"Punish" them? To the pit?

You seem to have the wrong idea, dude.

Pit is no worse than bass. If they can't learn their bass music, they should by no means be trusted with a pit part, even if it's only temporary.

xP

hm
we have four basses
five is really the ideal number of basses though
although it does sound amazing when you can get a large number of basses to play a crazy 32nd note run =)

yeah, we are going to now have a 7 man bass line for the second year in a row, its sounding really good.

this dude said it as plain as it can and should be said..if they can't learn one rythm on one drum how do u expect them to learn rthms and such on the mallet percussion as well as memorizing the notes? not to mention any kind of suspended cymbal or what ever sideline percussion instrument you might need as well?

I agree for the most part with the above statements about the pit. But I think that the reason most people get "sent to the pit" and whatnot is moreso because of the marching AND playing. I could be wrong. But it's kinda more like who can play what and who can play what the best that decides our line. We don't really have formal tryouts. I don't know how that many other high schools do it, but ours are more like "instrument fittings" as our percussion director likes to call them. But in my opinion playing cabasa and cymbal rolls is slightly easier than remembering sets and step sizes AND playing. I don't know if you all agree with that or not, but that's the way I see it. I'm not saying that concert bass drum hit is less important than the marching percussion part, just a lil easier to stand and do it than remember all the sets too.
That's my two cents.
Peace

thats the way my instructor does things. we don't really have formal auditions either. he just kinda moves us around to different things and sees who does best on what drum.
and then he assigns us to our drum by what drum suits us the best. i assume thats what u meant by "instrument fittings" right?

Yup, that's what I meant. Pretty much exactly how it works here. The only bad thing is that sometimes someone who could and possibly should be playing one drum is on another drum, even though they like the one they're on.

haha that or someone gets put on a drum even though its not the drum that suits them cuz no one else suits it either haha

we generally march 7 bass'...but in '05 and '06 we had 8 bass'....our bass line is very very competitive, so we march whatever numbers our talent level permits us to do; as long as the rest of the line is balanced of course....

4-5