QuebecSOP

La Releve Musicale is the feeder corps for Les Stentors from Sherbrooke. I think they still alive. I am the program coordonator for a group from the subburb of Montréal for 3 years now. The name of the group is Les Ambassadeurs de la Montérégie. We are not planning to tour this year, but we will do a lot of show and parade in the province of Québec and in the northeast of the USA. This year, we are planing to go out with 12 brass, 6 drums, 6 pit players and 12 colorguard. Our show this year is a tribute to Carlos Santana. We are a young organisation and we want to put everything in place before touring with DCI.

View PostHowdy, on 17 January 2011 - 06:12 PM, said: For the most part with a few exceptions like this one this has been a good healthy civil discussion. Please follow the forum rules and stay on topic and off personal attacks. I do not want to see this discussion closed down because posters refuse to follow the rules. Well, that confirm my thought. Humility, humility and humility!!!! I didn't want to break any rules or offend anybody. However, if you don't want to be attacked, you should revise some of the comments you made in this thread. A lot of them were arrogant, classless, and attacked directly the members of the show you show to us. Back on topic 1- Any good designer and staff have to adjust their expectation and their style of teaching to the level of the members they get. The show design and overall difficulty have to reflect the level of the membership. So, less talented members = easier conception. More talented member = More difficult conception (more blind move). 2- With that in mind, the choice of teaching the Dot technique or the form dressing, is up to the type of visual design and demand. I truly think that the staff who teach in World Class group know what they are doing, and wich option to choose to acheive the best result. Once again , please excuse my poor english, I hope you can understand what I mean.

Why are you arguing with Howdy? For me, he's out of is mind. He simply don't understand the fact that some people don't thing like him. He seem to not beeing able to evolve. For me, he don't have any credibility or class at all. By the way Howdy, where did you teach to denigrates everybody like this? Cadets, Cavaliers, Blue Devils maybe? Maybe your'e simply too good for them. Or they are simply not ready for your vision. Maybe it's time for you to let go and take a break to set your mind. Without offence, Mario P.S.: Soory for the bad english. Also, I don't want to be rude in my comment, I just don't master your language.

Schilke!!!! I played a lot of Bach (some great, some terrible) and Yamaha. They are great instruments in general. Yamaha are more consistant. But for almost the same price, you can have a Schilke. I'm just in love with my B1.

485$ for the trumpets; 526$ for the mellophones; 590$ for the baritones; 1050$ for the tubas.

Recently while surfing on internet, I saw the Schiller marching brass. They are cheap, really cheap, and I wonder if anybody tryed them or heard about? There is the link: Schiller Thank you.

Most of the time, dexterity problem occur when the muscles of the right hand are stressed. Relax your fingers, more importantly your thumb, and place only the tip of the fingers on the valves. Do the test: keep your thumb stressed and try to move your fingers........ So, always relax your right hand muscle muscles to improve your finger dexterity.

Please excuse my lame english. The fact happened this year in Allentown for the Cadets show. During the show Sarah said that she want to see what happiness is.... So we were in the stand, a bunch of quebecers with our own interpretation of it. One guy said:" She wanna know what A #####(thing between your leg) is, I will show her what A ##### (thing between your leg)is." With all the gesture. Total lack of respect I know, but so funny in the stand.

Well, I'm not sure how to describe DYNASTY Bb/F Bugles !!!!! We bought 82 brass from them, brand new. About 50% of the instruments had tremondous manufacturing problem of consistency. On the 14 mellophones, 7 can't reach the High C. Not the player, but the instruments. I play tested every single High brass. For the intonation issues, well, a mellophone still a mellophone!!!! For the trumpet the problem was obvious since not a single trumpet played the same. We bought more then 30 trumpet. We had some light weight, heavy weight trumpet. We had some trumpet with a kind of #25 leadpipe and some other with a more constrictive blow. Some don't had any resistance at all. In fact, we order only one model, the .464" bore!!!! After only 8 month of use, those instruments needs a lot of repair. Stickink valves, welding job. Lead pipe on the tubas who didn't hold in place. Suspiscious vibration in the instruments. In general, those instruments don't seem to be made to play in ensemble. We had tremondous trouble to tune them. In 440 we had a great sound from the trumpet but we were unable to tune the tubas. In 444 we were able to tune the tubas but not the baritone. In 438 we were able to tune the baritone but not the trumpet!!!!!! Freaky!!!! In fact, we have 48 instruments who are great. But for the rest .......... The only thing I can complaint is the poor consistency of the instrument. As I said to my player, if you can do it right once you can do it all the time. No excuse. They should follow that.I hope DYNASTY will be kind enough to came check our instrument and replace the instruments who have trouble. More than 150 000$ is a big amount of money to have almost 50% of the instrument who didn't work as they should!!!!

Thank you for the appréciation Adam. Our members will be proud to hear your comment. We are officialy 74 horns. Unfortunatly, some members have other commitments and won't be with us at the DCA show. We will be around 64 horns in Rochester. Once again thank you.

Hello everybody. If you want to hear some of our latest rehearsal just follow this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqSdpYo699w Don't forget, most of those players didn't play since the 60's or the 70's before last year !!!!! What a progress since last year :) See you at DCA. Thank you

Since this week, Les Diplomates are the owner of 79 brand new Dynasty Bb instruments. We decided to buy 31 .464" silver Trumpets, 14 F Mellophones, 24 Baritones and 10 BBb Tubas( 4valves M875s). The question about G instrument was higly discussed in the process of buying instrument. We already have more than 60 G bugles (2 and 3 valves), so to add 20 more instruments was not to expensive. We simply didn't keep G bugle for many reason. 1- Each member, staff and director have to pay 1000$ to be a lifetime member of les Diplomates, after that each member have to pay 250$ as an annual fee. For that reason, we decided to give them the best instrument possible. 2- Our brass arranger, Leon Bernier, is a world class composer and arranger. He wrote for many symphony orchestra (the Quebec Symphonic Orchestra and the Montreal Symphonic Orchestra), for many movie and TV show, he wrote for many pop singer and he was the main composer and arranger for Radio-Canada. So, once again, we decided to give him instruments in keys who he is confortable to write for. 3- Simply for the value. Most of the organisation now goes for Bb instruments. We had 80 000$ to spend, why buying G bugles and don't be able to sell them if anything happened ? 4- It's more easier to add instrument in the key of Bb or F on the line, than G bugles. It's really easy to add Picollo trumpet, Flugelhorn, cornets, french horn or trombone to our line to add different color and texture. 5- For a better intonation!!!!!! 6- Yes we are an Alumni Group, but we don't want to play loud, loudest and louder all the time. We want to play entertaining music, maybe older music, but with a touch of modern and up to date interpretation and arrangement. So for that we need instrument who are able to produce all the notes to vary the keys and to be able to explore all the modulation and texture possible when we will need them. (well, sorry for that sentence, I do the best I can in english :P ) I know that Yamaha, Kanstul and King instrument are better than Dynasty. But, for the value Dynasty are hard to beat. For the same price, we had the choice between Dynasty, Jupiter and Besson (?). The choice was obvious. Once again, thank you for all your comments. They were really appreciate. Mario Beaulieu Brass Caption Head

Soon, Les Diplomates from Québec City, will maybe have some 3 valves G bugles to sale for november or december. I will take the information on what we will do with our G bugles since we go in Bb.

Thank you all for your suggestions, Well, I know that good technique and good comprehension of how to make a great characteristic sound is essential and no equipement whatsohever can change anything in a bad habit. We spend a lots of time on proper breathing technique, long tone, slurs, color matching, airflow, proper articulation (this is not easy.........) and all of those basics stuffs. And after 10 months of rehearsal they begin to understand those stuffs........ Their not perfect, but they improve really fast. But, I have player who didn't play for more than 25 years and some for 40 years. The average age is around 52 years old. So, for their own pleasure, we need something who is easy to play and can "forgive" some of their mistake. I have an old bach Stradivarius here and she is really forgiving, but the sound is not so great. Lack of projection, thin sound and average intonation. The Holton I use right now, is way more difficult to control, but when you can play on it, men, the sound is really fat, project really well (maybe too much sometimes) and any notes are easy to hit with great tone production. My concerns about Dynasty was about that. My player try so hard to come back in shape. I don't want them to be discourage by an instrument they can't handle. You know, my old guys, who work really hard, don't have the same capacity in term of air or muscle anymore. You should see them trying to outpast themself to every rehearsal. They are amazing. So, finally we decided to go on a brand new Dynasty horn line without the micro tuning with the .464" bore for trumpets. Unless Minnesota brass can make us the deal of the century for their horn line :) Once again thank you for all your suggestions. Hopping to see you soon on a DCA field

Thank you Jeff for your answer about the Dynasty trumpet. I also have a Werill trumpet in my Wardrobe. I did my college year with that monstruous green trumpet Therefore I still not totally convinced by the quality of the Dynasty trumpet. All the groups I heard who played with those trumpet suffered of constant lack of warmth in their sound as soon as they play more than forte and the intonations issues was way more noticeable than other groups with other brand of trumpet. Then tone color was uneven throughout the register and troughout the dynamics. Those issues bother me a lot. Also the sound of those trumpet don't seem to "stand togheter", the sound seem to spread really easily. Those are my own opinion based on what I heard. I wonder if it will be possible to try a Dynasty trumpet before buying 24 of those. So I will be able to have my own opinion on the instrument. You know, most of my player are come back player who didn't play for more than 25 years So I need an instrument that they will be able to handle and an instrument with good intonation. By the way, if we buy Lacquer instrument, we will save more thant 11000$ so we will be able to buy better trumpet. So forget the Amati, Blessing and Besson I've listed above. There is my new choices 1- Yamaha YTR 4335G 2- VanCleave MV2 or MV3 3- Getzen Capri 590 4- King Silver Flair 5- Conn Constellation 6- King 1117 Ultimate 7- Dynasty 503M, if I can try one prior to buying them!!! One again thank you for your answer and to try to understand my english :P