New Membership

New Membership Information

United Alumni Senior Drum and Bugle Corps is always looking for new members. We rehearse once a week every other Monday and every opposite Sunday. On Mondays we rehearse from 7 pm to 9 pm and Sundays from 1 pm to 4 pm. Please see our schedule page for dates and locations.

United Alumni Senior Drum and Bugle Corps has no membership fees and provide our members with their equipment and uniform. If you are not musically inclined you are more than welcome to join our Colour Guard. This section honours our Nation's Colours and the Colours of our Corps. Many of our members are husband and wife teams. One performs on either the horn or drum line while the other marches with our Colour Guard.

During the 2007 season United Alumni Senior Drum and Bugle Corps performed at 18 parades and shows starting in March at the Montreal St. Patrick's Day Parade and ending with the Paris, Ontario Santa Clause Parade the first weekend in December. During the months of July and August we only rehearse on Monday evenings. We are solely funded through our parades and some fund raising actives. Our prime objective is to entertain our audiences and have fun.

Don't let the word "Senior" in our name fool you. Drum and Bugle Corps is divided into two main classes:

Junior: Corps with marching members 21 years of age and younger.
Senior: Corps with marching members over the age of 21 years.

We accept any anyone 19 years of age or older. Those under the age of 19 wishing to join may do so with a parent or guardian.

For information on becoming a member please feel free to contact our Corps Director, Ed Pow at 519-720-9290 or send a note through our Contact Us page.

Click to view more information on Drum and Bugle Corps

Our Corps consists of 3 main sections: Horn Line Drum Line Colour Guard

Horn Line

United Alumni Senior Drum and Bugle Corps only play G Bugles horns. This means that the horns are pitched in the Key of G, not B flat or F like marching or concert style bands. Most junior corps (membership under the age of 21) now use B flat and F instruments, along with some all-age corps. Most Alumni Corps like United Alumni are staying true to our Drum & Bugle Corps roots and have no plans to switch to B flat and F horns.

Our G Bugles also have a larger percentage of conical tubing as opposed to cylindrical tubing. This allows the horns to be played much louder without sounding strained. In other words, our Bugles are designed to be played outdoors and project in a way that most brass instruments can not match.

Most of the horns owned by United Alumni are fully chromatic with 3 valves. Although, we do still have a couple of 2 valve and valve rotor Contrabass horns currently in use.

For more information about our bugles see the Bugles page

Bugle Fingering Chart

Drum Major, Len Addley

Port Dover, Canada Day Parade, 2009

Legends of Drum Corps Show, Oshawa

August 31, 2009

Photos by Jim Hodge

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Drum Line

The "Drum Rig".

Since United Alumni started back in 1998 our drummers had one problem. Carrying the drums - Due to back and other medical issues, many of the drummers couldn't carry the drums through an entire parade. Many were faced with not marching; it was then that Robert Judd (our drum instructor) created the "Drum Rig"! Since that time the drum rig has evolved to include the entire drum line with multiple rigs one for snares, tenors, quads and the other for the bass drums. Our "Drum Rig" has become the talk of drum corps and has been praised for its ingenuity. It has been said by some that it takes away from real drum corps drumming. One thing is for sure, it has allowed our drummers to continue playing drum corps even though their aging bodies don't always want to play and for that, we are grateful.