Featured Columns
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Written by Wayne Downey
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Monday, 27 November 2006 |
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 Welcome back to the "Land of All Things Brass." With marching band season coming to an end most performers are finding themselves involved in drum corps, local, district, regional and or state honor band auditions. To help those involved in these auditions I thought it a perfect time to discuss how to achieve a high level of success in preparing for and performing at an audition.
The ABC's of a Successful Audition
The first question everybody wants an answer to is: How do I control my nervousness before, during and after my audition?
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Written by Cozy Baker
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Monday, 20 November 2006 |
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 The stars of the Bands of America Grand National Championships held every November in the "RrrCccAaa" Dome are the youth of the approximately 535 bands which are whittled down to 92 of the finest. These regional contenders caravan to Indianapolis to select class winners and 12 finalists that joust in a battle of the bands in a Saturday night finale. At BOA and in Champions Sports Bar, a couple of blocks from the dome and Convention Center, I met more celestial champions, the close-knit family of Star United. SU is an exclusive club made up of past members from Bill Cook's and Jim Mason's Star of Indiana and past or current performers of Blast!, Shockwave, etc.
Given a choice of planning strategy to stand in line for a new Sony Playstation 3 or working the BOA gala, I happily opted for the performing arts. The $20 billion video gaming industry does fine without my input.
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Written by Allan Murray
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Monday, 06 November 2006 |
 In the last few years there has been a fair amount of discussion on drum forums about whether or not today's drum corps, marching bands and indoor percussion sections are playing anything difficult in relation to what was being played 10, 20 or even 30 years ago. With all these discussions happening I thought it would be appropriate to talk about for this first column of "Where's the beef?"
First of all, even though I can't say this for sure - seeing that I wasn't alive in the 40's, I suspect that the guys from that era were looking at me playing in the late 60's and early 70's and saying "Where's the beef?" Even though we played 250 plus flams in the first half of Berlioz' "March to the Scaffold" in 1974, I promise you that because we had a bell and xylophone player on the field, appropriate "musical tacits" were being adhered to for over-all musical integrity. I can just hear the old timers, and I use that term with affection, on the sidelines shaking their heads in disgust and saying that we weren't playing anything in comparison to their days. |
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Written by Cozy Baker
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Friday, 27 October 2006 |
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‘Boptitude’ test – Entertain or ‘educate’ into boredom and financial ruin? Roll out VK!
“I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.” ~ Pablo Picasso, 1881 - 1973
It was fowl play arising at cockcrow. Electric service abruptly ended for 15,000 residents in three north Alabama counties recently, shutting off alarms before half the folks were buzzed awake to get kids off to schools where they are still allowed, better yet, encouraged to exercise, to play tag far from Amherst, MA, forcing moms to put on makeup in the rayless gloom and dads to settle for a quick bowl of Honey Oats. It seems that a behemothic glob of bird poop had been allowed to accumulate over the years atop an insulator, and, when it fizzled out, spy satellites picked up total darkness on and near Sand Mountain, halfway to Spirit of JSU or CorpsVets or Music City Legend.
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Written by DCP News
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Tuesday, 17 October 2006 |
 Drum Corps Planet has expanded its DCP Store to include items from the Drum Corps World product catalog. Available now for purchase via The DCP Store are subscriptions to the DCW newspaper, the 432-page "A History of Drum and Bugle Corps - Volume 2" hardcover book, and the 1967 American Legion/CYO Nationals set of four DVDs that include four senior and 14 junior corps performances. Additional products from the DCW catalog will be offered in the future.
Drum Corps World Publisher Steve Vickers said, "John and I have had some great conversations over the last several months about exploring joint ventures, the first of which is making some of our hard-to-find audio and visual products available to the audience that regularly visits Drum Corps Planet. I'm excited about the added exposure and pursuing some of the ideas we've thrown on the table and future collaboration. Preserving and making available material from the past is important to me and I'm quite pleased that John Donovan shares that interest. Keep watching for additional offerings in the future."
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