well damn... you asked for any faults/ and or what we all feel about your OH SO GREAT IDEA, so we're just telling you.

no need to call me "tonto", i'm not the one running around with a plan every 5 seconds to recrute 12 year olds that can't even hold a stick yet. yeah, real good idea. show them DCI video's. that will make em' wanna join. show them the best of the best, and then tell them that not many people make it that far. real encouraging.

you know.. one thing, and i'm sure that most older people on this site have known as well.
If something works, don't fix it.

in other words, the recruiting process was fine untill someone (aka frankie) didn't do his job of getting new people last year. word of mouth.

remenber, there are a few meetings and a concert for the jr. high, and you get to talk with the high school kids that are/ will be IN THE LINE when they join for the following season.

a little kid in 6th grade isn't going to know if he wants to join marching band in 2 years at that time. hell, they don't even know what marching band is, let alone a drumline, technique, or anything like that.

and one more thing... notice how in the junior high there is ONE percussion player who practices, and ther rest are "arrogant"... and notice that you and that one other person are the only 2 that are in the drumline. doesn't that tell you something... they are in band to be jackoff's and not to learn...

Sorry, I meant to put "I sucked so I stopped going" sorry!

I think it is a great idea. I remeber my jr high BD sucked and never taught us anything. If we did it wrong, he said, "You're doing it wrong."... that's it. He wouldn't show us the right way. I wished I had gotten serious about drums alot a lot earlier than I did. Light a fire under them.

Weasel, stop being such a jerk.

And if people do quit because of seeing someone play, well, you don't want them on your line anyway. I taught my cousin and his buddy how to play drums since they were in the 5th grade and they wail b/c of it. If they hadn't had that time, they might not be as good. Most jr highers don't know how to practice. When I was in jr high, reading through my music was practice to me. 8 on a hand, what the heck was that? I works, it really does. Go for it Boom. Don't let anything discourage you. I used to offer free lessons at my old jr high. Not one person called. FREE LESSONS. They can suck then.

Maybe what you want to think about doing is starting a year round percussion ensemble or something to that extent. I know a lot of schools have a seperate percussion ensemble or symphony that rehearses or practices all year round that is open to grades whatever. That way if you start with the tutoring at a younger age, the kids then have something to focus their new skills on, they aren't just sitting on them in a band class. That is what we are thinking of doing at the school where I volunteer. It is very commendable that you want to help these kids become better percussionists but the big thing is you don't want to give them the tools and not have them be able to use them constructively.

Ok, I just read this whole thing and have a few things to say.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with ideas. If the world didnt have ideas then I wouldnt be typing on the keyboard of my laptop and watching the 2003 DCI DVD's right now....so keep having your ideas. The trick is to either be organized yourself to implement them or find someone else (maybe a little bit older in your case) to get the ball rolling.

There seems to be 3 people in this discussion from the same school/drumline. Instead of going back and forth about this over a computer screen, why dont you do it in person. That would make things so much quicker.

Drumweasel, you seem to have some bitter feelings for one reason or another. Don't take them out on your younger members because you arent happy with the way your final years of high school drumline are working out. Maybe, just maybe, if you and some of the other older members of the line showed the middle schoolers what was fun about being a percussionist, they wouldnt be in band to slack off.

Finally, the numbers that were thrown out about the size of the elemetary, junior high, and high school bands are completely irrelevant because something like this has never been done in your school system before....so you never know if something is going to work if you dont try it. It might fail, it might succeed, but if you never try it...then your just left wondering what could have been.

I thinks it's a great idea. Especially now with our drumline. We're losing all of our talented members as Seniors and the lower classmen don't take as seriously as they did. If we could recruit other guys (or girls)(our drumline is all guys and our pit is all girls just the way things turned out and we've never had a girl snare in 45 years of our school so if any girl whants to change that it would be nice) before they all go to different sport like football or soccer and even basketball. I've seen so much stick talent and chops go to waste with football or other sports. I'm not saying it's bad that they do that, but it's such a waste of talent. And the Movie Drumline will help a little bit. It's things like that that make people want to join.

Our school does this every year, at both elementary schools. We bring our field band down, we bring our concert band down, we even bring our jazz band down. The kids love it! I recommend that you do it. Kids love to hear the instruments, and if you did it with the drumline, they'd love it even more. We played at Funtasia in Gorham, and those kids loved us! I definitely recommend it.