Leland

No, I don't get it either. Just because someone turns 18 doesn't mean that they are suddenly fully consenting to any harassment they might encounter. Like JimF said, it's about the maturity level, not the number.

What I remember (I was in a smaller corps and usually saw Star either from the side or, a couple times, from the stands) was that the original ending was a long, drawn-out crescendo, using the fourth movement, The Pines of the Appian Way. Honestly, although it was executed nicely, it simply lacked energy. It was a few weeks later that the new ending appeared (after the new opener drill, too) and literally everyone was abuzz about it, from the spectators to the kids in other corps. I remember lining up for retreat and hearing the crowds light up for Star, thinking, "Holy f***, whatever they're doing must be WAY better than before..."

Any progress? If I had seen this thread six months ago, I would've told you to get a lesson book for either trumpet or treble clef baritone, practice the scales, and then come back in a month. I would've also said that playing a G horn among concert instruments is a pain in the ### unless you're really good at transposing on the fly. The bugle "Eb" is concert Bb, and worse, it's rarely well in tune. SO ANYWAY... In your last post, you asked about playing a scale in Concert C. In case you haven't figured it out since last December, it's like fingering a trumpet F scale (for G bugles, bugle "F" is concert C). The fingerings you wrote in the last post don't make much sense, either. "1 0 12 1 2 1 1"? You're missing some 2-3 and open fingerings in there. I hope you spent a lot of time on basic scales since then. For this: It was all custom-arranged, yes. As Brad T. noted, writing G bugle music in bass clef grew to be a mess (I've seen GG contrabass parts written for both BBb and CC tuba players, where on the CC parts, a written C was a bugle open "C" that sounded concert G). Alto or tenor clef? No. Who reads those outside of college and British-style brass bands? The entire hornline was normally written in treble clef because the various voices were gradually added to the line. Contras didn't even get into widespread use until the 1960's. They kept writing only in treble clef to make it easier for players to switch from one instrument to any other. Remember, drum corps was not born as a highfalutin' music education experience for aspiring professional brass masters. It was for giving kids something to do in their spare time, keeping them out of trouble and helping them build friendships, a high sense of self-worth, and a strong work ethic. If the corps needed kids to switch to a different instrument to fill out the numbers, they did. No big deal.

It's just parallel 9th chords, which is what every Theory I teacher will tell you to never do. ;) Everyone moves up like they're playing the first five notes of a major scale. A BD alum from the early 90's said that he personally liked to voice them with only the contras/tubas on the root, then the minor triad (3-5-7) in the euphs/baris, an open interval (5-9) in the altos, and the major triad (5-7-9) in the sops/trumpets. So, in modern Bb/F instruments, it probably goes like this: Tubas: Bb (could add an F split); Baris/euphs: D-F-A; Mellos: F-C (this would be "C-G" in mello notation); Trumpets: F-A-C (well, that's concert pitch, so they'd play G-B-D "trumpet" pitch). The exercise itself has a couple rules: Balance to the root, and each step up must be louder. You can't zoom up to fortissimo by the second chord, because you've got three more steps to grow.

I doubt many marching euphs or baritones play well with a 59; that's a big mouthpiece. We used 51Ds (or similar) on baritone in the USMC D&B, and a smaller mouthpiece for the euphs (often a Giddings & Webster GW-102, which is probably closer to a 51 or a 6 1/2). Get a 51D as a baseline, and expect to possibly need a small shank if you get on bari instead of euphonium. Either way, I'll expect that everyone in the line will be using the same mouthpiece -- but don't worry about it for now. But do get used to a smaller one than a 59.

The big bell that Phantom was ringing at the end of '92 was one of the loudest things I've ever heard on the field. Or, at least, it was one of the loudest omnidirectional objects ever used in drum corps. The loudest I've heard in person? '96 BD, 2004 Renegades, maybe '88 Madison. Maybe a few others, too, but it really depended upon my vantage point. One of the strangest sounds I've ever heard was the buzzing in my ears during Empire Statesmen's final hornline warmup. For their last bit, they ran through the last push of their show. Joey Pero and the other sop soloist kicked it off with this wailing interval, and I think Joey wanted to do brain surgery on me from twenty feet away.

*bump* You two are talking about breathing (good ideas, too, although a little over-analyzed for my tastes these days), but not much about stagger breathing. There's a couple tricks to get players to start thinking about stagger breathing -- Sneak out and sneak in. Decrescendo out like MelloHorn said, and crescendo back in. I would suggest learning how to attack... sorry, "attack" is a fairly aggressive term, so I like to say "begin" the note without using the tongue. Learn how to do it relatively quickly, too, so the neighboring player isn't left waiting for a full measure or two to get their breath. "Don't breathe on the bar line." It's not 100% musically correct to carry a phrase over the bar line, but it gets them to think about breathing in unusual places. More pointers: If the situation allows it, have them watch each other for breathing. If the player to your left takes a breath, keep playing until you see them re-enter, then take your breath. They don't have to be bouncing up and down, either -- you can see their body move (chest expands, mouth opens and comes off the mouthpiece, etc). "Buddy up" if necessary. If you've got someone next to you often, pay attention to each other for breaths and don't worry about the third person on your other side. If needed, and if possible, you can set counts for people to breathe. I've been in a contra line of two, and for some parts of our show, we said, "Okay, you breathe in the second half of the bar and I'll breathe in the first half." If the music is moving along (i.e., no sustained chords), besides breathing where it makes sense for the phrase, breathe in a way that you don't sacrifice the timing of the next note. Better to release a hair earlier if it means you can reliably attack the next note in tempo. Extreme dynamics make a big difference, both at the loud and soft ends. It's nigh impossible to sneak out & in if you're playing as soft as physically possible, and it's hard to blend a blastissimo tone quality and keep it from sounding like people are dropping out. And for heaven's sake, don't tell them, "Play until you run out of air and then take your breath." If they do this, most of them will be running out of air at nearly the same time, so they'll be left scrambling for their unique breathing point in the span of two or three beats. Stagger breathing a long phrase works really well if a few players start the "chain" or "cascade" of breaths by breathing very, very early -- say, within the first two beats. I'll illustrate that point like this: Say that the longest a player can sustain a particular note is eight counts, but it's written to be 24 counts long. You have a section of ten players. You can have everyone try to sustain as long as they can before breathing, or you can have a couple get their first breath very early (by count 3), then their neighbors take a breath (which means they get theirs by 5-6), so that when the last breathers take theirs, everyone else is already back in the sustain. And, lastly, it's just like how you get to Carnegie Hall: "Practice, my boy, practice." Remove the distraction of moving parts by holding a sustain -- and hold it long enough so that EVERYONE has to stagger breathe repeatedly. Tubas stagger breathe all the time, but trumpets sometimes never learn because they don't have to breathe as often anyway. Play a chord instead of a unison so players can't hide (unisons hide a lot, really). Start with mezzo-whatever volumes, then over time, work up to holding chords at fortissimo levels (don't worry about FFF+++) for a whole minute or more… WITHOUT letting the smooth, sustained sound break down. Stagger breathing properly and seamlessly is an art form in itself.

Don't forget that a mobile version of Flash still hasn't been released. Oh, it's been shown, but it still sucks.

Yup. Man, the season can't start quickly enough. I don't come here for a while, and now I see that somebody started a thread to complain about the corps staff wearing summer attire... Next thing you know, they'll be whining about how the kids are dressed at rehearsal.

This, plus the highlighted part. There are at least four theaters in my area that I could get to in time to see it, but the content isn't that interesting (no offense to the kids who marched), and at least half of the fun is seeing it with friends. Nobody I usually hang out with is going, so I'll be sitting there by myself. To tally it up, 100% "I'm gonna go" = great content + great friends. Minus friends, 50% I'd go; minus compelling content, that's 25% or less reason for me to go. Funny -- now that I think about it, I'd pay five bucks for tonight, but not $20.

Sam's said that some of the visualization exercises, particularly the bow and arrow and the paper airplane, were lifted directly from pre-show routines of British brass bands. Other exercises have their basis in yoga. If you've been a corps horn player, you've done some of this stuff whether you know it or not. What Pat and Sam did was put a bunch of stretching and visualization techniques into a coherent routine. It's almost like a method book for wind.

Sheesh... over 60 replies... +1 to the lowest denominator comment. One more bit (sorry) -- The breath is the wind player's backswing, or windup, if you will. Try to hit a golf ball using a crappy backswing -- it's nearly impossible (and I can prove it every time ). I've known pit players being taught from the outset to lift their mallets in sync. The instruction given to them, funny enough, made mention of a hornline's unison breath. Drumlines play the same way. For us in the low brass, especially on contra/tuba, constantly moving wind is just a way of life. When other wind players learn it for the first time, they think it's revolutionary. I think it's interesting that so much of this breathing stuff goes back at least as far as the Arnold Jacobs school of playing.

$125 seats on the 5 is reprehensible. I'd yell up and down DCI for a refund. Getting between the 45's is almost a guarantee for good sound, as usual. Going from what people are saying, though, it seems like the balance gets really bad really quickly as you move away from the center. Like I've said, I'm used to seeing most shows off-center, but I'm also used to being able to hear what was going on, too. The constant drone of pit amps, reverb and echoes really did a disservice to the kids on the field. I'd see thirty or forty of them in front of me and wonder if they were playing or not.

^ This. Heck, I'm just going to wait for rips to show up online and give them a listen before ordering anything. I was really disappointed with the recordings from the first amplified year and hardly listen to them at all anymore. Modern studio engineering can make Britney sing in tune, but it can't fix what happened in LOS.

I've tried fixing recordings of junk, and as the saying goes, "You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear." The CD/DVD audio won't sound any better than what we heard in the theaters -- lots of pit, LOTS of synth bass, with the other hundred musicians somewhere in the background. The same mic setup is used for the CD/DVD mix, and unless they had secretly installed a set of mics by the neon Lucas Oil sign at the top of the 200 level, they simply did not record a better-balanced mix. Unfortunately, placing mics further back would have also picked up a lot more reverb...

$200,000, that is.. Knowing how quickly that money can get eaten up, I wonder what they're planning to use.

The only improvements I could imagine would be hundreds of sound-deadening assemblies with deep spikes for absorbing excess bass. I'm thinking of those test chambers used by NASA and automakers. *edit* Ah, I wonder if Chesney's producer came to DCI to hear what it was like. It's certainly more challenging than a typical rock/country concert, what with multiple instruments playing different parts and always changing locations. */edit* Lucas Oil Stadium Sound = L.O.S.S.

You guys found what were probably the only acceptable seats, sound-wise. Unfortunately, there were a lot more spectators in acoustically worse sections.

The curious thing about the membership that comprise the performers in DCI is that there's almost always a sense of the DCI organization being "The Man". The judging is there to tell you how much or how little you suck, and if you can bludgeon them into accepting your accomplishments, then you're doing well. The underground community distributing "boots" is a surprisingly effective PR tool, IMO. Pre-internet, I've played rehearsal and warmup tapes for people who then start asking me all sorts of questions about drum corps. It makes them feel like they're talking to an insider, and they expect to get the straight scoop on the activity (or at least one more opinion). Think about it -- maybe half, or even less, of the enjoyment as a performing member comes from playing in front of a crowd. The rest comes from the results of the hard work done at rehearsal and just being on the road. Among your fellow members, you probably have more stories about rehearsing and traveling than about actual performances. Those are the moments of a drum corps member's life, and they're what the curious outsiders really want to know about. They're not going to ask about how many counts a drill move was -- they ask about what a typical rehearsal day is like. They want to know what exercises the drummers do, they want to know how the horns achieve their sound, they want to learn how the guard cleans their work. They know they're going to get the best answers from the "troops on the ground", so to speak, and not from the corps' own leaflets or DCI's Pravda-like publications. I think that word-of-mouth mostly takes care of itself and that it doesn't need DCI's help.

Think about this, though -- There are probably enough people who liked being comfortable indoors that they'd pay for our empty seats. I don't think we'll see a drop in attendance next year.

Having the roof open would have helped with the sustained reverb, but it still would've been a mess of echoes, just like Montreal and other stadiums with large, overhanging roofs (think of most European football ["soccer"] stadiums). The curtain wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, either. It got rid of the "TCHow" echo that snares do with empty stands but didn't seem to add anything else. I heard more slapback from the sponsorship banners at ground level, but even that was nothing like the stone wall in Toledo or the base of the front stands in DeKalb or Mankato. Granted, it was nice to sit in the stands and not be sweating my balls off, but next year, I'd settle for whatever local shows I could see, simply because I'd be able to hear the corps better and not pay insane prices for a decent seat. I won't go to Finals at the Oil Drum again if I have to pay for it.

Good review, Psycho. Agreed about the muddied bass because of the synths, too. It was awful in Indy's Lucas Oilcan Armory… I mean, Stadium. It's like adding bologna to a pepperoni pizza - sure, it's "meat", but it just makes the pizza worse. Back in my bar band in college, we realized that the source of our unclear, boomy sound was due to having lots of bass not only from the bass guitar but also from the keyboard/piano and both the rhythm and lead guitars. We cut out most of their bass presence, leaving only the bass guitar in the bottom end, and everything sounded better. I hope the amp guys in DCI come to their senses.

I only got to see some of Top 12 from the 5... The acoustics sucked, but it wasn't all the stadium's fault, either. From the field as a performer, it really wasn't that bad, because the echo noise was a constant drone. Normal destructive echos are clear slap-back-type echos, but those weren't happening here. From the stands, and understanding that I was way off to the side (which is where I've watched most shows, too), it was terrible. What was really killing the clarity was simple: too many bass sounds, most of which were coming from the synth keyboards. I've seen the same thing happen many times, both in drum corps and in other ensembles, both amplified and acoustic. Add too many voices in the bass register and their pitch - their harmonic support - turns into a big, rumbly mess. Even a rock band in a bar can sound like garbage if the bass guitarist insists on playing running 16ths and chords all night. It's enough to have bass drums and contras with the occasional banging of timpani for effect. But, just as the addition of one ingredient can ruin a cooking recipe, the amplified bass notes from the pit turned the bass register into a blob. Not even the marching basses were able to come through outdoors, let alone in the oil dome. The CDs and DVDs are going to be awful, too, unless they were being recorded by mics mounted at the front of the middle deck. But, since they were at the sideline, you'll hear the loudspeakers instead. Speaking of which, that mic placement is what wrecked the theater broadcast. The sound mix being transmitted by DCI was very pit-heavy, especially when the synths sat in the lower octaves. Theater operators, therefore, had no chance to turn up the overall volume because the loudest noises were coming from the pit amps. Cliff's: Indoor stadium + booming synths = fail. Sorry.

Honestly, I didn't like BD's show, but they executed the snot out of it, and - as usual - they had super-exposed stuff written in to show off that execution. My reactions were along the lines of, "Wow - I can't believe they pulled THAT off…" Crown rocked; great corps two years in a row. They're gonna win soon. Cadets were WAY aggressive. I thought they were going to jump ahead of Crown, actually. Really cool show, too. SCV.. Probably my favorite show this year. And the booing? I've only been around DCI for a couple decades, but I've never known anyone to actually boo a corps instead of a score. Sure, people want to see someone topple BD, but it's going to take something truly special, whether in programming innovation or emotional power. This year came close, that's for sure. Synths… don't get me started. That's a topic for another day (and typing on a computer instead of a phone).

Yup, that's it. "Breathe to expand, not 'expand to breathe,'" and all that stuff. Remove the mechanism from breathing from the conscious self and just play the friggin' horn. For a contra player like myself, it's actually pretty easy to not feel winded as long as I keep playing the way I'm supposed to. I'm moving lots and lots of air just to maintain the sound, and it's usually enough air to keep up with the physical demands. If I were in a concert setting, I'd be breathing much the same way. When I'm tired, it's hardest to play soft; thank goodness the end of the show is always loud. To the listener, I'm blowing my stones off; from my perspective, I'm letting out a big, "Whew!" For breathing exercises, it probably doesn't matter what you do as long as you do them. Doing stuff to a count structure helps you learn how to meter your air ("halfway", "three-quarters", etc), which in turn helps make sustained notes smoother and more consistent. On the field, during visual rehearsal, DON'T SING. Well, maybe singing helps when you're learning drill and trying to remember where you are in the music, but as early as you can manage, stop singing and start blowing, articulating, and fingering (ahem!). While singing, you're using your air completely differently than while playing the horn, and you're going to create the habit of not moving enough air. Since, while doing air n' valves, you're not actually buzzing the notes, you're not going to blow out your chops. Instead, you'll be reinforcing everything that creates sound -- articulations for timing, fingering for air-tongue-finger coordination, and the air itself, the all-important FUEL for your sound.