Ep. 13 - Drumline Camp Deep Dive!

The drumline is set and the camp is scheduled - now what?!?! Let's get in the weeds and work out every detail of your drumline camp. Set up, pacing, exercises, procedures, goals, leadership, and MORE! Is this week to work out your electronics? Should you go ahead and change that part you don't like? All this and more discussed by the team in episode 13! 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Greetings and salutations, friends, and welcome back to the Team Eastlass Podcast, episode 13. My name is Doug Bush, and today I'm joined by Patricia Eastlass and Zach Sheer. And this is the podcast for anyone looking to better themselves in percussion education. It's time! One of your favorite weeks of the year, drumline camp. Let's jump right into the deep in and talk about what you can do to get maximum value out of your camp for you and your students. Mr. Shear.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Awesome, Mr. Bush. I don't know if I can follow that intro. Yeah, so you said what can we do to get maximum value out of the camp? And I think your preparation before the camp is key. So we talked about in a previous episode, schedule, and all that stuff, but now we're like on the ground, nuts and bolts, the campus about to start. What are the very practical things we need to have set up? And um I think utilizing your student leadership is very important here. So I'm gonna look at just some basic things like number one, where are we rehearsing? Do we know, like, do the bases have a room? Like, okay, they're in the janitor's closet down the hall or whatever, like what whatever it is, but like, do we have a spot for everybody in that room? Do we have a metronome? Do we have a speaker for that metronome? Do we have batteries? So I know I personally can think back to my very first year of teaching where before the drumline camp, I think I was up there for like three days and full nights, like doing literally every one of these things by myself. Yeah, right? Like I'm wheeling out. I think I actually, no joke, I actually set up the instruments for the students in other music rooms before.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Um and uh you should not do that. You you should utilize your student leadership and give them some responsibility. Um but you as the director, you should, you should make sure that when that tech um or when you, whoever's gonna be teaching these kids, whether it's full ensemble or subs or whatever, um, that everyone knows where to go, when to go there, and that we all have the correct tools when we get in that room because this time is precious. So we don't want to come into the room and have to move chairs and tables, and now we gotta go find the metronome. Mr. Shearer's gotta run to CBS because we're out of batteries. No, let's take care of those things in advance.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Absolutely. And a lot of this student leadership-led stuff harkens back to something that Miss C. Slas talked about in one of the previous uh podcasts about how you need to uh create an environment where you are doing the things only you can do, and then you're allowing these other people to do things. Yes, you could go set up the drums, right? You know, but also the student leaders can do that. And what we've discovered, like here's a really good example of how we utilize this at the Cop Hill camp. Mr. Wynne, uh, the director of percussion at Cop Hill, make sure prior to the camp, every section has a student that is assigned the responsibility of the metronome and the speaker. So, as a staff member, when we walk in to teach the Mets already set up, the speaker's already set up, it's good to go. And uh it takes a little bit on the front end to establish and learn these procedures, and you should dedicate time to that uh early in your career. But it's happened now for so many years, the student leadership, they pass it down to the previous generation, right? So, like as someone graduates, you know, as someone, you know, maybe as a sophomore, they were in charge of them, now they're a junior. You say, Hey, Emily, will you show Trine where this is and how to set it up? And then once Trine, okay, Trine, will you show Varun? So on and so forth.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Yeah, and it's something that carries through the season too. It's not something that you have to manage constantly. Now you have people who manage that. And you're doing a service to the students. Being a leader is not just a title or an award that you get to put on your you know college resume. I mean, that's great. They they all want that, but really they need to build leadership skills, and you only build leadership skills if they're given that responsibility to uh to try and test out, and they're gonna make mistakes sometimes, they're gonna do some stuff wrong. Um, and that's your responsibility too, to uh give them some grace. But empowering them to do things that they should be able to do is gonna help you in the long run get a lot more done.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah, absolutely. And so before camp starts, uh before the first day at camp, we need to have a staff meeting, right? And this is something that if the staff is relatively fresh or new, uh, or someone you haven't worked with, you probably want to give yourself at least half an hour. Like that's kind of the importance because because we're setting the tone for the entire week, right? With a little bit more experience, like for example, something we have at Capel, we can meet 15 minutes prior, but it's a lot of people that have been working together for years and already understand the expectation.

unknown 5:03

Mr.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Sheer, what are some of the things that we're trying to address or take care of in this staff meeting?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, absolutely. So I think first of all, if you are the person who is um uh, for lack of a better term, quote unquote in charge, uh, especially if you have a staff that you have not worked with for a long time, um, and especially if you're a younger teacher, please don't hesitate to be in charge. I think it's actually helpful for people you hire for you to be like, hey, here are some basic do's and don'ts here at my school. Um this is the way we do this, we don't do this, here's why, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that's number one is don't hesitate to be in charge. Um, number two, uh, you need to have a very clear schedule for the week. We talked about this previously. Um, Mr. Bush, I think you mentioned that um at Capel, Mr. Wynn does a great job of actually having that schedule on your binder when you walk in ready to go. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, absolutely. When you show up, Mr. Wynne has a binder with your name on it for every staff member. And then on the front cover of that binder is literally the schedule with the date and times for the entire week, uh, which is uh an incredibly helpful service, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm also gonna make sure in that staff meeting that everyone understands uh I would want to be sure there's just no ambiguity about what we're gonna do and when we're gonna do it. So that is all the way down to like exact exercises we're gonna play, exact tempos we're going to play them, when, if and when we're gonna get together. I want to make sure people know this is when you pack up, this is when you move, this is when we come together. Mr. Bush, I think I remember teaching a camp with you one time, and I was like, okay, we're gonna get together at three. And you may have been asking this question actually as a hint for clarification for someone else in the room, but you asked. You were like, Mr. Shearer, do you mean that the downbeat of the ensemble block is at three, or do you mean we should start moving at three? I think I was like, Thank you, Mr. Bush. I mean the downbeat is at three.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Yeah, which by the way, on a side note, uh, that is our recommended method. Because in our experience, if you say, Okay, hey, let's start on some, we'll we'll start at three. You know, Mr. Bush gets there with the bases at three, and then everyone's just standing around, and about 10 minutes later, the quads mose in.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

And now half an hour later, the snare.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Because you know, they put Mr. Bush, we were doing triplet grid backwards off left, and we just put it. And it's like, hey, uh, all these individuals with their subsections or whatever, you know, they got the best intention of the world, but you're literally, it's at the detriment of the entire rest of the programs, just wasting time. So it's like uh by just defining, okay, hey, we're we're getting together at three, you allow every individual tech to make the decision that's correct for their group and where they're located in the school and all those other things, you know. I mean, it just is a more efficient use of your time. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

And also, like, okay, okay, if we're getting together at three, I want, assuming we're in subs, I want every instructor and the students also to know when we get get together at three, here's why we're getting together. We're gonna play, you know, this list of exercises at this tempo. Does that involve the front ensemble? Does it not? That way everyone is held accountable and everyone just has a clear plan of what to do and no time is wasted.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Yeah, because sometimes what that translates to to me, like let's say I'm working with the snares, and uh, you know, okay, the whole battery's gonna get together and we're gonna play these three exercises and this chunk of the music. I know exactly the music that I need to work on. And then I also get to evaluate are these three exercises they're the type of, like, for example, if one of them's eight on a hand, that I might not actually even do eights with the snareson, right? I might do uh, you know, a triplet timing exercise or whatever, something like that. Because I know that they're strong enough that I'm okay if their only rep of eights during the day is in this final block. However, if I'm with the baseline and we're gonna be working on our splits, our ones, our twos, our threes, four, I'm probably going to structure that in and then see, okay, now how do they perform in a full ensemble environment? But it's a lot better than just showing up and being like, oh, hey, what do you guys want to play? You want to play this one, jugga, jagga, jga, or whatever?

SPEAKER_03 9:13

It can be really useful in a front ensemble setting too, because uh, and I we'll probably talk about this later, but we tend to move a little bit slower. There's more moving parts, there's more details to kind of iron out when we're in the music learning process. So we might not, as a group in subs, get to the point where that we can play it exactly the tempo that the battery is going the day that we're gonna meet with the battery for the first time. Um, but I will make it really clear that morning, hey, this is the plan, guys. We're gonna play this tempo, we're gonna play this much music. And if we have a little bit of a longer lunch break, then that gives them more motivation to come in and want to practice through those parts because they don't want to seem like the weakest section or they don't want to fall apart in front of the entire group the first time we get together. Um so it gives them more uh ownership over that music, and you're gonna see them practicing more.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yeah, absolutely. You know, um I would say the other thing that needs to come up in that staff meeting is again, if I'm the guy that's in charge, if I'm the progression director, I want to clearly communicate to the staff the goals for the week. And if these are people I work with regularly and I've worked with for years and they were involved in in crafting those goals, um but like everything we just discussed, uh, are we getting together, what exercises are we doing, what tempo, et cetera, et cetera, those should all serve the clear goals that have been set out for the week. And you mentioned student leadership earlier, that should involve the I I would argue that the those goals you've set should involve the student leadership again prior to camp. Um and like you said, Miss East Lots with a front ensemble, especially, like in the absence of clear goals or a clear plan, yeah, these days of camp can get real long and real monotonous, real quick, and then you get to a point where we're just kind of spinning our wheels. Yeah. Um, but if we all have a clear goal and the staff knows it, the kids know it, I think um it goes a long way towards keeping everybody moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Absolutely. Yeah, and I I yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I couldn't, you know, in terms of the students' awareness of the goals, I I I think it is important to go all the way to the micro level. This might be one of the most consistent things when um Missis Last and I go clinic groups, we'll get in front of groups of completely varying skill levels. They play a basic exercise like eight on a hand, and then we just simply ask them, what are you doing right now? Like what is your goal? Why do you play eight on a hand? Sometimes not a single student can answer the question, even though it's something they literally do every day, they've probably done it every day for years, and not a single student can even attempt to articulate. You might get like a half-hearted to warm up. It's like, really? That that is that it's the full depth of eight on a hand is to warm up, right? And so I think it it it it is if the students don't have a clear picture of what it is they're trying to achieve, then how are they gonna achieve it, right? And um there, again, there's not a right or a wrong here. One of our current staff members uh is an incredible educator that marched for Pulse uh, you know, a couple years that they won WGI, and he's an incredible player and incredible educator. And, you know, he believes in the tilt, traditional group of the tilt, right? Even though I I might not agree with that, right? And he believes in these long-form kind of lot exercises, even though I'm not, but he can very articulately uh explain to me why he has these beliefs and why they're important, and he can communicate those to the kids he's teaching. And that's great. That's exactly what it should be. It doesn't matter if your goals, you know what they are, as much as that you have them and that they are clearly defined so the students know what they're working towards.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 12:47

Um, Mr. Shar, speaking to uh front ensemble, time being uh can can get a little long in the tooth sometimes. Um I'm going to talk a little bit about some ways to keep the kids engaged. Oh, yes. When you're in drumline camp mode and you have hours and hours and hours. Um now, you know, a lot of the things that we're talking about, including having these staff meetings, come from experience, right? The the fact that we have lived through uh a bunch of different varieties of these uh things multiple times over, gives us insight to uh what can go wrong and what could be useful. And uh I started to develop this technique in my teaching that I can't say that I saw anyone else do before, but I developed it through a necessity because of maybe a lack of communication at the beginning of camps. Um, when I was in college and just out of college, and I was teaching, you know, four to six percussion camps, band camps during a summer. There were many times that I was invited to come in and given complete trust and ownership over the front ensemble for the week. And there's various degrees of it, like maybe there's some music that we have to learn, maybe there's no music at all, and it's just exercises. But in most cases, I wasn't given a lot of instruction on, okay, this is what the kids can do, this is kind of what their experience level is, this is what I'm wanting them to uh to develop. It was just kind of like, okay, here's the exercise packet, here's some beats, go make them better. And a lot of the time I'm walking into programs, which maybe I know the instructor uh from one experience or another, but I haven't been personally teaching lessons or doing camps here before, so I don't really know what's being taught or how they're being spoken to. So I'm left to my own devices to kind of figure these things out on the fly. Um, so one of the techniques that I started to develop was if I jump in here and start asking the students questions, like, okay, how do we really hold them out? Where do we stand? Uh what is a key signature? There's just these basic fundamental questions that I'm gonna very quickly learn what they know and what they don't know. Um, and shocker, uh none of the kids are great at describing any of these things. Um so it's good practice for them to have to work through like, okay, I kind of am familiar with this concept, but I can't, she's not gonna just let me hold my hand up and show her. She's gonna actually make me say the words and go through the process. So um that's a way that I have continued to use in every uh classroom setting that I'm in, even in my private lessons, of getting the kids not only to be more engaged but more uh cooperative in their own education. Um, because you know I can give them the answer, but they're being given the answer by all of their teachers all the time, and they're not memorizing these things. It's not really sinking in. But when a question of how do you do this, or why do you do this, or why do you think this is the most efficient way, and they have to really think through the process, it's gonna stay with them more. I mean, there's studies that show that this is true. You having to solve the problem on your own is going to be more long-lasting uh benefits than someone just telling you how to do it. Um, but that also leads to this beautiful thing of when you have three hours of time, all of a sudden it flies by because you're giving opportunities for everyone to communicate and to be a part of the conversation. Um, I have students uh play individually and then have other students give comments, um, both critically, but also positive comments, like what are you seeing this person do that looks really good or that sounds really good? Tell me about uh how does their posture look? Yeah, it looks better than all you fools in here. This is how you need to look. Um it's an opportunity to give props to students and help build individual confidence. Um, but it also uh allows people to be much more aware of the process and intrinsically makes it more long-lasting and uh more continuous throughout their entire percussion career.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, yeah. You know, Miss E sloss, um, if I were gonna write a book, I think I might write this book, the the Isloss method of teaching front ensembles, you know, like um everything you just described, uh, and I've seen you do this. Everything you just described takes a really high level of patience for the instructor.

SPEAKER_03 17:11

It does.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

And you uh you have such a uh gift for patience as a teacher. Um, and so uh I I definitely, I think when we first started teaching together, I had none of that. You know, I was like, we need to be good, we need to learn the music now, you know. And I would watch you just be so like, you know, it sounds easy. Oh, ask the students questions. Sure, great. Well, after like three seconds of silence, a lot of teachers, and myself included, especially younger teachers, they're just gonna answer the question. Yeah, you know, or they're gonna go to the kid that they know knows the answer. But you are so patient, and like if you're gonna do it this way, and and by the way, I think with front ensembles, magic is made over a long period of time.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

It is.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Like, you cannot great front ensembles are not made overnight. They just are not. And um, so you just have to have patience. You have to be okay with silence, you have to be okay with, like you said, going down the line, letting kids play individually, and then getting feedback. Um, and that can be a really hard thing to do.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

It can. And there's an art to the question answering, ask asking as well. Uh, I don't just typically ask a blanket question and wait for someone to respond or wait for the hand to come up because usually it's the same student every time or the same couple of students. I'll be very strategic with giving questions directly to a person, you know, and which can be useful for some of those younger or less uh kind of bought-in kids, especially that you will see in the front ensemble. Like you might have some kid on the rack that thought they were about to make center snare, had no clue what was going on, and uh are now playing suspended symbol roles because that's probably what all they're capable of. Um you can get them engaged in the conversation by giving them questions that they have to reach for a little bit, but you know that they're gonna be able to answer. You don't want to give them a question that's just a way above their head because they're not gonna buy into you. They're immediately gonna turn you off. This is an opportunity for you to earn their respect as well. And you can do that by feeding the right question to the right students. You can give advanced questions to the kids that have been involved in a long time and you know that they can they need to be pushed, and you can give kind of lob some easier ones off to the kids that need to build confidence and need to feel like uh they have a spot in this group as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Matt. Hey Matt, what do you think about that? Can you summarize what Mrs. Lassen Mr. Shear just said? That's another method that like to use. We got from uh Michelbreck, he was the master at this, is by saying the names of the students when you're directing them, you know, uh can can help in this situation to kind of wake them up or keep them engaged. Uh again, this, you know, in in full disclosure, I don't think that this is going to be a big shocker for everybody, but it's just it's genuinely harder for younger players nowadays, you know, uh than it than it was uh because Young people are just have grown up with so much uh stimulus, right? It's just harder to focus for longer periods of time, genuinely. Uh the and the the positive on the other side of it, though, is their exposure, right, is so so high. So they're capable of doing incredible things. I mean, I think all three of us in the room feel like we've taught uh young students there were significantly play better players than we were even when we were in college, right? Um, so but that's one of the tricks that you can keep them engaged is is by saying they're uh calling their name out um individually, right? Uh and like Mrs. La said, you don't need to just throw out these blanket questions. You literally go to the student, you know, Trenee, what count should the sticks come out on, right? Can you demonstrate that for the group? Uh, that type of thing. Uh, another great thing that you know, we used to do at North Texas all the time. I know that Paul still does all the time, uh, is down the line playing, right? And during these longer camps is one of the few times you are afforded the luxury time-wise to do these things. And as Miss C Slaw said, it can be very powerful if you feel like you're giving the student the same comment, hey, keep your beads together, keep your beads together. Uh, you see your beads are apart. Hey, try to have your beads in the center of the head, watch your left bead. If you feel like that's happening a lot, then you go down the line and student A plays, and then you ask student B, hey, what did you notice about student A's uh beads? And student B is like, yeah, one was in Capel and one was in Mexico City. All now the kid, you know, because the this is something that's very clear and obvious to fellow student, you know, right, it's it can kind of help with that type of stuff. Um uh yeah, uh another, you know, a good example also as well is you if you are afforded the luxury of having a staff, you want to give them as much sub-time as humanly possible. Uh like you want to resist the urge of of always coming together and just tracking outside without a met or something, you know. Like if you if you brought in a specialist to work with the quads or work with the base or whatever, the you know, front ensemble, give them as much time as possible. But there is an element of fatigue, especially with a younger group uh or or program, where changing the environment can help to keep the engagement. And one of the things that we do at Capel is our first block of the day, I think is like a three-hour block. The hour before lunch, the snares and quads get together and we work on rolls for 45 minutes. It's like every day the quads and the snares are having to move to another room for that last hour, and then they're performing with and uh other sections, right? You know, and then the last 15, the baseline comes in and enjoys us. And for the for the last 15 minutes, uh, age out podcast has this incredible fundamentals playlist that is basically chop builders, and they're all roughly around 15 minutes long. So you put on whatever you want to work on your triplet rolls, your paradigm, your accident tap, and it'll start at a slower tempo, and it's you know, maybe like an eight-bar exercise that increases by two clicks up to like 200 or something. And that's always a really positive uh experience, too, right before you send into lunch. So again, uh, you want to do subs as much as possible, but you know, read the room. And if if hey, if the last 15 minutes we all pull together is going to get the kids to focus a little bit more because they're in front of other staff members or other students, uh, then it's you, you know, that's a good thing to take advantage of.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

You know, Mr. Bush, you mentioned staff members and subtime and all that. I think another good rule of thumb, especially if you're a person that does not have uh a staff like Capel of uh a lot of people, maybe you can only get one person. Um I am gonna make an effort to put the very best. Obviously, we're gonna get the best teacher we can. I'm gonna put the best teacher with the weakest section. Um I can't remember if I said this on a previous episode or not. If I did, forgive me, but uh, my first year as a teacher, um, I was really fortunate to be able to hire one person to help me, and it was Dave Hall. And um and Mr. Hall, I was like, oh my gosh, yes. And the bass drums really needed a lot of help that year. And I was like, basses, meet Mr. Hall, you know, and I was like, I'm gonna give you the best metronome, the best space, the best everything so we can really make this section improve as much as possible. Yeah. Um Mr. Bush, I know something that I've seen you do a lot with the bass drums specifically, but also with other sections, is like you are strategically placing yourself in the room and the students in certain ways and using some, I don't like the word tricks, but um, things that are just like what I would put under the heading of like best practices for teaching. So can you talk about some of those a little bit? Like I know the stickers on the heads and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Yeah, yeah. Thank thank you, Mr. Shear. I I think a lot of it sends back to uh actually some values that I got from the Mass of Scouts back when I marched there, and then was very fortunate to teach with a lot of those guys, you know, specifically I'm thinking like T.R. Fitzgiven and Paul Weber and some of these guys, where we as a staff very much believe the students being a reflection of the teacher. And if we are going to ask them to do these things, and we ourselves are not projecting or willing to do those things, you know, it is we want it to feel more like we're on their side. We're not the boss mandating and coming at them, right? So I have found like if I'm asking the section to run back on the field and I am running back, that is more effective, right? And so this is another one of those things where uh like I want the baseline to know, or the snare line or whoever I'm working with, the battery to know, Mr. Bush is fully engaged. He's not on his phone, he's not checking this, he's not doing that, uh, he's not sitting in a chair, right? My legs work, thankfully. I hope to live long enough where they don't work as well as they do now, right? You know, and so I'm gonna use them while I got them. And I'm gonna be up and I'm gonna walk around and I am gonna have the right hands in the mirror, and I'm a trim have their left hands in the mirror, and I'm sometimes I'm gonna stand next to bottom base for four reps in a row, and then I'm gonna go up to top and I'm gonna look down the silhouette from the front to see the angles of the mallets. I just uh I'll do five reps in a row at the back of the room, just staring at their feet before I come over to third base and let her know, hey, your your left foot's not leaving this, you know. Um, I want them, I feel that they're gonna feed off of my energy, right? And if I'm coming in with the positive energy and I'm coming in with excitement and I'm engaged and uh, you know, I'm I I don't know. I can I can remember moments uh like at NT, for example, where we would play an exercise and we would go down the entire line. And after every individual played, Paul would then give that individual one comment. Yeah, and that really stuck with me. Like, like I could see, I could feel uh-oh, he's getting to the baseline. Okay, he's working down the baseline. Oh, now he's right next to me as I'm playing this, you know, Mambo pattern in my right hand on the rim against a cascade in my left hand that he just improvised right now, or whatever. And then the oh, what's the comment he's gonna tell me? And then he's like, hey man, can you play your tap softer? You know, or whatever. And it really, really stuck with me. And so this is the same thing. I I think that uh, you know, if you're just teaching from a chair, you just kind of plant yourself behind a music stand in front of Marimba 2, there's a lot you're missing out on from technique sound uh standpoint, sound just everything.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

Yeah. Um, one thing I would mention too that I have uh experienced myself as a teacher and also witnessed, especially other front ensemble techs or educators kind of struggle with sometimes is you gotta, especially in the front ensemble world, where you have so many kids in one room, uh various levels and attention spans, is you have to command the room.

unknown 27:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

You really have to be in charge. You have to be the leader. And um, I think it's very easy to get into a habit of this is just my teaching style, and this is the speed that I go, and these are the things that I say, and not keep in mind that the students are a part of that collaboration. Um, and I try to always keep an eye on the eyes of the students and the yawning that maybe is happening and the fidgeting that's happening, and use that to kind of guide the pacing of the rehearsal. Now, like you said earlier, Mr. Shearer, I'm very patient. Yes, and I will move very slowly, very intentionally, especially at uh our first full camp, in which this might be the only time of the year I have the uh opportunity to move this slow. But I would rather build the standard from the ground up and then uh be able to move from that uh foundation than have to feel like I'm constantly fixing problems that have arised because we move too quickly, right? Absolutely. But uh that requires the students to be willing to go there with me. And uh I have to be mindful. I I mean our students at CAPEL are excellent, and they I would like to believe they really trust me and trust in the process, so they will go there with me to a certain extent. Right? And so I'm going to make sure that I'm keeping an eye on them and see how much progress we're making throughout that time, going very slowly. And once I start to notice that they're losing that focus, that's either time for a break or we're gonna play a different exercise and move a little faster or go through uh a different level of challenges or whatever. But I'm gonna guide that off of what I'm seeing from their feedback.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

You know, what I hear you saying is there's an inverse relationship between speed and how much detail is going on, right? Like you're not just going slow because you're like, by golly, kids these days. We're gonna slow it down. You're saying, and again, I've seen you do this, um, we are going really slow because the level of detail is so high.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

And but you're also saying, like, hey, there might be some times where I give a little bit the other way. Absolutely. Like maybe we do need to move a little faster. And you're gonna be realistic about that level of detail, maybe coming down a little bit, you know.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Um, just I get a very practical example here. Is like, I know we've all judged, we've all taught students our vibrophone friends in the back row, you know, um, who like, you know, you talk about a wide range of abilities and types of students and stuff. Okay, meet the vibes sometimes, you know. Um, and I've just I've judged, and I know I've taught groups where it's like, hey, did you guys know there's a pedal? And um and I it's just you can find out so many interesting things from walking back there and just watching what are we doing with the pedal.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Oh my, we got one student that his doesn't work, right? And then we got one over here that pedals everything. And then we got, you know, and I remember um uh a camp at Kapel where it was like, okay, by golly, we are gonna get this pedaling right. I found out, and so we made a big deal of it. We got it right. Okay, great. I found out years later that one of those students had like gotten so into it, Lauren Dean. If you're listening, she made a pedal. I think if I I remember this correctly, there was like a pedal cam that I realized had been filmed years later, and I believe it was on YouTube at some point. But it was like, okay, yeah, that's good. Yeah, like yes, okay, you gotta really slow down to do that.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

And to reiterate that, because as arrangers, sometimes Miss Islas will even be asked, like, will you put the pedaling in the music? And and this happened with me, where it's like, Will you put will you put every sticking for the bass or whatever? Yeah, yeah. That does not solve the problem. Yeah, Miss Eslas can put every pedaling in there, but someone has to hold them accountable to that. Like, like I can remember a group like it with the instructor was very insistent, Doug, I need, I want every detail, exactly as if it was the cockpill baseline, like every sticking everywhere. And it's like, yeah, of course, of course, no problem. And then I come out to clinic the group, and unironically, you know, I'm working with the bases and 40% of it's changed. And I and the teacher's not there. I asked the basket, like, what happened? They're like, Oh, well, yeah, this guy came out to work with us and he said this was all wrong and he fixed it. And I was just like, Yeah, okay, cool. Okay. So again, that's that's one of those things, like, there, there's no quick fix here, right? You know, I mean, rule 12 in the book Master Hands is uh drumming is about attention to detail, and that attention to detail requires you to have patience and it requires repetition. Like you have to address it just because you told them the the stick should be in the center of the head once does not mean or that they shouldn't play on the nodes, it does not mean it's gonna happen. This camp is one of those few opportunities where you can really grind these things home through many different methods, and hopefully the students leave again with that clear understanding of what it is they're trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Mr. Bush, you mentioned changing the music during the camp. You know, and in our line of work here, you know, we've we've all been in groups, we've taught groups where it's like it seems like we went through entire rehearsals and all we did was deal with changes. You know, or like you said, you come into a group in like October or something, and it's like the music I'm looking at has no relationship to what I'm hearing. It's like so much has been changed. So that, you know, um, in general, I'll just say, and I think I learned this a lot from you guys like uh we should all be more hesitant to change things, number one. But number two, I think you would agree, especially during early season, like camp number one. I would challenge you, anybody who's listening, just commit to like, I'm not gonna change one thing. Yeah, I'm not gonna change one thing. But I really think it's fine. In September 1st, you can change it. But like I we've talked about this camp, there's so many things that you can only do at your summer camp, whatever that is. Yeah, and that time is so precious, don't waste it putting in a whole bunch of changes that may or may not stick.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Yep, there is a time and a place, and the kids can only process so much. And these beats were not written to go 120 or 130 or 140. They were written to go 172, and you're not hearing the band. You don't know how this thing goes or doesn't go with the band, and all these things, right? So, yeah, I I uh I do very much believe um, you know, I I had a great conversation with um uh Frank at Coper's Cove about this yesterday, who we write the beats for of like uh once they are in his hands, they're his. You know, once the beats leave our uh inbox and they're they're in your your folder, you know, we shared them with you, they're your and yes, you 100% should modify them as necessary to fit your needs in your group. Absolutely. This isn't like Mr. Bush's self-worth isn't destroyed if you take out that five lit single and you know measure 45. No, please, if you if that's what you need to do, do but as Mr. Shear's saying, you know, there's a time and a place. I don't think that the camp is the time and place to do it right now. This is the time to really ingrain procedures and fundamentals and quality and consistency. And then once it's actually at tempo and you've lived with it for about a week, then you know, of the actual season, now it's time to make uh, you know, strategic minimal changes. Strategic and minimal, yes.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah, no doubt.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

All right, guys. With that, I'd like to take a moment and thank you for hanging out with us today. If you have any questions for the podcast, send them to teameslos at gmail.com. That's teameslos, t-a-m, i-s-l-as-s at gmail.com. Shout out to all the great percussion companies that support teameslos, mapexmajestic percussion, remo drum heads, pro mark sticks and mouth, sabian symbols, beetle percussion, and lot ride apparel. Mr. Shear, in order to play all this advanced drumline music, you need to have a rock solid foundation. And that starts with your beginners. What book would you recommend starting your beginners with? Player's Guide for the Beginning Percussionist. Ooh, Missy Slots, where can they get a copy? Uh our listeners get a copy of this very own player's guide for the beginning percussionists.

SPEAKER_03 35:46

Um well, they can go to the internet and they can find their favorite uh music source.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Uh Steve Wise, we're gonna make it. Anywhere you can buy music, uh essentially you should be able to find a copy. Um hey, listen, if you can run a successful drumline camp that leaves the students wanting to practice all summer and the principal wanting to give you a raise, then don't forget to like and subscribe. Please give us that five-lip, five-star review. Remember, friends, step one is time, step two is sound, and step three is subcross is subscribing to the Team East Lost Podcast.