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Thoughts on Bluecoats 2016 after the smoke has cleared?


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It's a balance of achievement weighted against the content. You all are counting ticks thinking that the content for all the groups is the same and it isn't. 

The bloo members were marching up walls while doing body and keeping formations. That's a whole energy and technique that no one has explored, ever.  Their movement vocab was much denser than other groups. It isn't a bunch of keep the right hand on the horns and use the other three limbs.  They actually put their instruments down and dance. They started their show with the drum line dancing with no drums on. No one else took their drums off and asked their drummers to dance.

Exposure, look at the uniform. The opening dance block? No one was as exposed as that.

They actually had to be performers who used their faces. Every other drum corps hid their faces under a big hat. That's a whole responsibility that no one else had. 

Bloo was hauling around the field. They jazz ran a lot.

Their drill isn't all on, 2 off and splitting like most other groups have been moving towards. Thanks Pyware... I mean Obama! I really mean pyware.

Their content was denser and when you weight that against their achievement they did a great job. They had blemishes but they were good enough visually to get them in a winning position and they did. 

Looking forward to 2017.

Edited by ashyUechi
More substance to support my arguement.
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1 minute ago, ashyUechi said:

It's a balance of achievement weighted against the content. You all are counting ticks thinking that the content for all the groups is the same and it isn't. 

The bloo members were marching up walls while doing body and keeping formations. That's a whole energy and technique that no one has explored, ever.  Their movement vocab was much denser than other groups. It isn't a bunch of keep the right hand on the horns and use the other three limbs.  They actually put their instruments down and dance. They started their show with the drum line dancing with no drums on. No one else took their drums off and asked their drummers to dance.

They actually had to be performers who used their faces. Every other drum corps hid their faces under a big hat. That's a whole responsibility that no one else had. 

Bloo was hauling around the field. They jazz ran a lot.

Their drill isn't all on, 2 off and splitting like most other groups have been moving towards. Thanks Pyware... I mean Obama! I really mean pyware.

Their content was denser and when you weight that against their achievement they did a great job. They had blemishes but they were good enough visually to get them in a winning position and they did. 

Looking forward to 2017.

Yeah, I understand that- hence the GE scores.  The marching itself at times though was dirty.

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The closer drill, particularly the insanely fast spinning parallel pinwheels in the rotating circle right before the repeating charges up the slides where incredibly insane and consequently visually dirty. However, the feel of the velocity seeing it live is lost in translation in the Blu Rays. It just can't be appreciated unless experienced live. 

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2 minutes ago, Jurassic Lancer said:

The closer drill, particularly the insanely fast spinning parallel pinwheels in the rotating circle right before the repeating charges up the slides where incredibly insane and consequently visually dirty. However, the feel of the velocity seeing it live is lost in translation in the Blu Rays. It just can't be appreciated unless experienced live. 

Musically I had more issues with the closer.

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6 minutes ago, Jurassic Lancer said:

The closer drill, particularly the insanely fast spinning parallel pinwheels in the rotating circle right before the repeating charges up the slides where incredibly insane and consequently visually dirty. However, the feel of the velocity seeing it live is lost in translation in the Blu Rays. It just can't be appreciated unless experienced live. 

Up close and personal in Denton about 10 rows up they definitely moved around the most and had an incredibly large amount of stuff demonstrated as said above WAY better than I ever could.  

I guess in the end there was a consensus among pretty much the whole judging community from Texas on Bluecoats were the best overall.  I can't remember how many times I heard "this is a Blue Devils/Carolina Crown panel Bluecoats will lose tonight" and it never happened in the back stretch.  It's easy to go back afterwards and say otherwise but I will take their collective opinion and trust it.  Captions told the story and I pretty much agree with what they said as much as in August.  Carolina Crown was obviously the most proficient sans SCVs gorgeous drums, and Bluecoats had the show and enough achievement to pull off the win.  

Edited by DrumManTx
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My top five (5-6 months after finals) rankings: 

1) SCV -- Easily the most rewatchable show. Those Mellos man... and the tag ending, sweet!

2) Crown -- Best brass + Roxanne + great guard work. The non DCI followers in my household thought they were the winners. 

3) BD -- Loved the ballad, and the use of the trombones. They found a nice way to present the Tempest theme in a typical BD way.

4) Coats -- Great energy, loved Todo Tiende...But a little saccharine over repeated viewing.

5) Cavvies -- Getting back into contention, liked this one more and more as the season progressed.

 

 

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18 hours ago, BoaDci said:

Musically I had more issues with the closer.

 

I can understand that ... earlier in the season they did not have the jazz groove section that was played for the charges up the slides. The music felt better orchestrated and more holistic before the late season insertion, in my opinion. I am convinced it was only added so that the corps could add the final visual effect. I kind of preferred the earlier season ending, but I am in a minority. 

Edited by Jurassic Lancer
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2 hours ago, DrumManTx said:

Up close and personal in Denton about 10 rows up they definitely moved around the most and had an incredibly large amount of stuff demonstrated as said above WAY better than I ever could.  

I guess in the end there was a consensus among pretty much the whole judging community from Texas on Bluecoats were the best overall.  I can't remember how many times I heard "this is a Blue Devils/Carolina Crown panel Bluecoats will lose tonight" and it never happened in the back stretch.  It's easy to go back afterwards and say otherwise but I will take their collective opinion and trust it.  Captions told the story and I pretty much agree with what they said as much as in August.  Carolina Crown was obviously the most proficient sans SCVs gorgeous drums, and Bluecoats had the show and enough achievement to pull off the win.  

Sometimes a design overpowers the judges and they credit content over achievement.  Doesn't happen often -- most years there's no credit for an attempt.  Coats were gonna win this year no matter how much dirt there might have been.  They were fun to watch and deserved the gold.

Edited by corpsband
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