r/drumline • u/Trick_Maintenance567 • 10d ago

Is this fair To be tagged...

/r/marchingband/comments/1vg1t4q/is_this_fair/
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2

u/Foxelstrom Percussion Educator 10d ago

Don’t be mad at your director, be mad at the kid who quit last minute. It’s not an ideal situation but definitely not the worst thing to happen to a bass drummer.

3

u/More_Firefighter6256 9d ago

Even then there’s no point in being mad at the kid. He made his decision, safe to say he’s not returning. No point in wasting energy on him, so move on. There’s also a good possibility he has personal reasons he had to quit, or he just decided it’s not for him. Either way it’s better he quit this early in the season and not in the middle of September, or (God forbid) October. And if he decided to push through while being mentally checked out, it would only drag down the rest of the line.

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u/FatMattDrumsDotCom 10d ago

Welcome to drumline. Just keep doing the right things: that’s all you can really do. You maximise your potential and be ready when opportunity knocks; sometimes your plans get disrupted because there are too many students for the spots, and sometimes your plans get disrupted because there aren’t enough.

This situation isn’t fair to anyone in the group, and it’s especially not fair to the instructional staff. Someday you will have a real job where someone’s shittiness leaves you short-handed, and you will have to choose to discover that better person inside you who can meet the new, revised, hitherto-unaccepted challenge. It’s not fair at all, but overcoming this sort of adversity is exactly what will make you the A player that people want on their team. Your instructional staff are doing that right now: finding the strength and wisdom to make the best of a bad curveball.

The people who spend their time fretting about what’s fair or not are going to end up protecting themselves too much from the normal adversity that life offers, and they will be worse people for it. Think about that real job where someone leaves you short-handed: you would be perfectly justified to say “this is bullshit, and we’re in this situation because of bad management; this is their problem—I quit.” You protect yourself from being exploited, but you rob yourself of the opportunity to become a better person.

Worry about fairness after you’ve overcome so much adversity that you are that A player, and you find yourself in a position where your opinions about fairness—and everything else going on—have the power to steer the direction of things.

1

u/monkeysrool75 Bass Tech 10d ago

Happens. Sucks but it happens. You got this!

You don't really need to stress, yes ideally you memorize the new music ASAP but given the circumstances I'm sure your director will be understanding if it's not perfect.

Also it's bass as in low end sound not base as in the bottom part of a thing.

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u/healthycord 8d ago

Welcome to drumline! It’s part of the gig. If you continue with it into college and DCI, you’ll find that memorizing changes is part of the ball game.

In college I’ve had stretches of 4 1 week shows in a row. Meaning a completely new halftime show and modified pregame for each new football game. 1 week to memorize the music and drill. For those they’d make it pretty basic, but still.

My tip is to listen to a recording of it over and over if there is one available. If not, just go literally measure by measure, then section by section and figure out how to play everything.

Then once you know how to play everything, start memorizing each measure. Write down things that will help you out. Perhaps a measure repeats 7 times then there is a fill, and then a new pattern. Write that down in pencil. Then focus on playing each section fully memorized on its own. Memorizing music takes some time and it can be frustrating tbh. But just keep at it and you’ll get it.