Gafoo’s Blog

This was probably the best weekend of my life!!! A weekend filled with drumming of all levels. Here are some recaps for you…

(note…all pictures are clickable to full size versions of the photos)

It started with Bell Gardens Drumline, a school I teach in a sort-of bad neighborhood in the L.A./Commerce area. They are freaking cool as hell and have turned into a very good drumline in a really short amount of time. It has been a lot of hard work with these guys as so many of them are brand new as of this year (including one very lucky snare drummer who barely made the cut at auditions!!) but they are drumming with the best of them. This is their 1st year doing drumline competitions and the director and I have placed them in an old circuit that they are doing quite well in. This past saturday saw us technically recieving 3rd place. I say technically because we recieved some timing penalties that knocked us into 6th. Oh well, you win some and you lose some, but regardless, these guys came home winners in my book…

One of our tenors players, simply known as “Pringles.”

The Bell Gardens Snareline.

The Bell Gardens Pit (say, does that xylo remind you of anything South ever did?)

And last but certainly not least…The BG Bassline!!!

Immediately following this competition was another competition all the way on the other side of Los Angeles. So Alyssa, Shaun (my bass drum tech for both schools) and I get in our cars and drive for about an hour north to Fontana where Montebello is arriving at A.B. Miller HS for their warm-up and finals performance.

I have written about these kids before several times on this blog. They are without a doubt, the most talented kids I have personally ever come across in the high school level. I was literally throwing more and more notes at them the entire time I was with this school and they just ate it up like candy. Over the course of a few rehearsals I had them playing So Cal Dream’s drumline cadence! It was just ridiculous how talented these guys are and not only that, but they are such hard working kids as well. They have a long history of being a power house parade marching band and it shows in the level of dedication they have to each other and to the school. I feel very fortunate to have been able to work with them this season. Anyway, enough gushing, on to the good stuff.

As good as these guys were at the parade marching, and as talented as they are at the rudimental drumming, their program is deeply rooted in 70’s and early 80’s style marching and playing. IE. they are REALLY good at marching forward but we had to work with them all season to be able to march backwards as well as doing the side-to-side style marching. As a result, all season our visual scores were kinda in the toilet. Also, these kids can play a LOT of notes but they do so in an older, more tense way. They grip the stick really tight and play with very little rebound. So for myself and the staff, our job was to take their talent and ability and bring it into the 21st century so to speak.

This season, this drumline saw their score being consistently lower than everyone else in the A class drumlines. The main reasons were the visual score which bled into their GE score. It was a little disheartening to see it happen because they worked so hard to achieve so little. This competition however, something had changed…

They played with such relaxation and such confidence…

They played with newfound skills and abilites…

They moved on the field with a grace that I hadn’t seen from them before…

For about 7 mins, the gym came alive with the sights and sounds of our drumline. They had the “golden show” and it was intense for everyone in the gym that day.

We ultimately placed 6th out of the 10 lines in our division but it didn’t matter the score they got or the placement they got. It was enough for me that they broke out of their shell and played the snot out of their show and enjoyed doing it. It’s times like these that I always remember why I love doing this.

Such is drumline, such is life!!!