Hello everyone.

I instruct an independent line. Our members have pretty much no experience doing drumline "drumline-style". They have experience from military bands and concert bands, and most of them joined because they thought it sounded like an exciting project. So, things are going fairly well, but there is one problem though. They think that working on warmups and technique as a line is BORING. They´re not focused during our warmups, and it seems like they just do it because I tell them to. I know that if they were really into it and gave it as much focus as it demands, this would not be the case. How can I, as an instructor, make our warmup sessions more intense, and make it more interesting for them? And finally, how does one get them in the right mindset so that progress can be achieved?

Ok, I had this problem with freshmen last year in my line. During warmups they really had no focus whatsoever, and that led to no focus during rehersal. Here are some things you can do to remedy that situation.

-Write fun warmups Or find some that are fun to play
-I dont know if you do this already, but if you don't it might help if you play along with your students while they do the warmup exercises. This way you teach by example and it shows your students that in order to get good, they have to do these. It's not an easy pill to swallow for some, but eventually they will get the point
-after the warmup play some thing that really jams. This gets the students excited about playing.

I hope that these help
Robbie

You could get them a really advanced warmup, that'll keep 'em busy for a while, trying to learn it, and usually the really advanced warmups, once you conquer them, pretty much fun to play

Something like double beat?

The point of warm ups is to work on basic things. By making warm ups more difficult note-wise than necessary, it loses effectiveness in that it means less time teaching technique (and other more "important" music, i.e. show music) and more time teaching the notes in the warm ups.

One thing I've found helpful is drumming to music, rather than a metronome. With groups that aren't necessarily in it to be "hardcorps," using other methods beyond the Dr. Beat is essential to keeping interest. Remember that they are partcipating for fun and excitement, and approach that attitude accordingly. By finding a couple songs at different tempi, it becomes much more interesting to play 8s. Swing jazz is good for triple diddle warm ups. Funk is good for Sanford-style double beat exercises.

First of all the thigns I consider "warm ups" are 8 on a hand and 25 legatos. Otherwise I call what my lines play exercises. An exercise works a specific skill or group of skills...a warm up does just what the name implies.

As to your question I would say write your own charts. When I write its all about writting somethign that is functional, fun to play and something you would enjoy listening to(over and over and over). Like anything else no one wants to play something thats boring to play and listen to.

write some cool groove warmups that develop skills as well as, well, warm the drummers up. If you don't want to write any, Revolution has some good groove warm-ups that also do a good job of developing technique. www.revolutionypa.org

come up wit some new ones..

Gotta eat the vegetables before you get the dessert, if you know what I mean.

Honestly, I think we live in a society where people want there own way too much when it comes to an organization, a job, or whatever discipline. That group needs to conform to the organization that they come under, not the other way around. When I was in drumline, the band director or drumline instructor was the last word. We drilled boring marching techniques & drumline fundamentals all day long at camp because we knew the outcome...excellence. Making things fun is what pre-school teachers do to make little kids mind. Honestly, Tension- Bolt your line just needs to grow up & follow your direction, boring warm-ups or exciting warm-ups. You make the call...Good luck & Best wishes...

what one of my instructors did was he had someone play a really cool beat on the drumset while we played 8's at the same tempo. He said for us to groove with it, we didn't have to stand perfectly staight. After a few minutes we were all goovin and it made the warmup fun.

I'm all for funky exercises, but I think some warm-ups really can't be 'groove-ified', they need to exercise certain parts of drum theory and get your hands used to doing them, day in day out, robotically. But that doesn't mean they should be boring. Eight on a hand is an exercise that takes about a minute to learn but a lifetime to master. Every time you do warm-ups you should analyze every part of your technique, and your accuracy and precision in playing in time with the met/the rest of the line. As for other things, like accent, roll and flam pieces, try them out at different tempos, and reversed stickings, one of the most fun and challenging things I think is taking a grid exercise and running its phrases forwards and then backwards, then forwards, without stop to see how well I can adjust. And remember, keep working on and examining your technique and timing, there's always that last tenth of one percent of perfection to strive for. DCI world championships have been won and lost by those kinds of margins. =0

I would tell them to grow up....playing clean as an ensemble should be fun enough.

The problem with my line is that there isn't a whole lot of talent. Now I'm not proclaiming to be a brilliant drummer; I'm just ok in the scheme of things, but my line plays oversimplified exercises that don't help us improve...

I am of the opinion that people have gotten way to concerned about whether or not something has a 'groove' to it rather than if it works a specific issue. All people wanna do is play something that is groovin' rather than playing an exercise that will actually help them more. Of course everyone wants to have fun...but what ever happened to having fun playing clean and musically? If you want to play something that grooves then write a cadence....

Warmups are meant to warm up. Not groove and draw a crowd. That is the purpose of a cadence, or maybe even an onfield (with the exception of Grevious Groove - it's a misleading name).

Warmups and exercises are designed for just that...warming up and developing techniques. There is no point in handing out "cool" warmups if it is beyond the grasp of the individual players. You'll do more harm than good.

That being said, there have been some good ideas presented so far. I personally like playing music during the warmups, but you have to do your homework before hand. Know what songs you are going to play and what tempos you need. iTunes has a column that will let you input the tempos. Go to www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm and find the tempo of your music. Remember to use lots of variety in you selections.

Next, write some of your own exercises, or better yet, have the members of the drumline write and submit exercises. My criteria for submissions is that they have to play ALL the parts for me themselves before they are considered (this avoids writing stupidly hard parts for the sake of writing stupidly hard parts).

I thought I should add something I discovered while playing some of our new warm-ups with a snare player after practice today. If you have a tap accent exercise, and it is boring and everyone plays the same accent pattern, have different sections play different accent patterns. We have this in a new tap accent exercise, and it is extremely fun to play!

Yea thats exactly what we do...it makes it way more interesting