Corps of drums
When off duty, the Corps of Drums would carry out various roles within the battalion, such as administering military justice and ensuring soldiers' billets were secured.
The Corps would deploy with the rest of the battalion and would often form specialist platoons such as assault pioneers, supporting fire, or force protection.
Due to the specialist duties and ceremonial aspects of a drummer's life, a Corps of Drums may be the unofficial custodian of regimental customs and traditions.
In the British Army, this model has been continuously upgraded, with the inclusion of snares, more modern metal rod-tension, nylon hoops, and plastic heads.
The side drum was increasingly decorated throughout the 19th century, until it bore the fully embellished regimental colours of the battalion, including its battle honours.
When the bugle replaced the drum mid-way through the 19th century as the most common means of battlefield communication, it was sounded on parade to give certain orders, to offer salutes, or to play the "Last Post" (or "Taps") at funerals.
[citation needed] In addition, the HAC's veteran unit, the Company of Pikemen and Musketeers, maintains an early form of the Corps of Drums known as the 'Musik'.
Whilst similar to the Army Corps of Drums, these are members of the Royal Marines Band Service (RMBS), and they retain their own rank structure.
Members of the RMBS are primarily musicians; however, they also carry out secondary roles such as medics, drivers, and force protection when required to, like their Army counterparts.
After their formation, the HMMF's drummers and fifers of the three marine divisions played alongside their fellow soldiers in various landings worldwide on behalf of the Royal Navy.
At Admiral John Jervis's insistence, by King George III's order of 1802, the HMMF was transformed into the HMMF-Royal Marines (HMMF-RM).
Annual, triannual, and eventually biannual beating retreats for both the Royal Marine bands and the RM Corps of Drums buglers began at Horse Guards Parade, Portsmouth, and other venues.
Parade work forms a large part of the curriculum and considerable time is spent developing personal drills and bearing.
Today's RM Corps of Drums consists of approximately 60 buglers who carry out duties ranging from repatriation services (Last Post and Reveille), mess beatings (drum displays), beating retreats (marching displays), and concerts on behalf of the Royal Marines and the entire Royal Navy.
[10] After this date, the regiment carried a small green silk banner in addition to their usual stand of colors to commemorate the one they captured.
This is unique within infantry regiments of the British Army, since colors are normally only entrusted to commissioned officers, except when they are in the custody of sergeants to convey them to an ensign.
The motto of the Northumberland Fusiliers, Quo fata vocant (Go where divine providence leads), is displayed on the upper scroll, and 'Northumberland' on the lower.
A laurel wreath with red berries surrounds the central elements, and Tudor roses surmounted by crowns are featured in the four corners.
A fife and drum corps in the United States is a type of military band that originated in European armies in the 16th century.
In addition, the drum major wears an 18th-century infantry cap and carries a spontoon, the honor badge and weapon of 18th-century senior non-commissioned officers.
This corps wears regulation uniforms from the 1820s, and as of 2016 plays using bugles, fifes, and traditional rope tension snare and bass drums.
Until 1970, all Corps of Drums served to reinforce the massed bands in major parades, a tradition introduced in Moscow in the 1930s and influenced by the former Imperial Russian and German practice.
Uniquely, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces follows the Turkish model by attaching a full bugle formation behind the corps of drums.
Additionally, the two regiments of the Regulares have a form of a Corps of Drums known as Nuba, which dates to 1911 and thus combines the instrumentation with chirimias, bugles, trumpets, and cornets.
After the 1968 Unification of the Canadian Armed Forces, Corps of Drums were dismantled and abolished, though notably made a return in the mid-1980s within the naval reserve.
In July 2013, a five-person Corps of Drums was unveiled for the first time by the Naden Band of Maritime Forces Pacific at a Victoria Day Parade.
Alongside them, both the southern regencies of Central Java and Yogyakarta have dedicated civilian corps, each serving the bregodo rakyat (people's brigade) companies that preserve the traditions of the armed services of the former sultanates.
The corps snare and tenor and sometimes bass drummers often play on drums that are painted in the service or unit colors (sometimes in the colors of Guayaquil, which are blue and white for the corps of the Ecuadorian Navy), and in the case of the Military Academy Eloy Alfaro and the Air Force Academy Cosme Rendella, have the unit or school insignia attached to the bugles' and fifes' tabards.
In recent years, there has been an effort to establish full-time military marching bands in the national armed forces, with the percussion of the corps combined with brass and woodwind instruments.
Tambourines are common within the school-based corps, with female majorettes assisting the conductor, school band drum major, or music director.
