it's not fair for him to yell, and i don't think you need to be off the line, i'd practice the zones until i got muscle memory kicking in.

He has every reason to get mad. Every tenor player should be able to hit correct playing areas with his eyes closed. Yelling usually doesn't get much done, but don't make excuses.

True. USUALLY.

Sometimes there is no better way to get your point across and get the group/individual to listen, or understand that there is an issue then to raise your voice. The problem is, WHEN to do it so it's effective and LIMITING it so that it doesn't happen so often that they tune you out.

Here's an example: Paul Rennick HATES people swearing around him (i.e. "tour mouth"). He would even get on people in the lunch line if he ever heard it, but I KNOW that if we ever heard Paul swear during rehearsal, we knew we were in trouble and had better get our crap together. Didn't happen very often, thank goodness, but it made us understand that we were not doing our jobs.

Not sure how your situation happened, but outside of blatant Jerry Springer-type abuse, suck it up and play your drums.

On the topic of zones...

Even if you can't SEE where the zones are, you should be able to FEEL and HEAR where they are. On any drum. I think it was mentioned before, but hand placement and muscle memory are more important than actually trying to look to see where you're supposed to be playing. Besides, while you're marching drill and rammin' beats there isn't really enough time to study your zones anyway!

Quad players are kind of lucky considering our playing zones are in the "sweet spot" of the drum giving it optimal rebound. Snare and bass drummers don't get quite as much because their drums "speak" better with the zone in the middle, but on any battery instrument you can feel and hear your zone almost as easy as looking at it.

Good quad lines don't look at their drums.

BTW - Is the "blind" guy with Cadets? For some reason I thought he marched quads for BD.

i don't think that he should be yelling at you because of a disability you have, but that should motivate you to work harder and not play in the wrong zones. the middle of the drum and the edges create a different sound, so use you hearing to fix it. also muscle memory. keep practicing playing in the edges and you will automatically play there after a while of practice.

Yeah, Practice with a mirror. One thing that I would do is Bend forward so the to of the drums face the mirror, and look at where your hands are. But do this sparingly. Like what was said above, the best way is muscle memory and listening for correct tone.

he marched cavies (im pretty sure) cadets and rhythm x

He wasn't entirely blind. He had a disease that destroyed his vision to the point where in 2006 he just saw blobs of color and faint shapes. But if he can march the Cadets and play correctly, then that means so can you if you put the time in!

The guys name it s Matt Bowers. He marched Cadets in 06, and BD in 07 and this year. He didn't march Cavies. I have no idea if he marched Rhythm X.


pretty sure hes the the second quad in, in the picture

Tenor Pad

My school owns a pad that looks just like that except its for quints and not 6 drum. anywayz as u can see that pad has the playing areas isolated in a way. so if u can get a hold of a pad like this it wouldn't be a bad idea of learning ur playing areas. or atleast thats how i learned them. so if u hear anything but the rubber then ur hitting the wrong area. just figured i'd suggest this hope it helps
and as far as size comparison to real tenors i sat our pad on top of our tenors and they're really close in size.

and as far as using actual tenor mallets on the pad they don't work so great.

That pad has a good idea in theory, but if you use scrape zones it's not so hot. Great for finding proper 'normal' zones though.