ironlips
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Posts posted by ironlips
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That's quite a brass section:
A Saints/Garfield/Tower of Power alum now with Letterman and the (very fortunate) Crossmen
The woman who set the standard and tamed the mellophone as a solo instrument
The Muchacho who played with Mangione and on Broadway (and produces Vanessa Williams)
The original 1954 "Cherry Pink" soloist who also led BS to several national titles
The St. Kevin's star who is arguably the greatest junior corps French Horn ever
A player/instructor of the Skyliners ('50-'62), who has taught thousands (including Jeff Sacktig)
The great "Echano" soloist of the '70s who un-retired in the '90s and won best DCA soloist
The man who turned the contrabass into a solo instrument with the Sunrisers, and taught Wayne Downey
The extraordinary Cabs sop soloist from '54 to '63, whose licks the rest of us tried to copy off the Fleetwoods
Many from this group will be featured performers at the Barnum. I would't miss it for all the valve oil in Saudi Arabia.
Congratulations! Horns up!
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This recognition by one's peers is a beautiful thing. My hat is off to you, my friend.
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That's some group. Bravo to all!
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Easy, now. There have been valved bugles around since the early 1900's and keyed bugles (with sax-like mechanisms) since the 1840s, at least.
I own some of these and welcome the opportunity to play them in ensemble, any time.
"Old School" is a catch-all that actually means "whenever I did it".
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This is ultimately subjective, but in 40 years I've never seen a more intimidating look than those Bellville Black Knights at a high mark time.
Anaheim was quite fierce as well, but they wore pale blue which mitigated that a trifle.
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One might get the impression from reading some of these comments that the corps that finished sixth through twelfth were somehow, well, not so hot. Allow me to disabuse the younger readers of that notion.
In the '70s, it was far more diffucult to make top 12 than it is today. The sheer number of competitors dictated that. Additionally, it was not unusual for a lower-placing corps to be particularly strong in one or more captions. (The Oakland Crusaders won drums in '77 and didn't make the finals cut.) Some of today's big stars often finished lower than 12th; i.e., the Cavaliers, Cadets, Madison, Boston, Crossmen, Bluecoats, ...yet they had great shows which will compare quite favorably to any today.
In fact, making top 25 was a major accomplishment when there were several hundred corps in the country.
Arranging screenings of the perfomances of these '70s corps at nationals and/or regional shows would be a good way for the current corps folks and those who marched then to strengthen the community. A myopic view of the activity is self-limiting and ultimately boring in the extreme.
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It was a great kick for me to play with Grass and Frank Ponzo last week. John was on my right throughout the parade and that cat just doesn't miss. I've admired his sound since he played the original "Lucretia" solos with NY in the '70s.
As for Mr. Ponzo, the Renegades lent him a spare soprano that had seen better days. It had copious dents and a patch on the bell. He made it sound like Heifitz on a Stradivarius.
It's always a thrill to play in a line with the likes of Doug Petersen, Roland Garceau, Dave Landers and Munson Chan. The addition of "the boys from back East" just frosted the cake. I look forward to the next time.
Frank Dorritie
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A very interesting premise, this. One comment in the original post is curious and seems to imply that '60s corps do not compare favorably to current groups. Having experienced both, I think I'll respectfully disagree.
In my view, the 1965 VFW finalists were more exciting, intense and entertaining than most of last year's top 12. Though the latter were superior in an analytical and technical sense, they could not match the visceral soulfulness of their (much) older colleagues.
If and when the South African corps show up over her in a few years, perhaps drum corps will lose some of it's current sterility in favor of communication. One can hope.
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I collect and deal in antique bugles, from the Civil War period onwards, and have about 90 horns at present. All are fully restored, and displayed in my office hanging bell down from the ceiling beams, much as you might see them in a brass repair facility. I use large brass cup hooks covered in plastic tubing.
They are easily accessible yet out of the way, and make an aesthetically pleasing display.
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Everyone's facial structure differs. In general, it is best to play on the largest size you can handle. This puts the maximum amount of vibrating membrane in play and will produce the best tone and biggest sound. Smaller/shallower mouthpieces help with high range but usually inhibit tone and low register playing.
Bottom line: use the mouthpiece which gives you the best combination of tone, projection and facility, given the material you have to play.
Brands have very little to do with this. Evaluate the sound you get. There is no universal great mouthpiece, suitable for everyone. I play lead on a Bach 3 C (ditto Arturo Sandoval, Randy Brecker...etc), but you may sound better on a Schilke 14 A4A or a Stork 2. When I produced Wynton Marsalis in 1983, he was playing double C's all night on a Bach 1 C. (Of course, he IS Wynton, after all, and told me he was practicing 6 hours a day at the time.)
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I have seen and performed in many a Dream from 1963 until the end of the Roosevelt Stadium era. For me, the best part was the crowd. This was the single most knowledgeable audience in drum corps and they knew how to enjoy a show.
The acoustics were optimized by the left field stadium overhang which made a corps of even a modest size resonate with great presence and gave the recordings a singular quality.
Since the show was originated by Mickey Petrone and Msgr. Wojtycha of St. Vincents, there were always a significant number of nuns, priests, brothers, Holy Name Society members and others from various religious groups present. Perhaps because of this, Pepe Notaro claimed that when St. Peter greets you at the gate he will ask only one question: "Did you ever march in the Dream?"
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You got it right. Jack designed the Meehaphone and I the Trombonium.
Now that we're all happily (or otherwise) in F and Bb and fully chromatic, I would not be a bit surprised to see
"Meeaphone and Trombonium Reloaded" (so to speak).
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Billy Cobham - St. Catherine's Queensmen, then Long Island Sunrisers
Steve Gadd - Rochester Crusaders
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The full retreat may be the most visually impressive moment of the evening, and if the corps play together, it's a real treat.
It's the pit (and now sound) equipment that takes the longest to load out, but they're excused from the finale.
Bring back retreat. Surely, the audience deserves at least that much.
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I'm with you all the way on that notion, Chris.
You have carte blanche to the use of my Trombonium prototype anytime. There are 2 bells for it, tenor or bass. Clint Matsen has the horn at present.
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Jay,
Don't mix G and Bb unless you absolutely have to. There will be serious pitch issues.
In theory, you can hold down the 3rd valve on the Bb's to make them the equivalent of 2 valve Gs, but the intonation gremlins will begin to make their presence known from middle "C" on up.
I suggest you get used G horns (they're plentiful on eBay and elsewhere), or go with marching Bb and F brass if you can find some used High School instruments. Mix? Nix!
Frank
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Well, actually, yes.
In 1980 Santa Clara, Madison, the Blue Devils and 27th Lancers all "field trialed" the trombonium, an instrument I had a hand in developing.
As a jazz player myself, my feeling was that drum corps who tried to cover Buddy Rich, Ferguson and similar styles were at a distinct disadvantage in the low brass area. Baritones and euphoniums just can't deliver that singing 'bone sound. They are designed for a different texture.
Enter the trombonium, essentially a baritone bugle with a trombone bell. It met with mixed success. On the one hand, it pretty much captured the timbre of the trombone, but was not the dynamic match of baris and euphs, so it had to be a compliment to rather than a substitute for these more traditional corps brasses.
Experiment suggested that a section of about six would be required to balance the standard hornline. The problem was, 128 was the magic total number, so the math prevented simply adding these unless one was willing to give up players elsewhere. In today's larger hornlines the trombonium could fill a real voicing niche.
Ergonomically, it was a very comfortable instrument whose crook extended over the left sholder. Perhaps someone has a picture from DCW or another publication. The horn was also used as a solo instrument, most notably by the Vanguard and the San Jose Raiders.
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The LP "Kenton's West Side Story" featured bell-front mellophoniums and pre-dates their use in drum corps.
There were tuning and timbre issues, to some extent because half the section consisted of converted trumpet players using cup shaped mouthpieces and trumpet technique, and the rest were French Hornists on v cups using a Horn concept.
I would suggest that this situation continues to present itself in today's drum corps.
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Instruments require proper use. "...written for really well" is a sine qua non. It's clear that the poster is musically erudite. I would simply suggest that timbre, as such, is in the ear of the beholder.
World-class composers and arrangers create music wherein instruments compliment, not obscure, each other. In the history of drum corps, these are rare birds, indeed.
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We're going 'way back for this one, and at the risk of being considered a dinosaur (guilty, as charged), and furthermore, confining this category to sopranos (calling them trumpets carried with it the very real possibility of a punch in the nose at one time, mainly this time), I'd have to say the New York Skyliners of the mid-sixties had no peer in the "solo soprano" category. Tommy Martin, Bucky Swan, Pee Wee, Johnny Guarino, Joe DeFiglia and Co. smoked everybody, six ways to Birdland.
Now, before all you youngsters get all bent out of shape and get your multiple valves tied in a knot, kids today are much better technically, but it's doubtful they could coax those single valve blunderbusses to wail like Sky's guys.
Do yourselves a favor and grab one of those Fleetwoods from around '64. Imagine a conservatory trumpeter hearing Louis Armstrong and King Oliver for the first time. Relative to drum corps, that's who these cats were.
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Sue is correct about the mental/emotional aspect of performing and that is perhaps the the most valuable lesson a drum corps person can draw from observing figure skaters. All the chops in the world are useless if one loses one's composure.
Beyond this, a great artistic performance is not simply the absence of error, it also includes the presence of an emotional link between performer and audience. This is why it rises above sport.
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This is in reference to skating and musicality.
A few years ago I was producing a recording for the National Cast of Phantom of the Opera. Franc d'Ambrosio (the Phantom) asked if his friend could watch from the control room. "Sure", I said. I was introduced to a guy in jeans and a baseball hat. "Hi, Brian. Just have a seat over here." "Thanks", he replied.
The next day I get a phone call: "This is Brian. We met yesterday, and I was wondering if you might be interested in producing a recording for my routine." ("Routine?" I wonder, what is this guy, a stripper, or something?) "Tell me a little about it", I reply, tryng to get a handle on this.
"It's for a TV special. I'd like to use "Shenandoah" and "They Call the Wind Maria". Franc would be singing and we'd need an orchestral arrangement." ( Now I'm thinking he's a Country/Western performer. Maybe this is for a Vegas act.) "So this is going to video?", I ask. "Yes", he answers. "I'll perform live to the track." I ask where this will be filmed. "At the arena, of course", he replies....Slowly a little light begins to blink in the recesses of my brain..."Are you Brian...Boitano?", I ask. "Oh Jeez", he says, "you didn't know?" We both had a good laugh at my naivete.
You may very well ask why Brian is one of the most "musical" of skaters, why he seems to hit musical impacts so accurately. He and his choreographer insured that the music was written to his routine, rather than the other way around.
One other thing: When I delivered the first master, Brian called to ask for more reverb. I explained that additional echo would tend to muddy the sound in the arena. "I know", he said, "but my audience is the TV viewer, and TV audio usually sounds too dry to me. By the way, thanks for mixing those cymbal crashes so up front." I replied that I knew what he would do there. "What?" he asked. "Fly through the air with your hand over your head", I replied. "I did my homework." This is one very musically hip skater.
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Allow me to point out that that last June Riggie Laus played the lead trumpet part on "Rocky" and "Birdland", sitting in with Maynard Ferguson's Band at the Barnum Festival, on his Getzen G/D slip slide single valve bugle.
Listen to any of his Pittsburg Rockets solos from the '50s to the present. No contemporary soloist, DCI, DCA or anywhere else sounds better. That may sound like hyperbole, but it's not.
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In my view, this intra-mural bickering is counterproductive and serves only to weaken the drum corps activity in all it's manifestations. There are different kinds of corps, to be sure, but they need to be mutually supportive lest the entire movement perish.
DCA, Alumni, Mini, military and DCI units exist to serve different populations, all of whom wish to participate in making a certain broadly defined style of music and pageant.
At the DCA Alumni show in '04, I stood next to a prominent current WGI adjudicator who has taught national champion drum corps from the '70s to the present. When the Cabs Alumni came roaring towards the stands looking and sounding like a Sunday afternoon at the Dream in 1964, she held her hand to her heart and said, "What a gift to see where we come from! What an honor to know one is connected to that!" A few weeks later she was passing judgement on the efforts of the cutting edge World Class guards.
We are all connected here, my friends. We need some mutual support and respect, not civil war. As they say, "United, we stand..." You know the rest.
Bugler's hall of fame
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
2005 Buglers Hall of Fame Inductees
John "Grass" Urspruch, Jimmy D'Amico
Maynard Ferguson, Gene Marotta
Kenton Clarke, Ken "Ace" Petersen
George "Sidemouth" Richardson, Ray Eyler
Tom "Bucky" Swan, Art Hlywa
Jimmy Maldonado, Riggie Laus
Tommy Martin, Eddie Hayward
Johnny Guarino, Dick Burns
Joe DeFiglia, "Baby John" Chalmus
Frank Dorritie, Ruben Ariola
John "Screech" Arietano, Bobby Gaff
Ritchee Price, Cliff Richmond
Jim Centorino, Bill Hightower
Frank Ponzo, John Simpson