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Anyone else hearing he is out of control? Wild behavior on DCI calls, harrassment of office staff, etc.

When one considers that this was 50 (!) years ago, it's even more impressive. These were middle and high school kids, instructed by the incomparable Sandra Opie, later a premier brass adjudicator and Hall-of-Fame member. These horns had only one valve. Listen to the 2 and 3 valve lines of the 80's and '90s, particularly Phantom, Blue Devils and Cadets to hear what evolved from what Sandra and the Rebels initiated. Avoid the temptation to compare to today's brass sections. They are a different breed of cat.

Not a musician by any stretch of imagination, but have been in the presence of hundreds of G brass lines over the years. I did prefer the audience impact of G lines over today’s configuration. To this untrained ear, the G equipment projected stronger, in a more ‘soaring or cutting’ way. The major, well-instructed, G lines of the past really ripped through in a unique way. No doubt, the utility of using those older brass instruments today has passed, and for good reasons. Brass charts are now written for a more diverse objective, it seems. For me, the epitome of G brass was the writing and instructional style of New York Skyliner’s Hy Dreitzer. I couldn’t care less if his product was technically ‘clean,’ or proper. It just worked for me at the time. Today’s lines are quite impressive, for sure. I am not complaining about how the craft has evolved. For someone else who is a true musician, today’s product is understandably superior in many ways. In the end, what’s better for the musician of the era is of greatest importance. I remain grateful continuing on as an ‘innocent bystander’ watching everything unfold over time.

okay, so scv's executive director is unhinged, something about local circuits and sponsors that connects to it in some way, and something about cadet corps. i'll add that i heard every corps is going to be required to do a 5-minute segment of West Side Story in parade block with ticks as part of a compulsory round DCI is adding starting in 2027.

It was probably a perfect call, though if Algernon has a transcript, maybe we can read it and decide for ourselves.

Most of us were from the area right around the small town of Great Bend Kansas, Sandra taught us how to play. An amazing teacher and great person!

Agree. I also think housing will be a huge issue moving forward next season. Also for this season, stadiums are not permitting people to attend, as seen by sports now starting back up.. By next season, who knows? Social distancing requirements in an outdoor stadium will remove a lot of potential paying customers.

i loved g horns for what i perceived to be greater volume and power, but there were very few corps that could produce a really nice brass sound year year with them, imo. i know that will bother some people, and that's fine. within a couple of years of the switch to b flat, i went from really loving the brass ensemble sound of maybe 4 corps per year to double that. i remember being worried about the b-flat shift sacrificing power for musicality for a bit back in 2000....until i heard the first big hit from the cadets live.

I would have thought that or at least piston/slide. I started 1974 and we had just bought new piston/rotors. Before that had a piston/slide bari for practice but that was second hand off a disbanded corps iirc. No idea of what corps had before that as was inactive in 1973

Unfortunately, my gut feeling tells me you may be correct. Unless school districts decide to allow for outside groups (Corps) to use their facilities during the off-season (camps) and during the summer (tour); and social distancing is relaxed so show sponsors have at least a chance to break even with ticket sales, 2021 will look nothing like 2019.

AS someone very involved in auditions and member communication ( all seasons of the activity ). MANY were and are far from comfortable with the whole situation. Parents who actually make decisions for their kids, ( younger corps, etc. ) put the brakes on and if there is a resurge will do it again. You are quite right about housing, it is and will continue to be an issue.

Reports are DCI will likely not survive in the same form if at all. The regional circuits are gone and the private sponsor shows are few if any. A committee has been formed to map various contingencies. However a tour of any length is questionable in the foreseeable future and logistics are not favorable. A more regional recruiting, rehearsal and performance schedule may need to be adapted. Certainty tempers are high when you cannot plan for a season. The very organization that schedules and promotes the tour has no money, little to no resources, and no guarantees of venues or rehearsal and housing sites.

I didn't care for Cadets musically in 1998, but visually they were almost perfect. Still some of the best marching I've ever seen. I still remember the rapid-change, cascading color palette of flags backfield. Loved Vanguard's show. In another year it might have won. But man, their brass was gassed by the end of the show, and you could hear it.

here's a good example of the bugle sound

1998 Cadets is my least favorite championship show ever. All sections were great, but the overall show was a snoozer for me. Give me Vanguard 98 over them... Z

She's good...she knows that 1) I'm not chasing Courtney's skirt and 2) what other woman would ever want to hook up with me?? 🙂

In another topic, I brought up a point about opportunities for contracting, outsourcing and virtualizing many aspects of running a drum corps which could help to reduce overhead and improve efficiencies. Sort of pointless if I don't provide more details, so, here goes: Telecommunications & Web Hosting Grassroots.org offers great free to cheap resources for non-profit orgs. Grassroots is created by founder of Phone.com, so provides free phone services and phone system for startups (this is pretty cool). In addition, they also provide free email and web hosting for non-profits, with capabilities to host sites with CMS like Wordpress or Joomla. FREE!!! Organizations can take this money saved and invest it in higher quality web and merchandise designs which will increase revenues. Graphic Design, Copywriting & Marketing It is possible to create high-quality custom designs and content very easily and inexpensively through crowdsourcing via sites like Crowdspring. Submit the project ideas and budget and designers and writers willing to work within that budget will create concepts and submit. This is perfect for inexpensively designing logos, Websites, T-shirts/Merchandise and creating web copy, press releases, etc. Regarding the Web site specifically... once you have the design done, it is possible to simply upload to a service that will take the designs and then turn them around to finished code that is then a custom theme for Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, etc. They can even publish the finished site to you to your free hosting account with Grassroots. Highly professional branding & web site designed, fully-coded and published for less than $2,500 ($500 branding, $1,000 design, $1,000 coding). T-shirts designed for about $300 each, which will generate 10 times that in sales compared to homegrown designs (they pay for themselves 10 times over). T-shirt Printing & Merchandise Fulfillment Instead of printing, holding and shipping inventory for t-shirts and wearable merchandising, Amplifier allows the ability to print merchandising on demand and handles all fulfillment from their facilities as a white-label solution. Their solution also integrates with Magento to allow integrated ecommerce with direct fulfillment. No need to tie up cash in offseason with inventory, to take up space storing on site or have the overhead/distraction required for fulfillment. Amplifier will do this on a % of transaction model for less than current cost of fulfillment. Accounting & Administration There are some great and inexpensive account tools out there now that are much better than things like Quickbooks and offer much greater flexibility. Xero is one that really stands out and is perfect for running an activity like drum corps. Xero can separate various roles from bookkeeping to reconciliation, generating reports for filing, etc. All of this can be performed securely and remotely by various individuals. Instead of hiring a local accountant, it is now possible to have a specialist that is able to work remotely via Xero, for example the accountants at LucidBooks for a very low monthly fee ($150/mo). In addition, there are many add-ons that allow the ability to automatically integrate with bank accounts, paypal, Magento, etc. so that information is automatically entered into the accounting system without need for costly human input. Xero also integrates with Vend, a perfect POS system for managing on location sales. With Shoeboxed, it is possible to take physical paper receipts and turn them into proper expense entries in Xero by either dropping them in a special envelope in the post, or by scanning or taking a photo from iphone app and uploading them. Xero also integrates with CRM solutions like Capsule, which can also automatically import customer histories from both Magento and Vend POS, as well as web forms, eliminating the need to manually enter records into accounting or CRM systems. Everything mentioned above can be done for under $150/mo, add in accounting services and you're at $300/mo... 10 times less than many orgs are currently spending to get the same result. ----------------------------- I could go on and on about many things like this for other aspects of operations (and probably will)... stuff than can save organizations running corps loads of money. Corps should not be afraid to outsource and virtualize any possible aspect of their operations outside of actually teaching the kids. Any other ideas out there to help reduce costs through virtualization, outsourcing or any other tips, tricks?

100% convinced that this is actually Daniel Ray.

Well, given the 11,748,296 posts he has made gleefully finding every possible excuse to mention it, including in an encouragement thread, I would say that N.E. does.

This was discussed in depth earlier Some previously mentioned, and current ,pertinent points: 1.Most schools are closed till at least September. Where would corps stay,practice etc. ? 2.You would have to have regular testing of all corps and staff members. What happens if someone tests positive,and you have to quarantine the corps ? 3.Most states still limit the size of outside gatherings. In N.J. its 25 people. 4.Even if there were no limits on the number of people in a gathering,Social Distancing is still required in most states. 5.I don't know any state that is allowing "fans" at sporting events.

The recording of data is so uneven it is impossible to draw a meaningful conclusion about the trend from a single day. Unfortunately, I am not aware of anyone who tracks each state on a, say, 3 or 5 day running average.

Yeah I heard it on National News as well as local. I have a 2nd home in Fla so get all those updates too, Maybe if you hear different PM me, let me know..Thanks

I'm on pins and needles. No wait, that was Minnesota Brass's final show.

A helmet from the Gold medal 2016 show can be had for every $500 donation. Yes, it's double the cost BUT it is from the championship show!

I know I'm bringing up an old topic but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE bring back the G bugles. Drum corps today just does not sound the same. Doesn't give me goosebumps like it used to.

It was said today Florida cases are spiking quite a bit. Interesting times for sure