Lance

i want to hear phantom do ginastera again and i want to hear the alumni corps do fire of eternal glory. just realized i'm talking about wanting to see/hear 93 again from both the corps and alumni corps.

this is the least i've looked forward to a dci season since the late 2000s. not much to get hyped about with this level of solipsism going on with pretty much every corps lately.

Try making an appointment with a dermatologist and tell them what you just posted on here. They'll gently explain that you're talking about things you don't understand and hope you listen. The best anybody can do to try to chip away at this kind of ignorance. Marching members tend to wear lots of of sunscreen and that's great.

it's pretty arrogant to say that people doing what you don't like isn't performing. beyond arrogant. truly feckless.

i'm not one to ever get out a stopwatch (Cavies and BD fans weaponized this type of nonsense for years) and i care a lot less about how much brass are playing than what they're playing, but percussion features are longer and more frequent than they were pre 2000s. brass members are oftentimes responsible for moving around props throughout shows nowadays.

Playing excerpts form 3-4 pieces over 12 minutes is different from excerpts form 7+ pieces. What Downey was doing with arrangements in 93 is wildly different from what Meehan has done for the past 10 years. It takes zero understanding of music and 3rd grade understanding of math to get this.

The cues by Zimmer and Goransson are fantastic. Looking forward to seeing what they do with Turbine...maybe this'll be a Mackey arrangement I actually like in DCI. And they're doing a cue from freaking DIABLO IV (By Three They Come). That is so awesome to me. Been playing that franchise basically all my life. Not familiar with the rest but that's about to change. Hoping to hear substance from all 9 pieces in a 12 minute show rather than mcnuggets. I feel like this is a pretty drastic change musically from what they've been doing of late. Love it.

RIP. A true goat of the activity. I'm hoping he wasn't actually a jerk to a custodian no matter who he was trying to help sleep. Be nice to custodians.

Spartacus: Part Dos? Edgy.

yeah, i didn't now that. i can see why people are a little more wary of it with a big name like BD especially. i do think it's going to increase if anything, sadly. i'd be surprised if they were the only group to use ai to design flags. and yes, i know that ai is displacing humans in the corporate world and beyond. if anything, AI taking away jobs that used to require humans is another reason that kids are at a point where they think AI should do all of the tedious thinking stuff for them if there are going to be a dearth of jobs that require those skills. the number of my graduating seniors who are interested in college is the lowest this year that it's ever been because they understand AI job displacement as well as anybody.

I despise it, too. But there it is anyway. I choose to care about bigger issues with AI than a band using it to generate something on social media. But I do see what you're saying.

Any other gen ed teachers out there? AI use is ubiquitous in all levels of education. It's at a point where kids get upset when they're told they have to generate their own ideas and do their own reading and writing. They and their parents complain about teachers to administrators about it more and more every school year. I'll wager it's going to get to a point where 504 accommodations (which any parent can request about virtually anything) will include allowing kids to use AI along with standard things like extra time, voice to text, preferred seating, etc. And part of me gets it. People making good $$$ in the corporate world are using AI to do their thinking for them more and more. Kids know this and they're getting to a point where they think teachers are out of touch. And they think it because it's becoming more and more true. This isn't me making a value judgment, just observing. If BD's AI use here is enough to give people the vapors, they're going to need to need keep their smelling salts up all the time if they want to avoid fainting.

Arranging or transcribing violin parts for clarinet aren't really creating much of anything. Changing the instrumentation for what's already there is by definition derivative. My least favorite battery books are the ones that take source material and significantly change the rhythmic structure. It happens a lot, and yes, it does involve more creation than just transcribing, but if you're working with a piece by a world class composer it's probably not a good idea to stray too much from the rhythmic backbone that's already built in. I feel like the job of an arranger is to make sure what they do IS derivative, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The Rennicks have mastered the balancing act with this. And I somewhat disagree with your characterization of the evolution of music. Great composers don't just try to be different from what's before them because hey that's art and it's how art works. You don't have to go far back to see that art is more about how artists react to what preceded them or right in front of them, and again, it's not always linear. Schoenberg led the charge for 12 tone writing in the early 20th century, and there were many positive reactions, but there were also plenty of negative reactions with composers who pushed back with traditional forms. Stravinsky was one of them. And then later in his life he went back and put his own neoclassical spin on the very techniques he had previously rejected. Just one example of it being so very nonlinear. Very dialectical. And still going on within the classical world today. Literature and art too for that matter.

this is a little piece of the bigger shift in sound that modern culture is wanting to consume. young people today have grown up listening to world class musicians (singers and instrumentalists alike) getting run through increasingly aggressive pitch correction so that they sound as "perfect" as possible. my first time hearing this computerized sound was Cher's "Believe" with the autotune and Lenny Kravitz "Fly Away" with a different artificial effect, both in 1998. those were cool effects in those songs, but now manipulation like that is present in virtually every second of every track that's being consumed by the masses. it all kind of sounds like midi files to me now. not just young people, either. we've all gotten used to this sterile/neutered sound that has become the industry standard across all genres, not just pop. it intentionally wipes out or significantly alters some of the very things (timbre, tone, texture) that create an authentic sound in favor of this modern flat sound that's so pervasive now. i was hoping that DCI would be at the forefront of keeping acoustic voices more pure, but i guess not.

No. He says when he thinks arrangements aren't true to his work (like Cadets doing Wine Dark Sea), but he's been an advocate of marching music for a long time. He charges a flat fee for corps to adapt his pieces for shows. Maslanka was always very protective of his music, so maybe that's who you're thinking of.