helps brain signals move faster and more efficiently throughout our bodies. When repetition of a physical motion increases, the myelin sheath on our axon chains is strengthened, giving us that feeling of “muscle memory” as we begin to improve. Bolser and Greene recommend the following:

start out slowly or in slow-motion [because] coordination is built with repetitions, whether correct or incorrect.

Rehearsals and practice in drum corps over the summer are persistent. We learn new repertoire at the beginning of each season from the ground up, always starting slow in the beginning and gradually speeding up the tempo with each repetition, just like Bolser and Greene described. One of the absolute coolest things to witness over the summer is the noticeable improvement and growth of the entire drum corps over the summer. More specifically, within my percussion section, it’s incredible to see how a piece of music so foreign and unfamiliar at first can easily become memorized second nature within just a couple of weeks.

This is one of the biggest things I’ve been able to learn from drum corps-- because although we do practice over 80 hours a week and improvement is inevitable, I’ve been able to learn just truly how much you can accomplish with relentless, dedicated, and mindful practice. Even beyond that, one of the best things about drum corps is that it’s never just about one person, but it’s about the entire group as a whole. Not only were we trying to improve for ourselves, but for the betterment of the entire group; just like Bolser and Greene suggested, we were mentally envisioning and practicing all of the things we needed to do together that would propel us to new heights. Just imagine, if dedicated personal practice is enough to increase myelin in one person and improve their skills, what could it do to an entire group of individuals who were all working towards one unified goal? Maybe it would be enough to win a DCI world championship?

Spoiler alert: it was enough, and we won. 

SCV 2018 DCI FINALS

Sarah Teng Vibraphone Cam 2018

About the Writer

Sarah is a fourth year BHP/MIS major at The University of Texas at Austin who is also pursuing a BDP certificate in Digital Arts & Media. She’s a local Austin native who loves exploring the Austin food scene (@eatwithteng on Instagram) and hanging out in cool coffee shops to do homework when she gets the chance. She was a member of the Santa Clara Vanguard for four years, receiving awards for Best Percussion three years in a row and finishing out her last year (2018) with a DCI World Championship title. Fun fact about Sarah: she has a cat with 25 toes! You can follow him on Instagram @25toedteddy