Thinking about burning some CD's with the Virtual Drumline playback of our book and exercises so my students, who don't have access, or know how to use a metronome correctly, can get in some quality rhythmic practice. Just trying to gauge if any of you have tried and had any success using this method?

I've been doing that since VDL 1. Each member of my percussion section gets a CD with the full show recording, just the percussion, just battery or pit (depending on their instrument) and their instrument recording. The basses get the full bass line, just their part and everyone but their part.

On average, the show is memorized and up to tempo in about two days.

Wow, impressive results thanks for the feedback, good ideas for the bass line too!

hmm from a student's stand point

i'd do it. my line does it all the time.
and it really does help you learn and memorize it faster. and pretty great as far as playing on tempo as well.

if you're familiar with the drum solo "Four of a Kind" by Mike McIntosh, my line had that memorized in ..about 2 days like Drumcorpbc said.

as a student i'd suggest it. it really helps me as an individual, and i don't see why it wouldn't help anyone you teach.

It is a good method and effective. Another method I like is SmartMusic..you can put show music on there via finale and then send each person 1 file for each song, full instrumentation, and in SmartMusic you can remove instrumentation to be just you..just percussion..anyone but percussion, lows + percussion..percussion + brass only..etc etc based on any instrument thats in the show, that was the most effective for me.

I think it's a great tool for memorizing quickly and locking in tempos. Like any good tool it's only effective if used properly. The only concern I would have is that it could become a crutch for not being able to read well. I used to be a pretty good sight reader and was very proud of that skill.

It's great for learning how to play rhythmicly clean. Spirit of Atlanta did that in the mid 80's ( while Mike Back was there) and we also did it 2 of the 4 years I was there .

When I was in the bass line (98) we had all of our exercises with many loops all starting from slow ( 80 bpm ) all the way to 180. Our show music was done in phrases in 4 tempos. 1 very slow, 2 a little faster, 3 show tempo and 4 faster than show tempo. This was programmed on a drum machine by an alumni and we got them at May camp.

Our bass line was rhythmicly and dynamicly clean by the end of the first week of all days. As for the other sections..... they did not do the practice on your free time with a tape ( yea it was the 90's) thing.....