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Howdy is on a roll: He is averaging 7 "I"s and 9 "my"s per posting when tooting his own horn (full pun intended).

LET 'EM PLAY! LET 'EM PLAY! Stop playing to the sheets for 11 1/2 minutes! Let them hear the roar of the crowd! Let the crowd see how much FUN the kids are having! LET 'EM PLAY! Back-sticking on a concert snare. I love it! Listen to the crowd begin to roar a full minute before the end! The crowd feeds off the kids, who feed off the crowd. If there was a benefit to the timing gun of old, it's that when the judges gun went off signalling the end of field judging the kids let it rip. Dudamel's entire encore was after the gun went off. God, that was great, Michael. Thanks SO much for posting that. I love Dudamel because of his exuberance; seeing him let those kids go to FEEL the music makes me love him even more. What a great video. What a great lesson for DCI. If there was ever a definition of "It's all for the kids", this is it. Great, great performance.

just because the books may not be written that way does not mean the kids couldnt do it if asked. and these days they could do it marching harder drills than you had in 1980. but if you tell a lie enough you begin to believe it's the truth, so keep on believing

Hunter Moss would tell you different. In fact, I've heard him say as much. But hey, never let the facts get in the way of a good Howdy dino-rant. You'd be shocked at what today's drum corps brass players can do. But never mind me, I just spent the last two seasons teaching them all summer...

Many have people have posted that part of the demise of drum corps’ has been their attempts to homogenize with high school marching bands. Here is a different theory: What if the demise of drum corps’ has been partly caused by the high school marching bands over the years homogenizing with corps’? As high schools began emulating drum corps’ show design and competitive prowess their activity grew (both in quality and in extra due fees to be in the high school band). Broken Arrow and L.D. Bell now charge thousands of dollars to march, and if you took out woodwinds they could compete very well in DCI with the upper part of Open Class or the lower part of World Class. Moreover, by studying the history of the entire spectrum of the marching activity, one can see that as more bands joined BOA, or became more competitively active in other local/national competitions, more corps’ folded. That has to be more than coincidence. Now, open for discussion:

Would MLB fans be so magnanimous to " try out " liking MLB's " change " of adding ( say ) a 5th base in baseball next year ? What if MLB allowed all players to ( say ) wear bermuda shorts next year ? Or allowed teams the option to "change" to the use of lacrosse sticks for outfielders ? If " baseball " added lacrosse sticks to " baseball " would their fans still call the game " baseball " ? You see, there is " change ", like the use ( or non use ) of " the designated hitter " change, and then there is the " change " of adding lacrosse sticks to the game of baseball. Not all " change " is created equal. You know what I'm sayin' ?

Personally, I don't care about whether the performers are expressing themselves with planned faux-spirited moments. What I care about as a spectator is how it makes me feel. The performers and Dudamel have a grasp of what it takes to generate excitement for the audience. And whether or not they're truly expressing themselves, they're probably having a lot of fun. As for how Bernstein would feel, I've read enough of his books to believe he would have been excited by the performance. He wrote he didn't want other conductors to interpret his works as he would...he wanted to hear his music anew through the interpretations of others. It's funny the question was asked because when I was watching it, I said to myself, "Bernstein would have enjoyed this."

facets of musicality like dynamics, tone quality, and intonation are more consistently implemented from top to bottom in dci corps now than they ever have been, IMO. of course, i don't always agree with the choices designers make, and wish there was more face-peeling stuff.

No, but the years THAT I ACTUALLY MENTIONED, the shows were pretty much the same, with a few minor differences. Usually a song added or deleted, and the visual changed around, or in the case of SCV, the guard changed. Besides that, these shows were pretty darn close to the same show repeated, so yeah, if you've been around since 77, you've seen some repeats, and it was even common practice back then to repeat large chunks of shows in consecutive years.

I came to drum corps because it's not high school marching band. I love being around 149 other individuals who want to work hard, who want to produce the best show that they can, and who are committed to doing that. However, I guess the reason why I'm okay with the new additions is because I was in a marching band not to long ago.

Wait a minute here, 33 years would be 1978.... You haven't even seen a repeat show? How is that possible? Spartacus, 1981/1982, Phantom of the Opera 1988/1989, City of Angels, 1991/1992, West Side Story, 1984/1994. Do you do an every other year system or something? Could you please explain your definition of a repeat show?

It was hard to imagine Yowza too. Just sayin'.

I have never said that all marching bands are drum corps.

If only the way you talked on here was as good as your playing...

Give it to me.

http://www.businessi...essor-teaser-23 /begin humor /sarcasm

Thank you; ONStar and GPS!!! And that actually makes the (electronics) addition to DCI more of a connection to the analogy!!! Thanks for making an improvement to my analogy which actually works!!!

It's all about the sounds for me.

the original statement taken from the context, my interpretation is that all corps would be performing the same old show year after year, meaning stylistically. Not the same exact show. Furthermore, even the shows that were mentioned were not the same shows. Some of the music was the same. Some of it wasn't. There were different kids marching the shows...different drill... sure they were similar, but they weren't the same, and it's not like all the corps did it...I don't consider a show a decade from the original to be the same...so, 3 times? in how many shows? 30 years times # world class corps...less than 1%

I'm confused. Your question to skewerz was: which electronics have driven away audience members? One of his answers was amplified narration -- and you seem to be replying with a claim that drum corps have added narration because they're making more from the fees of members who narrate than they're losing from audience members who are turned off by narration. Likewise for other electronica. Am I reading you correctly? And since most of the amplified narrators I've heard haven't been very good speakers (I would list only Bluecoats '07 and Crown '07 as well done), I'm especially confused by the claim that there is fierce competition for those duties! You're being sarcastic, right, in blaming the audience members for a corps' poor sound? Because if not, either those seats shouldn't be sold, or those venues not performed in. Or is this further justification for having the volume levels of the pit (because the players are apparently incompetent in this regard, compared to the brass and battery) not only amplified but controlled by someone in the stands?

It's actually that the synths change the SOUND. I LOVE brass & percussion music. I don't like the synth fusion, hence I won't pay to hear or see it.... It's a matter of taste and I do believe that it has alienated people. The point mentioned above is quite valid. Synths have not brought any new people to the activity but it has caused some people to stop patronizing DCI.

As I said before, amp'd pit instruments are ok, as long as they are amp'd correctly. This doesn't happen all the time. And no matter what you say, an amp'd sound is different than a natural sound. Possibly not to you, but to some people, and scientifically, the sound is changed, especially with the crap speakers drum corps use. Amps were proposed as a way to shrink the pit...it's done the opposite. It takes a skilled musician to play a bassoon, too. Do you want those out there? (probably not the right person to ask, I'm sure.) It takes a skilled musician to play a symphonium...wheelharp...harmonica...ukelele. There's a different topic for homogenization, which bringing new instruments into drum corps does.

You've made several assertions that I think are good points for discussion, but I'm not convinced. Here's the way I see it: Marching bands from "back in the day" made conscious decisions to do "corps style" programs, influenced by the drum corps. Those bands fundamentally changed what they were all about, and opted instead to emulate drum & bugle corps in virtually every way that they could, with the exception of changing their instrumentation. With that, there was instant competition created where "similar" marching experiences were available to participants, without having to actually join a drum corps. Plus, rather than having to leave all of your woodwind friends behind in order to march drum corps, the marching band was all-inclusive. Rather than continuing to do what was already catching the attention of marching bands, the drum corps activity (or more specifically, certain influential people within the activity) determined that the way to future growth, etc. for the corps activity would be to abandon unique aspects of drum corps (primarily instrumentation), and make the corps more like marching bands (again, via instrumentation), and thereby make the corps activity more accessible to mass participation. In choosing to be more accessible by way of abandoning unique instrumentation, a reality was created where band students and supporters could opt for participating in or supporting organizations similar to corps that did not require meeting the demands of the corps activity. Furthermore, the HS bands were certainly more connected to their general communities than the privately operated drum corps that were also in need of community support. Unanticipated consequences of abandoning unique aspects of the corps activity, in part, created competition for participants (band vs. corps), competition clearly won by HS bands. Drum corps were always going to be able to devote more time and focus toward the pursuit of performance excellence than the typical HS band, and the uniqueness of the corps activity is what made it appealing to the bands. When the uniqueness of drum corps was slowly abandoned, the decline of active corps and rise of active HS bands with "corps style" shows was imminent.

I think Tom is referring to something like this: I was born into an era where cars already had power steering, automatic transmissions, and air conditioning; my dad on the other hand was born into an era where cars had to be steered with a lot of muscle, shifted with just a stick and a clutch, and the only air conditioning was rolling down the windows. My dad would sometimes state, "These contraptions of today are not Real cars, Real cars do not have all of these mamby-pamndy things like airrrrrr conditioning". I would just roll my eyes and smile because (to me) those items certainly were parts of a real car.

'Ordinary' shows just did not draw the numbers you mention. Sorry...you are wrong, IMO. Listening to 1950's era recordings is what you go on? How ever does that tell you anything about how many people attended a show? I have a Stetson Richmond recording of my GSC corps and the Paramus Mountettes at the 1969 GSC champs at Dover HS, where the crowd noise is VERY high..sounds like a lot of people...guess what...it wasn't. Dover HS had an 'ordinary' HS field for the day...small wooden stands and no lights. People came and went as their corps performed. My perspective is hardly 'narrow'...I have seen shows of every type from the mid-60's to today. When did you attend your first show? Reading about it or listening to old records is hardly the same as being there.

Drum corps is and always has been marching band, so the above is factually incorrect, IMO.

Those are not new instruments...they are changes to existing instruments.

The year rain was forecast it was lower...was that two or three years ago? The next year it was up, IMO, to levels the year prior to the lousy weather...that was a down year. You are, IMO, minimizing that. I've seen a couple of dozen busses at shows...specifically Allentown and Giant's Stadium. I counted them at each show just because I was curious.

So, anyway... Go Cadets!

well, you've been on long enough to garner the lowest reputation points I've ever seen on DCP!

So I lurk a lot, but haven't in a long time. I had to ask this question to the general DCP membership: Is Howdy that guy that says really dumb crap all the time an everyone ignores him because he's a "special child"? You must not work with high school kids now-a-days, because let me tell you first hand. With the right teacher (probably NOT YOU) they do some absolutely INCREDIBLE things. I know a program in my area that played in one semester - Molly on the shore, Harrison's Dream, Candide, and Trittico! I'll move on after this to ignoring the special child, and lurking. lurk...

But this contributes nothing to, in fact has nothing to do with, the discussion. You're just coming on board to take a swipe at last year's winner because you didn't like their show, and giving yourself a smug, thumbs-up pat on the back like you've revealed some universal truth or something. Sorry, on this one. Fred O.

You have BD 23rd???? bold!!!

That's too bad. First and only time I saw them.... at Jersey Surf's show in 2003... Esperanza absolutely floored me. Really solid corps.

Lake Erie Regiment - currently retooling as Lake Effect - All Age

I predict that Crown will change their uniform in some way. Excuse me... I HOPE Crown will change their uniform.

you don't have to be a fan to watch it. Some people might have removed themselves from being fans of certain corps when they tried to use their fan numbers to put other corps out of existence (eg: "we have way more facebook fans than DCI does, we are bigger than DCI!!!!!!")

We're looking forward to sharing some good news from Edmonton with the Drum Corps community very soon!

I think this is largely true. But here's the difference this time and it has to do with the bolded part of your first sentence: BD will only continue to dominate if they continue to "push their own envelop". Their design staff knows this and it's exciting to think of the possibilities because of it. Meanwhile hopefully (hopefully to me anyway) the other capable corps have been paying attention are are willing to break out of the company front/48 bar hold crap and wow us with something new and exciting. Cavies rocked the DC design world and set a style in place that carried them. But they kept going back to that trough too long, they became predicable and fell out of favor with a judging community that had seen it all before with different show titles. This year, they designed a hyper version of themselves, but it wasn't different, just different enough to be more different than BC. This is strictly about design and not performance (which is of itself a determiner). So...BD will threepeat if they are able to not repeat themselves the way Cavies did. I think that's what we are both saying! NOTE: "Accessable" to me is code for dumb down your design and do what we're familiar with!

I think (only based on source music and rumors for vanguard) that both are designing a bit out of the comfort zone. The real question is will it work? Thats always the fun part with taking risks in design. They are either really cool, (IMO Bloo 2010, SCV 2009) or not as well received by the public (Bloo 2009, SCV 2010). Both corps had elements of risk with their programs each year, and both found a different level of success.

My opinion on darkness of tone from last year's top twelve. I'm not going to mess with the music selections, just their brass sound. (off the top of my head) [Dark Brass Tone] Crown Bluecoats Blue Stars Madison Phantom Blue Knights Cavaliers Cadets Vanguard Boston Glassmen (for the record, I cant remember their sound right now) Blue Devils [Light Tone] Thats just what I think right now. Feel free to state your opinions.

Um. Why did I re-read this entire thread from start to finish?

Still waiting for Santa Clara to do Wicked.

Double post.

6. Spirit 2007 5. Blue Knights 2005 4. Blue Devils 2007 3. Phantom Regiment 2007 2. SCV 2007 1. Crown 2007

Remember when Crown got a standing ovation after "the chord" at the beginning of the show at finals? I do.

Now, if we had the '07 show but with the '06 ballad then...wow.

Awww...sad to see BK go. That was one hell of a show, though I didn't care for the ballad (in fact I can't even remember how it went). I keep getting confused between that and Blue Stars' Le Cygne.

Voted: Bluecoats Immunity: Carolina Crown. Probably the best show I've ever seen.

My top six shows over the past three years: 6. Spirit 2007 5. SCV 2005 4. Crown 2006 3. Phantom Regiment 2007 2. SCV 2007 1. Crown 2007