Until 1965 single tenor drums were commonplace in some corps, the single tenor drum, beaten by 2 soft or hard mallets in the tradition of British corps of drums, served in the same role as the snare drums but without the snares below. The action of beating the mallets was following the British, Dutch or US Marine Corps practice, in which the tenors played as either flourishing tenors following British precedence or rhythm tenors similar to snares. The first multiple tenor drums appeared in 1966 and would be adopted by many corps in later years. A few corps even mounted glockenspiel in the bell lyre form as part of their percussion unit.
