KingJoeVII

you are right, "minimalism" is not really the word you want here...maybe something like "complexity" would work better as a definition of what you are talking about. Star stands out as an incredible show because it is so different from the standard model of drum corps show design we have all grown to love. It isnt your simple "soft-build-hit-release-build-hit-release-build-hit-release" that we see in every freakin show...Star 93 takes its time and is careful. One might say that a show like this has even more meaning because nothing is gratuitous - i.e there is a reason for every note they play. Morton Feldman is another great example of minimalism.... It would be kind of cool to hear it on the field, but it really would not be "In C" by Riley...the piece is made up of notes (duh) but Riley also composed it to be a certain length and a certain number of repetitions. Any attempt to transcribe this onto the field would automatically destroy the context of the piece - which in minimalist music, amounts to destroying the entire piece. Drum Corps shows are inherently inclined against minimalist concepts. The show is limited to 11:30 minutes, and in that time, in order to remain competitive, all corps need to do certain things (fast difficult drill moves, loud playing, soft playing, fast playing, drumming, etc.) I think you would be hard pressed to try and incorporate these things into a minimalist style show...

in before close!! 3...2.....1....

great idea...though I do not know how much anyone can speak to it on here. It seems like simply an issue with numbers. Could they get an advertising deal with someone to cover what they make annually on selling videos? I dont have any of those numbers and I doubt anyone else on here does. You also have to wonder about piracy...so far it is quite difficult to find DCi vids pirated online, however if they release them free with advertising, it is a simple procedure to clip off the advertising and offer them sans-ads... Also if they could land a major advertiser for this operation, then maybe they could get more advertising $$ all around the board? More subsidizing of corps? better shows? lower ticket prices?

good points...I'm not sure it reasonable to surmise that parts would change that dramatically over the course of the year...what someone agrees to say in May, cant be that far off (just from a strictly design standpoint) from what it ends up being in August. In other words, if someone agrees to say "I believe in my country" in May, it is not likely to change into something like "America! $%-YEAH!" in the middle. If it does change that much, then the show design is in real trouble and they have bigger problems than narrator mutiny.. I kind of answered the "stage freight" issue before...though what you present is a little different I concede. I imagine if this were to happen at all, it would be in the beginning of the season when people do not know what to expect. The narrator could then maybe work through the problem the remainder of the season, learning to accept the response it gets, or if it is strong enough, be asked to be moved off the part. I would imagine though, staff and corps members would try and help the person through whatever problem they have in performance the way a struggling soloist may frak in the beginning of the season.

I agree, DCP would be pretty boring without him...

haha yes! they get new instruments pretty much every year anyway... BTW, what was the year that one corps threw their instruments on the sideline at finals?? or did I just make that up??

yes, every one of them...a great show is a great show is a great show..

now there is no need to get snippy... I understand your question fine..."what would happen if someone refused to say a speaking part"? I then said to myself, "Self - That is an illogical, unrealistic scenario. what are the conditions to which someone would accept a speaking part an then weeks later, decide to refuse it?" is is under that last statement to which I answered. I was taking your question to the next logical step and pointing out the reasons why it would be extremely unlikely anyone would have a problem with a speaking part, and thus refuse to perform it. Your response coming concurrently with X DM's posts about not believing in what they are saying probably had a lot to do with the confusion here as well. Sorry if I projected my responses to him onto you, but I am answering your arguments in a way. to summarize: YOU: "What would happen if someone would refuse to narrate a part?" ME: "It is not realistic to believe that someone would spontaneously refuse to narrate something without a good reason. Here are the reasons someone might refuse to narrate and why each reason was not a problem this year." it would be like asking "what would happen if the President decided to fire his cabinet and replace them with Transformer action figures?"...it is much more effective to debate why that would not be such a likely scenario than to try and figure out exactly what would happen after he did that. Hope this clears things up a bit... my head hurts... hmmm, interesting idea...maybe corps could start hiring famous writers to compose narration for the show? It would definitely make things a little more interesting... "Narration by John Grisham" there he is, welcome back to the mess that has become this thread :P

could have fooled me... I guess you could argue you never said those exact words, but why else would someone refuse to speak the narration part unless they had some sort of problem with it... we are just connecting the dots here

maybe because X DM ducked out when the punches started flying and you were left holding the bag

the members knew what the show was about long before the third camp, George is very good about communicating these things. Also if the stuff wasnt written until the third camp, then there is plenty of time for people to switch out of narrator role if they do not want to read it after that. Also, Nick has just confirmed that narrators were not set in stone until around spring training, meaning they knew exactly what words they were volunteering to say. I still do not understand why someone midseason would have a problem with the words they knew they would be reading when they volunteered? lets move on...

Those were the worst mornings...George running around the gym kicking sleeping bags, telling us we were wasting our lives away sleeping....

but they obviously knew what they were trying out for i.e. they knew what they were getting into. I am not really sure why someone would feel uncomfortable with the content of the narration. Who doesn't believe in choice? or Hard Work? If it was a performance issue (stage freight) first off, I don't know why they would audition for the part; second, there are ways to work through those things; third, they could always try and change things around if it got bad enough -just like if someone wasn't cutting it on a trumpet solo (we had to do this midseason in the band I teach. The first soloist consistently choked in every performance.)

how many props did The Cadets use this year again?? come on people, these are design choices...and as was stated earlier, amplification actually is not that expensive and lowers costs in the long run...

you are wrong...the parts were not handed to them, they volunteered for these parts. How many times do we have to go over the same thing???

are smoke and mirrors on the table to be voted on this year? :P

there are a couple reasons why people play Bflat horns now: 1. They just sound better. While they cannot play as loud as bugles, Bflat instruments have a much better tone quality to them. 2. They are cheaper in a few different ways. Since Bflat is standard for the rest of the country, there are many more people manufacturing the horns and therefore they are cheaper. Also, Corps can resell the horn after they use them, making up for much of the cost. clearly there was an advantage for corps to switch to Bflat instruments - it made sense musically and financially. Ive got news for you, but the Troopers and Pioneer have other issues than what instruments they play. Implying that it is the horns that are making them un-competitive is like saying some people dont like flying because of the in-flight movie.

we are not getting into this again, maybe if I make enough faces I can distract everyone long enough to get the thread back on track :( B) b**bs :sshh:

very interesting idea he has been thinking about for a while...it was kinda test piloted in 04 during the TOC - I thought it was great fun (maybe because our encore piece, "William Tell", got a better response than our field show) I know Hop has been wanting longer shows, could this be a way to get around timing restrictions? Also I wonder what kind of mechanism something like this would require? How could you get a feeling for if the fans wanted a encore or not?

wow, as I suggested, maybe you should take a moment to sit and process everything your are posting and read everything people have been responding with... its pretty clear to me if someone volunteers for something, they obviously want to do the thing they volunteer for. Thats how it works. you make the illogical assumption that if they somehow got duped into narrating and they fin out they didnt want to, their only course of action would be to quit (or be kicked out)...this is false, simple as that. They could maybe talk to Hop (believe it or not, he is a reasonable guy), or they could request to not be a narrator for some reason or another. btw, maybe if you consolidated your posts into longer, more in depth posts you could avoid the kind of misunderstandings that I see over the past couple pages. I'm not really trying to be a jackass, I'm just throwing that out there for you...

dude, take a deep breath and step back from the computer for a bit...you just added like 5 pages to this thread in the span on a few minutes. Its a message board, not a chat room

so then we agree that music has nothing to do with the physical act of producing sounds and more to do with personal perception. (i.e. if I think that a truck passing by my window is music, then it is music)...now what was the point of this discussion again??? spot on :) "There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. " -John Cage

um, I dont believe so, unless you consider pop psychology "strange New Age thought" ...but you'll have to ask him

wow you saw right through them. they tried to fool us, but there was one vigilant DCPer who never lost his mistrust [/jackass sarcasm] anyway...I dont really think any chuckles you heard were because of that...people today are so engrossed in a society of irony and cynicism that when they are confronted with something genuine, their first response is to maybe nervously chuckle - think that is a more likely scenario for any audience reaction than the theory you put forth. Have you marched Cadets? Have you listened to Hop speak? Do you know the values and ideas you so readily ridicule and judge??