Well me and my wondering self took all day thinking where to put this question here and finally it ended up here, so here goes....

What's the deal with the instrumentation of the men and the women in percussion these days? Why are there so few men who want to play pit, and why are there so few women playing in the battery? Is it just me or am I wrong for asking these questions?

I personally would love to be in battery, but my pit chops are just way better. I might as well play where I can use my skills the best.

I think some girls are intimidated when all the other people in the line are guys as well as the whole drum staff. Some guys can be less than accepting of girls in the line, and won't necessarily include them if the line has certain traditions and things.

I think for guys it's a testosterone thing. The just like to beat on big drums LOL. Plus maybe they don't think it's cool to hang out with mostly girls. I don't know, a guy can answer this better. I've always wondered myself.

any number of reasons. why do more girls play flute and more guys play tenor sax? sometimes, when they're first learning instruments kids just look at whose playing what already and just keep it going if there's a lot of girls here and a lot of guys there. actually at our school we usually have quite a lot of girls compared to other schools (esp. or how small a school we are) until the last 3 years where we've had only between 1 and 3. also some schools that don't have exceptionally large pits do take from other sections with "extras" who can read music. and typically in high schools the largest wind section with people to spare is the flute section which is generally mostly girls. ultimately why are the lines generally drawn where they are who knows. most people who become drummers like to hit things, there just so happens to be more boys than girls who like to do that i guess. it also may have to do with their parents....if they're the type who have that type of influence over their children they're probably more likely to steer their daughter towards a more "feminine" instrument, whereas a more masculine one for boys. oh well who knows, who cares....every year there's more of a mix out there in pit and in battery.

and if anyone wants to know...a line that has "good use of girls" (a.k.a lots in the battery, and not gratuitously all on cymbals either) is perkiomen valley indoor drumline. i don't know if their outdoor is the same but whatever.

Hmm.. good question. I have to say I agree with indorrperc on this point.
Plus I have to add that it might be a testosterone thing, guys wanting to beat on drums as loud and fast as they can, while girls seem to prefer the more delicate and quieter tones of the pit instruments. I dunno, maybe its just the feminine appeal to not stand out a nd be as brash and bold as battery instruments tend to be.
But hey, what can I say? I'm female and marching snare. <img border="0" alt="[20]" title="" src="graemlins/cwm20.gif" />

JHS has a girl playing Bass, that's only happened once before, but it happened this time because she got tired of playing Sax. And she does fine with the traditions. Even though they joke around and say "When we say shirts off, that means everyone" or "Everyone has to wear the Drummer of the Week shirt and you're no exception." (it's a wife beater, see-through btw). But, it's all in fun, they don't mean it. Anyway, in my experience, the girls don't want to be in the Drumline because they were put in pit 1st and hated that. Most of the Freshman and Sophmore and occasionally upperclassmen girls that get put in pit just don't like standing there and would rather be marching. But, they also don't like drums anymore so the march something else.

Guys want to be in Drumline to be around a bunch of other guys and hang out and band on things. Yes, that is my natural instinct as a Drummer and I'm sure every other guy here is the same way. We all started out because we saw a drum at some point in our lives and went "Hehe, I want to bang on it." Or something in our heads like that. Plus, it's just fun for us to be apart from the rest of the band and as our own group. Anyways, I'm rambling. I'm done.

that is an ongoing concept I've wondered about. Our battery has two girls: me on tenors and another girl on 4th bass. In the pit there are only 2 girls...there used to be more, but they graduated or left for their "concert" instruments(aka double reeds/flutes/etc.) I'm thinking that one of the obvious reasons that less girls are in battery is because of the physical factor. I know some girls in band could definitely not march a bass without or falling over...and very few could march tenors...i'm lucky that I'm well-built enough to withstand all those back pains..LOL...Another reason may be that there may be more females who are in pit that also play piano and can therefore understand the setup of a keyboard....of course, guys do that too, but...just speculation.

But I've found that it's not so intimidating to be in battery because I just fit in better with drumming people.And all the other band girls look up to you. :-) I have an advantage, in a way, because both our percussion instructors are female. :-) :-) LOL

Well, this year we have a totally different situation in our percussion section...in the drumline there're 3 girls and 3 guys, and in the pit there are 2 girls and 1 guy, so we actually have the advantage overall. I'm not sure why there are typically more girls in pit than in drumline- when you get into the brake drums, gongs, cymbals, etc, pit can be just as loud as dl, perhaps it's because drumlines seem more "intense". But for overall percussion, I think a lot of us are tired of the guy percussion stereotype- we've all joined percussion cuz it's a lot of fun to do and we don't really care if we are the "wrong gender". I do have to agree with what others have said- I think a lot of it started with the fact that percussion used to be mostly male, and so girls were intimidated from joining. Just look at the screen names of pretty much every girl on this board, myself included- we all have "girl", or "grl", or something to that extent. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that if we don't specify, it's going to be assumed that we're male cuz we're percussionists. I think subconsciously, we're all trying to break that stereotype and prove that, yes, we are good enough.

(I'm not saying that anyone here thinks we're not good enough, just that the percussion world in general sometimes seems to think that we're not good enough)

<small>[ July 11, 2002, 02:59 PM: Message edited by: pit_girl1 ]</small>

I guess the line I'm in really hasn't had a problem with this. My freshman year we had 3 girls in the bass line and 2 in the snare line. My sophomore year it was 2 in the bass line and 3 in snare line.. Then my Junior year, there were 2 in the snare line and 2 in the tenor line.. This year is the first year that we've only had 2 girls in the drumline, 1 on tenors (that's me) and another on snare. And our pit is mostly female, but we do have 3 guys in there. It just all depends on the year and the amount of female percussionists vs. male percussionists we happen to have.

wow yeah, i never really thought about the whole name thing. most "girls" do mention that somehow in their names. i mean, when i first signed on here my name was indoorperc_pit-girl so that people wouldn't think i was a guy. later i shortened it though cuz i didn't want people to think that was all i did, plus it was too long anyways, indoorperc is short and to the point.

anyhow, the year before i was in drumline there were 11 girls and 7 guys. 5 girls in the pit, 6 in the battery.
-3 of them on bass drums
-2 on snares and
-1 on tenors.
all the guys were in the battery though i think...1 on snare, 2 or 3 on bassdrums 1 on tenor and the others were cymbals/aux stuff, i don't know exactly but that's pretty close. oh well. the next year though most of the "battery girls" had graduated, save for 1. and so the next year (my first year we started out with 3 girls in battery 7 guys in battery, 4 girls in pit and 1 guy. but then one girl in the battery quit (she was a first year) and then the other said she hurt her ankle and couldn't march anymore (she was pit the year before) and after that it was the same minus one guy (go kicked out). then it stayed the same pretty much number-wise until last year when the girl from the battery graduated and last year was the first year we didn't have any girls in the battery.

edit: oh yeah, i almost forgot....for people who do think that the pit is a "feminine" section...that's just because the people picking the shows constantly pick ones where the pit part is "feminine". 2 years ago we did stravinsky's "the sacrificial dance of the chosen one" out of the "rite of spring" and let me tell you....not feminine at all. the entire sound of the show was loud and obnoxious, and save for maybe one or 2 minutes the entire time you were playin with full vertical stick heighths (or perhaps i should say "mallet" heighths) an well...yeah...not girly at all.

<small>[ July 11, 2002, 05:23 PM: Message edited by: indoorperc ]</small>

You know, I never thought about the screen name thing before, but that's really true! Hmm

Anyway, the physical thing is a lot of it also. Like if I was going to switch to drumline, I would love to play tenors, but they weigh like 80 lbs. I'm only 5'4 and weigh around 115 so the drums are like 2/3 of my body weight. There's no way I could march and play with them, I can barely stand there with them on. I really would only be able to play one of the smallest 3 basses or snare. So that is pretty limiting right there.

Usually we have at least 1 or 2 girls in the drumline, usually on Bass 1, 2 , or 3. Before we have had one girl play tenors, and one girl play snare. Usually the pit is almost all girls, and like someone said, a lot of them have switched from other instruments. I am one of the only girls who has actually been a percussionist since Day 1 of my music training. It hasn't been easy, I know a lot of girls quit in middle school because they are surrounded by guys and are intimidated. I was lucky that it wasn't really a problem for me after about 6th grade, But I think a lot of girls get scared away right there.

Now what I really wanna know is why guys don't think pit can be masculine too. It's a great mystery of our time.