Oh Black Fire, yeah they're pretty good. If i didn't suck at that visual stuff, i totally wouldn't mind joining them

SARCASM ON

Director only being worried about the music and and not drumline visual...WTF? He needs to be fired. If he doesn't care enough to make sure that the drumline's visuals are in order he needs to go back to school at Auburn and take the classes that he missed. (the preceeding sentence is brought to you by the letters D and A...somebody will get it)

SARCASM OFF

A friendly piece of advice to some of you guys, please get your drumming priorities in order. If the music isn't clean, there shouldn't be visuals. Visuals are used for timing purposes and to add something extra to the part. If you can't play the actual music, you don't need the extra, because you don't have "the required" down. I don't care if your line does not do competitions and it is to impress the general crowd at a football game, you should have enough respect for yourselves as musicians to get something clean and right before you worry about visuals.

that is what we do, but we don't even have more than one cadence. That cadence is used for marching into and out of the stadium, parades, and a stands tune only played in the 3rd quarter (we dont get third quarter off)When we had the cleanest line in the past few years, we still had the one cadence. Everything was cleaner that last year, where all but 3 of the drumline was freshmen, that were lazy (one got kicked off.)

I didnt say that visuals are required, just that it pleases the crowd. The high school crowd doesn't look for the music, just that it sounds and looks cool. I, myslef would rather have a sqeaky clean line than a crap line with a ton of visuals. Cleaness, really, is the ultimate visual. If you can get 5-11 snares clean, and precise, then seeing that many in unison... indescribable... I just think that after you get a clean line, you can add a little bit of visuals (EW 2003 Vid on youtube; small tenor visual in a break)

I don't know, i guess I may be ignorrant of drumline stuff because i play trombone. I don't get the chance to experience being part of a drumline like most all of have, or had.

You seem to want it both ways. In the initial quote of yours that I mentioned earlier, you were complaining about your director only worrying about the music and not about the visual. Now, in the above post you say you want a squeaky clean line. While it is possible to be clean and have visuals, that is not the way you came across in the first comment. You seemed to want to please the crowd more than you wanted a clean line (and your 2nd post has a little of that in it too).

Now, let me touch on the one cadence thing. It is not uncommon for a line to only have one cadence. Most lines in my area (which is not all that far from you) only have one cadence that is used for exactly what you mentioned (parades, stadium in/out). I guess I just don't understand why the obsession with more than one cadence.

last thing...maybe your director doesn't add more (visuals, more cadences) because the one cadence you do have is not clean.

I'm with drumholio on the cadence thing. One group I work with has had the same cadence since I was in HS and before. I believe the group has had the same cadence for about 20 years now. No one complains and everyone loves it. People know it. Why would we need anything else?

If you wanna be good at visuals, join a cheer leading team or color guard

I like it, I think it is cool how they mix bass and snare licks in with the show style instead of a typical show line that has the snares pounding out quarter notes and dancing and then the bass line just playing unison stuff the entire time.

Two different styles of play with two different purposes. So in that sense it is hard to compare them. I just wish we could call it drumline and leave all the show/corps style stuff out of it.

Anyway, you gotta love Black Fire.