Bluecoats Drumline Lot Warmup Method

[mingusmonk]

Roger wanted to use a met. Roger didn't want to click sticks with a met in his ear so he thought he'd do a kit, so he did.

[mingusmonk]

An interesting part of this discussion is that, of the nine snares in 'Coat's line, eight of them are rookies to the corps. "The center snare from here, the center snare from there, two tenors from two others."

"They seem to like the groove we've got going."

Hard to say if using the set drew them, or if they started using it specifically for "the groove", but it seems it paid off well.

Competitive, jammin' kids want to go to a competitive, jammin' corps.

1 snare vet. 1 bass vet.

[DrumManTx]

1 snare vet. 1 bass vet.

Well. next year gonna be fun. :)

[Jeff Ream]

I heard one reason they did it was because Dr. Beats are not allowed to be used in the warm-up park during Finals week. They were planning ahead so they didn't have to change the environment for the last 3 days.

i think it's a great thing for another reason....

so much of rehearsal now is run with the good doctor blaring through the long ranger, kids can get addicted to it. You can't use it in a show, so i think it's a genius way to wean them off of it before a show

[cf144]

i think it's a great thing for another reason....

so much of rehearsal now is run with the good doctor blaring through the long ranger, kids can get addicted to it. You can't use it in a show, so i think it's a genius way to wean them off of it before a show

My thoughts exactly. I think that spending the majority of rehearsal with an artificial time keeper is counterproductive. It trains you to listen to the metronome as your reference rather than listening in and watching the DM. So come show time when there is no metronome you are forced to perform differently than you did in rehearsal.

[oldbandguy]

In theory I can understand some of the comments concerning the use of the met becoming counter productive, but I have to ask (and point out) that the top corps ARE making use of the met right up until the LAST day of the season. Seems to be working.

A couple of nights ago I had the pleasure of attending a clinic by a great drummer, Danny Seraphine of Chicago fame, who is still playing really well at age 67. During his clinic he mentioned that in some ways he was a better drummer today than 40 years ago because he felt his sense of time was better. He attributed that to FREQUENT practice with a metronome. He also made a great comment about his personal playing..."I've gone from relying on a great fastball to having a wicked slider." :-)

One of the things that always amazes me in watching the Coats rehearse is how frequently they are discussing and analyzing tempo during runs and that (for example) 206 bpm is not 204-205 or 207-208 bpm.

Is Dr. Beat (and similar) the great rehearsal tool ever invented?

Edited August 15, 2015 by oldbandguy

[cf144]

In theory I can understand some of the comments concerning the use of the met becoming counter productive, but I have to ask (and point out) that the top corps ARE making use of the met right up until the LAST day of the season. Seems to be working.

A couple of nights ago I had the pleasure of attending a clinic by a great drummer, Danny Seraphine of Chicago fame, who is still playing really well at age 67. During his clinic he mentioned that in some ways he was a better drummer today than 40 years ago because he felt his sense of time was better. He attributed that to FREQUENT practice with a metronome. He also made a great comment about his personal playing..."I've gone from relying on a great fastball to having a wicked slider." :-)

One of the things that always amazes me in watching the Coats rehearse is how frequently they are discussing and analyzing tempo during runs and that (for example) 206 bpm is not 204-205 or 207-208 bpm.

Is Dr. Beat (and similar) the great rehearsal tool ever invented?

I had the same thought but on further consideration maybe it seems to be "working" because pretty much everyone does it the same way and they are not being held to the same degree of precision and unison playing as in the days of tics. Not suggesting that the lines in the tic system were "better" just that demands and expectations were different. Lines had to be perfectly in sync with each other to avoid a tic and every tic cost them a tenth. With the way shows have evolved over the years I doubt that many (or any) lines today could play with the precision of the tic era lines while running around the field the way they do. Nor do I think that tic era lines could have played their books as cleanly while running all over the field. It's much easier to play cleanly while just going up and down the 50 for the most part. IMO practicing by with Dr. Beat all the time they never develop the listening in skill to the same degree.

Using Danny as an example isn't completely comparable since he doesn't need to play perfectly cleanly with a bunch of other guys playing the same exact part - plus he may well have the click track playing in his headphones as a constant reference while he plays.

I definitely think Dr. Beat has a place, but I think lines have become too dependent on it. On the other hand, it could be that given the style of today's shows it may be that it works better. Having not marched in longer than I'd care to admit I have no real basis to know for sure.

[oldbandguy]

I think we can both agree there are indeed AMAZING drum lines today...and there were some AMAZING drum lines back in the tic system day!

In his clinic Danny even mentioned that he MUCH preferred playing with a live band because they would go with HIS tempo. He said the #### met never seemed to do that :-)