bawker Posted June 30, 2012 Share Posted June 30, 2012 for all who hate Hopkins in the lime light 64 pages on a subject that has been beat to death sure is doing a good job at keeping him right up there....lol 1. No one hates him. 2. You've posted just about as much as the rest of us in this thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garfield Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 for all who hate Hopkins in the lime light 64 pages on a subject that has been beat to death sure is doing a good job at keeping him right up there....lol Sunshine is the best antiseptic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GUARDLING Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 (edited) 1. No one hates him. 2. You've posted just about as much as the rest of us in this thread. yeah youre right I have....and try to comment on things other than him usually......no one hates him? are you kidding? Where have you been..lol....but just for the record if you do look back at my post it says " hate Hopkins in the lime light " Edited July 1, 2012 by GUARDLING Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OrlandoContraAlum Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 Having witnessed the birth and death of SBI (Summer Bands International), I can tell you it was a third tier group, competing at a level below the Class A corps of the same era. Small and without the presence of an all-brass wind ensemble. Attendance was poor as more people were watching the corps in the lot than in the stands. And, for the most part, the best kids migrated to the drum corps anyway. You also have to remember that the organization now known as BOA started as summer marching band, and quickly reinvented themselves as a fall event. I'll repeat the concept that some choose to be in an all-brass and percussion group. We all know that we can't go backward. How many rules have been rescinded? It will be another case of having to embrace the new to be seen as relevant. Once woodwinds are allowed, the activity is fundamentally changed. I've said it before. I like band. I like drum corps. But I like having a choice more. Adding woodwinds would eliminate one of those choices. I'll repeat another statement I made on RAMD over a decade ago. I went to the Fiesta Bowl band championship a couple of times. One year, Pflugerville (TX) was there. They had 50 flutes on the field. I know because I counted. I counted because I knew there were a lot, but I couldn't figure out why I COULDN'T HEAR THEM. This was a 300+ member band, so there were lots of clarinets and saxes, too. I only heard them when they were soloing on a mike. Woodwinds will not save drum corps. Good business practices will. I'll also repeat my Yamaha Theory. We changed the rules to allow any-key brass. Guess who wanted a bigger slice of the drum corps business? Guess who didn't have tooling for G brass? Guess who also sells amplifiers and electronic instruments? And,, finally, guess who sells woodwinds? Are Cadets a Yamaha corps? Well, there ya go. Garry in Vegas I usually hate this, but: /thread 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeD Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 You don't see instrumentation as a fundamental change, but I do. And there are nearly 40 years of DCI history (and in some cases 50 more years of pre-DCI history) on my side. At no point before the advent of a&e did any corps legally use any instruments other than brass and percussion. That's what made drum corps unique. We may argue over valves or no, bugles or no, keys, pit or marching timpani, but at the end of the day, it has always been brass and percussion in some form or another. Synths changed that. Woodwinds will change it further. You may like the sound of synths and woodwinds, and that's fine, but they aren't a part of drum corps. If they become a part of DCI, I'll be watching DCA shows or staying home watching Legacy videos. And I'll be very sad to no longer be able to enjoy the live, powerful sound and inspiring visual designs that drum corps used to provide. Instrumentation never made drum corps unique. The experience the members receive now and then are what make it the great activity it is. Instrumentation has changed pretty much forever. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OrlandoContraAlum Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 Instrumentation never made drum corps unique. The experience the members receive now and then are what make it the great activity it is. Instrumentation has changed pretty much forever. Perhaps. And perhaps in YOUR eyes Mike. But, as just another dinosaur, the instrumentation made ALL THE DIFFERENCE to ME the first time I saw it. Seeing a line of 2 valve brass, with nary a reed in sight (as a Clarinet player) made me think that this was something different. So yeah, to at least ONE person, instrumentation made a HUGE difference. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielray Posted July 1, 2012 Share Posted July 1, 2012 (edited) Actually, I think it has more to do with limited rehearsal time and audience wishes than it does with composers. I know plenty of composers who continue to write symphonies, but no one is willing to play them because they're too difficult to fit into limited rehearsal schedules (longer rehearsals require more money and longer hours, neither of which is available in most orchestras) and the music often isn't anything their patrons want to hear. When composers come up with pieces that sound really interesting and aren't overly difficult to play, they have much more likelihood of being performed. Every symphony I know premiers a new piece or two every season. Some premiere a new piece on every concert. Maybe the plethora of new music is also a contributing factor to the demise of innovation in the orchestra. In any case, DCI can learn from orchestras. Namely, if you ignore your audience's wishes, your money dries up, but if you never push ANY boundaries, you get stale and your audience gets bored. It's a balancing act. Currently, the pendulum has swung toward pushing too many boundaries (in my opinion), and WW would be the straw that breaks many audience members' backs. What are you talking about? Orchestras in the US are nothing like the rest of the world, where the musicians are usually government employees with all the time on their hands in the world. My girlfriend, for example, plays in the national orchestra and is a government employee. The majority of the orchestra doesn't teach, neither privately or at the conservatory. Most don't have any other obligations except for maybe a small ensemble that plays in the downtime. Their rehearsal schedule is determined by what they are performing and varies greatly. Their house is always packed, standing tickets sold for every single concert... doesn't matter what they play... because this is just how it is culturally. This is how it is most places outside the US. The problem in the US is that a culture evolved that separated the arts from other aspects of society, rather than integrated it... that arts were seen as something optional, rather than essential, and that not providing an awareness of the arts to all citizens was not seen as deprivation. What this comes down to is the concept of arts education vs. arts awareness and arts integration. At the end of the day, arts awareness and arts integration are much more important than focusing on arts education, as support for arts education naturally comes as a result of increased arts awareness and arts integration. How can you get people to support what you are doing as something valuable and essential if they do not have enough of an awareness of it to understand or appreciate? How can you get people to support what you are doing as something valuable and essential if it is isolated from the rest of society and not integrated into the very fabric of daily life? As an example... where I live they created an experiment not so long ago to increase the awareness of specific works of art and music. Names of all several key transit routes were changed from numbers to the name of a specific composer. Busses, trams and trolleys were wrapped with a picture of the composer, their date of birth and death and the historical period they belonged to (ex: Romantic). On each route, the sound system would play a particular piece of that composer that was timed between stops to announce the name of the piece and the composer along with the name of the stop. This project was also coordinated with the national symphony orchestra, local chamber orchestras, the opera, the ballet, and several other groups to perform each of the specific works played on the transit system live during the course of the season. In addition, it was possible to simply purchase tickets to the performance through your transit pass. What I am getting at is that the arts as a whole can't just sit back in their isolated halls, galleries and conservatories and claim how important they are, how they deserve to be appreciated and supported. They need to focus first on creating an awareness of what they do (not show.... but actually provide the general public with a rudimentary arts education) and integrate it into other aspects of daily life. BRING ARTS TO THE PEOPLE.... not wait for people to come to the arts. How does this apply to drum corps? Awareness is key.... forget all silly and useless arguments about instrumentation... the rest of the world really doesn't care. Just give them something cool that interests them.... and is more accessible. YouTube and more media performances are great for building this up... but not the pure competitive stuff.... there needs to be something more transitional... get it out there.... What I think could be cool... and this is something for another topic entirely... but... similar to the stage performances of years past... more sort of guerrilla drum corps performances.... small ensembles scattered around a city performing to promote corps in general. You have 150 kids per corps in town... could be broken down into loads and loads of small ensembles that literally blanket a city for a couple of hours. If all corps are doing it, staggered over the course of a day, no one is having any more or less of a competitive advantage... ... but... imagine key cities where the city is essentially invaded by loads of small ensembles... playing, drumming, dancing, spinning.... whatever. Give each group a handful of cheap or free tickets to unload. This is interesting. Edited July 1, 2012 by danielray 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grandpa Posted July 2, 2012 Share Posted July 2, 2012 (edited) I'm sorry - I'm getting a little frustrated with the new-speak trying to define drum corps as "the experience". It's a way of wheedling in any instrument that DCI feels like this year. As a teenager in 1973, I had a great experience with the Sea Cadets when I was sent across the country to a Navy base a couple thousand miles away from Mum and Dad, learning discipline, self-reliance, performing a sunset ceremony on the lawns of the provincial legislature as part of the guns crew of a field canon to cheering crowds. I made friends from coast to coast, learned a lot about myself, got very fit, learned about leadership, responsibility and putting the goal ahead of a little physical discomfort. Sound familiar? Like the kind of rhetoric used to differentiate drum corps based on "the experience"? You're right, it is. I didn't pick up an instrument the whole time, it wasn't drum corps. So what makes drum corps, drum corps? It's all of the above, plus a unique style of performance which, sorry guys, is most definitely tied to the instrumentation. I will never say drum corps isn't about the experiece, but it's also about the look and the sound. To try and drop either one from the definition is naive at best, dishonest at worst. with love.... Grandpa Edited July 2, 2012 by Grandpa 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted July 2, 2012 Share Posted July 2, 2012 Instrumentation never made drum corps unique. The experience the members receive now and then are what make it the great activity it is. Instrumentation has changed pretty much forever. instrumentation is part of what made corps unique. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeD Posted July 2, 2012 Share Posted July 2, 2012 instrumentation is part of what made corps unique. No its not...see we both have opinions. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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