Ep. 2.1 - Drumline Auditions Part 1

In this first half of a two-part episode, we dig into the nitty gritty of drumline auditions. Doug Bush, Patricia Islas, and Zach Scheer break down what makes a great audition process, how to balance fairness, seniority, musical achievement, and lessons learned (sometimes the hard way) along the way. Whether you’re gearing up for next season or rethinking your whole process, this episode is full of practical takeaways and real talk.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Greetings

SPEAKER_02 0:19

and salutations, friends, and welcome back to the Team Islas podcast, episode number two. My name is Doug Bush, and today... I'm joined by Patricia Islas and Zach Scheer. And this podcast is for anyone looking to better themselves in percussion education. Today's episode is all about setting up a successful drumline audition process. We're going to break the episode into two parts. Part one is more the philosophical and conceptual ideas of a drumline audition process. And part two is an explanation of the specifics that we use at Coppell. Zach, I can remember when we first came to Coppell, you had a very different audition process in mind. You want to walk us through a little bit of how that might have changed over the years?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yes, absolutely. So... You know, Mr. Bush, first I'll say that it changed because of you guys. And so I give you all the credit for that. And I will also say that Especially the further I get away from it and the more I look back at how things developed at Coppell, I can say with confidence that this was the number one difference maker in what we did at Coppell. And so people have asked me multiple times, and I know people have asked you the same thing. They see a video or they see a live performance of Coppell doing something really, really impressive. The playing in a very impressive way. And they go like, golly, what are you guys doing over there? Or what methods are you using? What is going on? Or people would ask me after I hired you guys and brought you guys on, what are Doug and Patricia, what kind of things are they working on? What's the secret over there? It's got to be more than boba. No, boba. It's the tea they're drinking. Yeah, no, that's another episode. But It always, those conversations are always, there's always an assumption that it's like something about the way we're cleaning the rolls or like some secret method of the quad tuning or the way Patricia teaches permutations. And it's like, no, it's none of that.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

In

SPEAKER_01 2:43

fact, I would argue that like you could not listen to any of the future episodes we're going to do. You should listen to them. But even if you change nothing about everything else you do, If you were to implement a time-tested program, proven method of the way you do your drumline auditions, you would see exponential results. And that was my experience. So Mr. Bush, I have a vivid memory of us being in front of the drumline in the fall. So it's probably like September, October-ish. We've got it in our hands and we sound okay, but we're trying to round the corner and get to the next level of excellence. And it is just not happening. It's just... And it hasn't happened. I feel like it was kind of had been this way for like maybe a week, you know, and it was kind of like, okay, I don't know what, what, what to do here next. Um, and after rehearsal, you know, um, as we were want to do, I probably kept you there forever. You know, it's like rehearsal ended three hours ago and I'm still like asking you questions about what, you know, you might recommend. And you basically just kind of like, um, leveled with me sort of in a way like we didn't know each other that well at this point. This is early. This is maybe the first year we were working together. Yeah. Yeah. This is like, yeah, for year one. And you were just very honest and very candid about like, man, There are just a lot of things about the group that I think are kind of holding you back. And it was a lot. Some of the things were musical, but a lot of them were about the lack of efficiency in our rehearsals, the lack of a really concrete, really effective team. set of procedures in our rehearsals that were... Those things were holding us back from being able to really communicate with the students well and run our rehearsals in a really efficient way. And I think you probably used words like, it's a little lax, it's a little vanilla, it's a little... Not enough

SPEAKER_02 4:52

attention to detail

SPEAKER_01 4:53

is probably something that I said. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I was like... Okay, yeah, I hear you. I guess I believe you, but I don't see it. I don't have another thing to compare it to. That led to you... sharing with me about how you had some recommendations of ways we could change the drumline audition process that would get a different result. So we're seeing some problems now in the group in the fall, say in the month of October. are these problems things we can fix right now? Or are these problems actually things that could be completely erased if we changed the way the group started? And you described to me, I vividly remember you saying, if we look at the way we do the audition process and if you were to look at some of the the ways we've done this at other schools, it will be the time of year the students practice more and practice harder than anything else all year. Because that's

SPEAKER_02 6:02

the thing that they enjoy the most or want to do the best at, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, absolutely. And now I'm like, yes, absolutely. But when you said that to me, I was like, no, Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush, welcome to Coppell. I'm glad you're here. I'm so, you know, but do you know that we played at PASIC last year? Have you heard of that? The Percussive Arts Society International Convention? And, you know, and it was a time where like. there were a lot of things that the students at Coppell were working really hard on and right. And like practicing a lot for, um, and it wasn't like we weren't working hard at marching band or being a good drum line. We were. So you said that to me and I was just like, no, that's not right. Um, but, but you know, again, this was like in October. So, so by the time we got to, uh, the time where we were going to roll out drum line auditions, I was willing to try this and I was like, okay, you know, we're, we're going to do this. And, and, Um, there, you know, if I fast forward to like the next October, right. Uh, the difference that the audition process made was night and day. It was just, it was night and day. Um, the ability to go, okay, the problems I see now, I'm going to make those things, uh, really, I'm going to make those things a big emphasis in what the students are required to, to do, to even get into the group next year. Right. So, um, you know, something, when I was thinking about talking about drumline auditions, I wrote down like, instead of starting the season or during the season, trying to figure out like, man, how can we get better at, um, marking time or starting a rep or making sure the students all start and stop in the right place. Or, oh, we just went to the plain old drumline contest. And it really just looked like the vibe of the group was kind of weak or whatever these problems are. Instead of making those things we work on in rehearsal during the season, what if we made them prerequisites to even get in the group? It puts your starting point for the season so much further down the road. So it was a night and day difference for me. And then As I got to a point in my career where I was able to go and was asked to come into clinic other groups, I would have this exact same... My experience was replicated multiple times where I would come into a group, say in September or October, and they're good. They're doing a lot of really good things, but I'm seeing these problems that are like, oh man, I... I don't, if I'm really honest with you, I don't know we can fix these right now. The trajectory of your group is such that we need to make such a big adjustment. It might not be possible when we're this close to the end. But I guarantee you, let's go to dinner afterwards and it might take three hours. But we're going to talk about your drumline audition. And if you will change the way, if you will incentivize the things that are the problems you're experiencing now the difference you will see is just absolutely exponential. So yeah, it just made such a huge difference at Coppell. And I think talking about like the nuts and bolts of how that was put together is, yeah, it's going to make for a great episode.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Absolutely. And I want to be clear that it wasn't just at Coppell. This had been years of kind of developing this process and the system had been forged in the fires of excellent percussion education alongside people. You know, the first person to really put me at a high level of this was T.R. Fitzgibbon, who was the caption head when we were at Southwind and, you know, works in some kind of machine-based artificial intelligence Google thing. You know, now he's much too smart to do this gig anymore, but he was the first person to really kind of start to point some of these ideas our direction and then alongside Jimmy Lebreck at Lake Highlands and Highland Park and John Bingaman all the way back at Allen. Only us old heads know that Bingaman which was so impressive. I can remember one of the very first, I mean, it was comical. There's like, if anyone that doesn't know outside of Texas, like Alan notoriously is like, grotesquely large, the school and the band. They should be broken up into multiple, but they just went, you know, so I don't know, something comical, like 800 kids in the band or whatever. And you come in and this audition, I remember this one night with Bingham, and it was something like the audition for the night was like cymbals, bass, and front ensemble. I might not even be able to hold myself. And that was the entire day, because there was a whole other day. But That band's culture was very different than the Coppell one, right? Coppell's drumline culture is crazy competitive because we have this very unique, wonderful situation to have a varsity and junior varsity. So just like your other elite athletic programs, not everyone gets to be a varsity cheerleader or gets to be a varsity football player. Yes, you have a spot in band, but you're not guaranteed a spot on the varsity drumline. And it facilitates. Allen was very much the opposite. I mean, if you showed up and you could breathe, you can be on the drumline. just 5 million kids. But I remember being so impressed at how hard the kids worked and how well, like how the overall standard and quality throughout the entire thing of some of the systems that Bingaman was using. Now, was it a little long or did it require refining? Yeah, of course, you know, all of us, right? You know, like a lot of great educators, we refine and, you know, so this isn't just you know, like a cop hell thing. This is a multi-year process that worked in multiple situations. And I think at the end of the day, the reason that it consistently works really, really well is there's like two very, very, very strong goals. Number one, the vast majority of the students in your program, the thing they enjoy most is Drumline. That is the biggest reason they're there, right? And so they will work harder for that. So we can kind of leverage this time for the personal growth of the student in a way that we can't always leverage leverage other activities during the year. That's number one. And then number two, man, getting the right student in the right spot. is integral you can if that kid even though that kid's really smart and they're wonderful but you know they don't have that natural flow or touch or whatever man what what you could do for that kid and your program by putting them on second base instead of second snare is huge right and i don't know how many times with c slots and i over the years have seen people really struggle because they put that kid on xylo that they really shouldn't have put on xylo or they put that kid on bottom that they really shouldn't or whatever, you know, or kid on quad. So I think those are the two big things. And, and to kind of speak a little bit to that expended time to develop fundamentals and how strong that is. I know that's something that you feel strongly about.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Yeah, I do. Um, you know, having this, um, process I guess that we have developed is really beneficial because it allows for a lot of focused intentional work done on fundamentals where anytime throughout the rest of the year it might not be as important as it is right now to the students even arguably in marching band season when they're playing these fundamentals every day it might not be as important to them because During the audition period, there is a standard that they're adhering to, and it's really important at the beginning that we set that standard. I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago. a lady, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and she's a physician. She's a bestseller. She focuses on skeletal muscle, nothing related to music at all. But she said something that really struck home with me. That was, she doesn't set goals, she sets standards. And what she meant by that was goals are going to come and go throughout your life. Goals are external. But standards, if you adhere to them, if you set your standard high and are consistent with trying to achieve that standard it's going to put you in the conversation of being able to achieve whatever goals that you want to achieve whatever goals come your way and so this drumline audition is a great opportunity to really clarify what the standard is and then the students themselves because there is that competitive nature even in smaller programs even in programs that we have worked with that don't have a jv that don't have two groups but there is going to be a number assigned to how they perform the green exercise or the timing exercise that they're Yeah, Misty Sloss. So, you

SPEAKER_01 14:42

know, when you were talking about that, talking about... standards and there's a number assigned and all those things and and how like focusing on fundamentals this gives the students an opportunity to show what they can do you know and that sounds obvious but if your process and and i'm i'm talking about myself here like before we changed this at compel the process the drumline audition process we were doing there there weren't numbers assigned There was not a, okay, you came in and you played this and this is the score. It was more just very general. We're all going to kind of hear you play and we're going to talk about some things and give some feedback and then we're going to make the call. As we sort of shift to the nuts and bolts, I think kind of the last thing to talk about on the more philosophical end or the why we're advocating for or sharing with you that you could change your drumline audition process or consider some new things is when we're talking about giving those students an opportunity to move up, the drumline audition process done well is a meritocracy, right? it rewards achievement and nothing else. That's all it rewards. It rewards achievement. Positions are earned, not given, period. That's it. What you do in that audition, what you do in the audition process, the spot you get in the group is a direct result of that. And so this was something that at times at Coppell I didn't, I backed up my words with action well, and at times I did not. And so I think just to illustrate the power of doing this well, and maybe the consequences for not doing it well, some specific examples came to mind. So Mr. Bush, that line that we were talking about, that we were in front of, said, had a girl uh in the center of the snare line who was a wonderful student um excellent percussionist i have so many memories of her playing so well and in all arenas um was put in the center of the line that year gave like gave 110 did a wonderful job okay fast forward um She's now coming into her senior year. She tapped the line her junior year. We're coming into her senior year and we're changing everything about the audition process. And now that I look back on that, she was one of a class of 11 seniors. A lot of seniors, right? And we're changing everything about the audition process. And I've only been here, this is my second year. So I'm ending my first year, I guess, right? Or maybe ending my second year, going into my third. And to make a long story short, all these points were made, right? Hey guys, this is a meritocracy. It doesn't matter if you were the section leader last year. It doesn't matter if you're a senior or a freshman. What you do in this audition process determines your spot in the group. Period. End of story. Well, fast forward to the drumline auditions. And, uh, as a result of the audition process, we decide that girl's not going to be in the center of the line anymore. And, um, there's going to be someone else replace her who is at the time, I guess was going to be a sophomore. Sorry. So she was currently a freshman was going to be a sophomore. Um, her name may have heard of her was Eliana Yamuni. Um, she's famous now. Uh, But she was... clearly the right person to put in the center of the group for the next year. Now, the girl who had tapped the line previously didn't do anything wrong. Wonderful student, like so proud of her. And I will say when those results came out, she handled it like a champ. So absolute like credit to her, but also I think she handled it like a champ in part because the audition process was set up very clearly. Like her expectations were not, like it was very clear this could happen, right? So merit was rewarded. Eliana got to be in the center of the group and tap the line. Okay, great. So we go through that year. We get to the end of that year. Mr. Shearer thinks he's a drumline audition expert, right? Now, here we are. We're getting set up for Drumline Auditions the next year. We've got Eliana. She's in the center of the line. And here we are. We're at the first master class. The freshmen are showing up. And like a great teacher, I am delegating some tasks to our leadership, right? So Eliana, could you please help them get set up? Eliana, could you do this? Eliana, could you tap off this exercise? Hey, everybody, I want you to meet Eliana. She was the section leader last year. Well, unbeknownst to me, there was another student in the group. Great synergy. wonderful student wonderful percussionist who had it in his mind that he was in the running to be the section leader even though Eliana was the year before he had seen Eliana take over someone else and he thought now it's my turn you know and I'm gonna work really hard and I'm gonna do this and I just completely blew past that and really did not even give him the opportunity to like show what he could do it was very very clear that Eliana was an incredible snare drummer, even then, right? We've all seen her play with Vanguard. She was that good in high school. And, um, It just never occurred to me that there was someone else who was gunning for her spot. And even if I didn't think that that was going to happen, it was my mistake to not back up my words with action. I said to everybody, hey, no matter what, you could be the section leader. But then I didn't really put that in practice. And even though at that time at Cup Hill, we almost never had students quit. Certainly students who were really high achievers, juniors, seniors, whatever. And that guy ended up quitting. He ended up, and this was probably late. I mean, we're talking like May, April, May, maybe. It was a hit to the group. And I will never forget him sitting in my office and being very honest at a young age, which shows a high level of maturity, and just saying, hey, Mr. Shearer, you didn't even give me a chance. to earn that leadership position. You, you didn't even like, it was like I was invisible, you know, because you did not, like you said, you know, you did not give me a spot and it really hurt. And so I'm out.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

And

SPEAKER_01 21:26

yeah, so there's an example of the drumline audition process and how, if you do it correctly, I think it can work really well, even when you make hard decisions and how, if you don't do it correctly, you can lose some, some valuable assets to your, to your group. And, and worst of all, you cannot do the right thing for your students. So yeah, I'll kind of pass it back to you guys to talk about kind of the nuts and bolts of how it works.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Yeah, absolutely. So what is this process? How do you go about achieving it? You know, to kind of add some further depth to Mr. Shear's story, you could walk up to any cop hell percussionist and ask them, when are drumline auditions? And their response will be every day. That will be the response. So to clarify, if all Missy Mooney, if all Eliana was working on was marching snare drum, she would not have surpassed the other student. The other student would have remained center if Eliana was slacking in her all region responsibilities or her band responsibilities or her purely rhythmic responsibilities, which is our percussion ensemble concert. And that is something that we've experienced lately where just this last year, you know, the same thing occurred where you have a vet varsity incoming senior bass drummer that just assumed he was going to get the spot because his only quote unquote competition were a couple of JV freshman bass kids, you know, but they outworked him for purely rhythmic. They outworked him for their solos. They outworked him for their ensemble. And then they literally outscored him. And so they got the spot and he didn't. And that's kind of that goes. Okay, this process that we like to take is having a set of skills that are evaluated every year, not exercises. And what I mean by that is, you know, there will be seven exercises and one etude that every student will play. They will be auditioning for either the upper battery, which is snare and quads. We'll talk about in a second, the baseline or the front ensemble. One of those exercises will be a, what we call a motion-based timing exercise. And it's important that that exercise is not the same every year. But that skill, the skill of motion-based timing is being evaluated every year. And this is true for our rhythm change timing etude, and our spatial timing, and our roll exercise, and our paradiddle exercise, and our flam exercise. And the logic here is I need kids to be able to play paradiddles, and rolls, and flams. But if it is the same exercise every single year your upperclassmen have less incentive to practice and rehearse because they already know it and it's already good in their hands it's one of the really powerful lessons I think that anyone that's ever had the privilege of marching for Paul has learned is these like simpler exercises with multiple variations right and when you're at a place like Vanguard or the University of North Texas and you're dealing with these 22 year old music majors you can just on the spot hey let's add a mambo and this that but when you're dealing with a 14 year old that's been holding sticks for three years and now all of a sudden the sticks are the size of their forearm and they're supposed to wear the drum for some weird reason, right? You know, it's more like the variations are happening at a much slower rate, like once or twice a year, right? And this is reflective in one of them. So you have seven exercises and one etude and in that evaluation process, once they actually come in and do the audition, each of the exercises are assigned 10 points of worth and the etude is assigned 30 points of worth, which equals 100 points and And that means that there's a very clear spreadsheet at the end where you can kind of evaluate every student's numerical ranking based on however many judges are involved in the process and whatnot. But, you know, Ms. Islas, do you want to take a second to talk about some of the front ensemble specific stuff?

SPEAKER_03 25:15

Yeah. So I'm looking at the list of exercises and requirements for our audition in 2024. And there in it includes a rhythm change timing exercise, which is basically, you know, an etude that that Mr. Bush writes every year. It's different every year, and it includes a variety of different rhythms from 16th notes to triplets to all the variations of fivelets you could ever imagine with dynamics thrown in that every single student in the program needs to perform for their audition, including the front ensemble members on a snare drum with sticks in their hands. And that's a really valuable exercise for the front ensemble students. We do spend a lot of time in the camps on pads with sticks and that allows for us not only to be able to have moments like in our drum line or marching band show where a majority if not all of the students are on drums but also it's just a fundamental thing for them to be able to do as musicians so it's a really important one and the name of the game is always let's get as many front ensemble students in the top spots as possible let's beat the battery students because everybody has to play it right

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Missy Sloss I I don't want to glaze over that. I'm sorry. Can I just, no, no, not beating the, not beating the battery students, not beating the battery students. I just, so as, as, someone who was here or there with the Coppell front ensemble in the before East lost times. Right. Um, and as someone who like, okay, I, I marched in the phantom regiment front ensemble. We were pretty good. Okay. I marched in the university of North Texas front ensemble. We were pretty good too. Um, taught some other groups, whatever. Right. But you're saying that every student in the front ensemble at Coppell every year as part of their evaluation to get in the group. And then as part of the rehearsals for the front on Yes, sir, that's right. like it sounds, you do it all the time, right? And it sounds so like, yes, this is so, we've seen the results of this. This is like a no brainer to you. But there was a time when you mentioned it to me at Coppell that I was kind of like, okay, like I'm not, obviously I'm not opposed to the front ensemble students holding sticks. They do it all the time, but it wasn't something we had done before. And I think it's something that I'm sure a lot of groups do this, but I'm sure many don't as well, because it can be very easy to go like, I just don't know if I have time for that,

SPEAKER_00 27:48

you

SPEAKER_01 27:48

know, I don't know if the ROI is really there, but... Clearly, the success of the front ensembles you've taught is there, and I think that's a really important part of it. So I just wanted to highlight that as something that's part of the genius of what you do with front ensembles.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

Well, thank you, Mr. Scheer. Moving on, we have a spatial timing exercise, which is usually closely related to if not exactly the same as the battery version. And then... The next five exercises or skills within the audition are generally based around things that either A, I foresee as skills we need to collectively start to develop or continue to work on, or B, skills that I would like to include in the arrangements of the marching band or the drumline show, or both. Because, fortunately, Mr. Bush and I arrange for the group, that gives us a little bit more freedom there. But... Even for groups that we write for, that is on our questionnaire for the percussion instructors, what types of skills do you want us to include in the music? And it could be as limited or as varied as they like. So it could be something like, for example, this past year, we had a one-handed roll exercise as one of our format exercises, not because we had a lot of one-handed roll techniques in the show, but that technique leads to other things like triple laterals or double laterals that I did believe were weak and that I wanted to include in some of the music that we're going to do this year. So it became one of the audition exercises. So I will typically have two four-mallet exercises and two or three two-mallet exercises. The breakdown tends to go. We have something that is kind of a run-based exercise like a green or rhythmic scale variations if you're familiar with that exercise. It's It's in Momentum, if you're not familiar with that exercise.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

What's Momentum?

SPEAKER_03 29:55

Momentum is a two-mallet... solo and exercise book that I wrote that goes from beginning exercises all the way to more advanced. And it has solos, two mallet solos at the end of it that demonstrate the skills involved in the exercises. So yeah, we'll have some kind of run-based exercise. We'll have maybe an arpeggio-based exercise this past year, one of our two mallet Parts of the audition was actually a segment of one of the pieces out of Momentum, actually, because for the 2024 Drumline show, I hadn't written it at the moment, but I had envisioned that I wanted some kind of split, two-voicing segment. entanglement-style syncopated thing. So I took a segment of entanglement, which is the last solo in Momentum, and gave that to the students to learn. And one of my favorite moments of this past audition process was in one of the master classes. I'm there with all the students who are interested in auditioning for the Varsity Front Ensemble, and there's 25 or 30 students all playing entanglement together. It was really, really cool. But and then the last portion of the audition is some actual music. And in terms of the scores, that part of it for both the battery and the front ensemble sections is weighted heavier than each individual exercise. And a lot of the time that. that part of the audition is specifically from whatever solo the student is going to be playing for their solo and ensemble piece. And we only do about a minute of it. It's not the entire piece. So we have some students that are playing these advanced format 11-minute pieces. They're not going to do that. I mean, their time slot is too short to be able to accomplish that. But we have a little moment of actual music that is appropriate to their playing level. So the adjudicators, the staff, can see all of these skills that they're demonstrating, how does that apply when they actually put it all together? So one more thing before I toss it back to Doug. The transition from the 8th grade to the 9th grade, for many reasons, is one of the most intense and most challenging and most demanding transitions that a student will go through from their 6th grade all the way to their 12th grade year. And this audition process, although many of the students in Coppell already kind of know what it's about now, even the middle school students, it's still quite a heavy and stressful one for them to navigate. So when I'm selecting the exercises and specifically in giving tempos and key signatures, I will often choose a selection that's a little bit more manageable and achievable for some of those eighth graders. So for example, it might say something like, You know, this exercise is supposed to be performed with the tempo range of 120 to 150 if you're a sophomore or older, but if you're an eighth grader coming in, going to be a freshman, then your tempo range is somewhere between 80 and 120. Now, the younger students have the option of performing the tempos at the higher range, but they're not required to, because I really just want to see, you know, what is the best quality that we can get, and it's more specific specifically about the skills that are important, not the tempos. If you have a high-achieving student, they're going to get to those tempos eventually, just by the nature of playing in the group for a lot of time. That also refers to key signatures. So sometimes I might have a wider range of key signatures for the older students, but the younger students, the key signatures might be more custom to the ones that they're seeing in band class. So maybe just your C, F, and B flat opposed to the full range of any of key signatures or just the major keys versus doing the minor keys as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:54

So let's say you want to audition for the battery, right? First thing, there are two separate packets, an upper battery packet and a bass packet. Well, where's the snare and quad packet? Good question, right? Why is it an upper battery packet? Excellent question. We're very, very fortunate that we get to do a drumline camp where we hire a quad-specific... tech to come in and work with the quad line and anyone that has ever played or taught quads knows that the golden rule of quad drumming is if you can't play it on drum two if you can't play it on a single surface you shouldn't be trying to move it around so my goal in the audition process is to unify what all the upper battery students are playing like they have the same literal audition there is no quad specific movement or motion based things in the audition process so that then if the student has made the quad line the technician can focus and spend as much time as possible in that really precious week we have with a quad technique and approach and they're not also simultaneously trying to teach them how to play in time and play with good accent taps and rolls and paradiddles and all those other things because I think that once the season gets going most of us are not fortunate to have a full-time quad technician or bass technician so like those camps it's really vital that if you are able to bring in someone to work with the bass line or quad line that they're able to do as much bass and quad specific stuff as possible then because that's one of the few times the whole year they'll be able to do it we got seven exercises there is going to be a motion based one there's going to be a spatial timing one there's going to be a rhythm change timing one that like Missy's last said is that etude page long etude there's going to be paradiddles there's going to be rolls there's going to be flams and there's going to be some kind of stick control and the bass packet is almost identical we it might come to surprise to some we play very very little bass splits. Like there are very few exercise oriented bass splits to the baseline at Coppell place. We play a split for eight on a hand. That's kind of it. Our role exercise kind of, we just kind of each measure, go down the drums. Um, but, but really we have one space split that we work on. Uh, here's a lot of music that these kids have to learn a lot. And, uh, yeah, I need my bass drummers to just be good percussionists. They need the, they grow a ton by being being able to play the paradiddle exercise unison on fifth base or the roll exercise along with the upper battery. And that goes, very far into establishing a healthy strong bass culture as well where hey just because you are on bass you're not expected to not be able to play rolls and paradiddles or any of these other things you know that's part of part of the process as well all of this is handed out in a packet where it is clearly defined literally like on the first page you open up the packet and it will say every exercise it will for each exercise it will clearly state that the student will choose the tempo when they come in for the audition within an assigned tempo range. You know, potentially, let's say we're doing the paradiddle exercise and the paradiddle exercise this year is Purdy's Punchy Paradiddles, right? And it'll say tempo range of 140 to 160. The student will choose that. It will say, okay, you're going to get eight from the met. We're going to mark time at the release. The sticks are going to come down on beat two. And this is really important so that not just that it's really, it's at a place that can be referenced by the students over and over for clarity, but also for the parents, right? so that everyone knows from the beginning, here are the expectations, here are the things that we're doing, and here is how we're going to do them. This process from when we hand it out, we specifically hand the packet out the week before spring break because... The week prior to that, we finished our percussion ensemble concert. So we're not worried about the percussion ensemble concert anymore. We handed out the week before spring break. A lot of our students, that gives them spring break to practice. That's what a lot of them will do kind of during that time if they're not going on some type of vacation. And we try to aim for about a five week process. So the Goldilocks thing, not too long, not too short, just right. It's essentially what we're trying to guide the students through is three weeks to learn everything they need to for the audition. One week to get all of it up to the tempo. actual tempo and quality that they want and then one week specifically to work on the actual audition process meaning a week before the gig I can play everything how I want to and now I'm practicing how to breathe properly before I play how to play in uncomfortable situations I can remember that Mr. Shear many years ago pointed me to Rob Knopper and I've referenced many of his outstanding YouTube videos on auditioning for you know orchestral auditions and process and they helped me as a performer, I mean, significantly. And so we're trying to embed a lot of these same values to the students. And guess what, folks? This is something they can apply to everything they're doing, not just the drumline audition. This is the same process that we use and reinforce in middle school for their solos, for the region process, for anything else they're doing. And I think, for example, this year in Missy's classes, as we transitioned out of drumline and started to do the focus more on the region or tightening up the region stuff, I know it was a frustration you had with some of the students this year is that they did not recognize that they could carry some of these skills over with them. They had made a separation in their mind. Oh, here's drumline and here's region. Do you want to speak to that a little bit?

SPEAKER_03 39:23

Yeah. We started to dig.