So I'm at the end of my season. My last football game is tommorow night and after that, marching is pretty much over. I've realised that twords the end of the season everyone just gets tired and start to put it on autopilot. They just go to practice to "go through the motions". People are more irratable during practice and it just doesn't seem like fun. Also, this usually tends to be right when we start going to competitions. Is there anything that you guys do to kind of "pull through" the rest of the season?

maybe at the end of a season, parts may feel cliche. morale boosters are a quick cure for these. like a hackfest? onfield warmups played especially dirty, but loud? just having fun with it, going over the top with normal things can light it up.

For us competitions were the highlight of our year, and football games were seen as practices. So we never had a problem with burnout toward competitions. They, and Mardi Gras parades, were the things we looked forward to the most.

Try and make a fun practice. Maybe try to play the songs as slow or as fast as you can. Anything to break from routine and to give everyone a break.

Write a piece in which everyone plays a different instrument. A tenor drummer playing cymbals for a few days might give him a new appreciation for what he has. A cymbal player getting to play tenors for a few days would be a lot of fun, and might give him some motivation to practice more.

Have the bottom two and the top two bass drums switch drums so the bass line is inverted. Then have them play the show. It sounds sooo. Also, have the line harmonize their voices like a barbershop quartet. If you are really bored, have the bass drums play their show on their cheeks, using their mouth to pitch to their own drum. We've had a blast with all these.

I know what you mean. But that happens all the time when you have a group of people playing and working together over a long period of time. As far as percussion, we get into a circle and just jam out to our cadences as loud as we can. No marking time, no trying not to be dirty, we just play them as they come. It's fun for us, and it's fun for the rest of the band to listen.

ususally at about the midway point of every season, and towards the end of the season we have a series of meetings...The seniors have a meeting, the under classmen have a meeting, the section leaders have a meeting, and the individual sections have meetings...basically what we do is we talk. Just kinda get an idea of what our feel for the season has been so far and to get an idea of what everyone's goals are...Usually that works pretty well...

and like most everbody else has suggested...just find a way to have fun. Jamming to your on-field warm-up and/or cadence is the best. Or if you have a fun warm-up that everybody likes playing(we play thirteen...the Vanguard warm-up...no we don't do variation 4. leave that for the pro's lol)just jam to that. I would suggest doing like the Cavies did on the 'Making the Machine' dvd when they played Latin Lover. Have everybody form a 'mob' in the middle of the field and just jam. That will release snugglebunny of tension and will be fun for the battery. And the band can join in and be the crazy people cheering and dancing and stuff. It's all about trying to keep momentum going and trying to just hold together as a collective