(yeah, it's a week late... I'm catching up)
It's been a tough season for winter percussion. We chose some pretty difficult music, and had to rotate our staff around because of schedule problems. Since I was busy with work at the same time, I wasn't able to get to all of the rehearsals and rework the music as much as I would have liked.
It took us a while to get through the first cut of the music, and then quite a while to polish it and make the parts sound good together. The kids were playing music that is probably more complex than most things out there, and trying to balance parts between the pit and battery (as opposed to having one group play while the other rests). They were doing it pretty well, but they weren't getting credit for it.
Part of the problem for balancing the sound is that many of the instruments are really made for outdoor use. All of the marching percussion instruments are loud by themselves, and putting 3-5 of them together (per section) and sticking them in a boomy gym is going to cause problems. On the other hand, pit instruments are pretty quiet (comparatively), and can't reach a volume even close to what the drums can. Because of this, the drums (bass drums especially) have to play REALLY soft while the pit plays REALLY loud - just to try and get a "balanced" sound. It works, but I feel bad for the drummers that don't get to play to their full potential.
Drumlines usually practice full strokes - where the drumstick goes from vertical (for snares and tenors) down to the drumhead - usually referred to as 12 or 15 inches. That would completely drown out the pit, so instead they have use much smaller strokes - only getting to about 3 inches away from the head at the highest point (in our case). This could be made somewhat better by using 'indoor' mallets - which don't make as much sound for larger strokes - and we'll probably use those next year.
For this year though - we just made due with what we had. After getting lots of comments from the judges the previous week, we spent a lot of time working on the dynamics - mainly bringing the battery volume down so it would work with the pit. We also added lots of extras to the show - trying to play up the "insanity" theme of the show. It was pretty fun to add the things, since we were already playing the music well. There were new visuals, facial expressions, jokes, acting moments, and other random things to try and help get the point across.
And... it worked! They performed their show at championships REALLY well, and they finally got credit for it. They got first in their division (which is really second, since it goes: champs, 1st, 2nd, ...) - which actually matches what we got last year.
The staff was pleasantly surprised, and I'd imagine the kids were as well. It's been a fun (and challenging) season, and I'm glad they got recognition for their hard work before it was all over.
