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Dave

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Everything posted by Dave

  1. I must agree with Jeff, I think returning music to at least equal footing with visual is a step in the right direction. Visual is awesome and necessary, but as I've said in the past: we don't buy muted DVDs to watch just the drill, but we do buy CDs to just listen to the shows. I'd like to enjoy today's shows musically as much as I have in past years.
  2. There is legitimate reason to be concerned. Any time bad management results in a corps dying, especially with the sort of borderline legal issues VK has evidently experienced, it damages the reputation of the activity. When members, staff and donors get burned, the result is that every other corps has that much harder of a time perpetuating its own existence. It's a legit gripe. Go look up threads (if they're still in the server) about groups like Jester, Spartans before their last resurrection, or whatever Marion called itself before they folded, just to name a couple examples. Opportunities to build a vibrant, thriving organization were squandered by people that either didn't know what they were doing running a business or that were, in certain cases, outright fraudulent.
  3. This is literally the first time I've ever heard of it.
  4. It's also the prize for the runner-up and most congenial.
  5. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say. DCI doesn't create new corps out of thin air, people decide to start up a group and affiliate it with DCI. All DCI does is evaluate these groups to try to make sure they're being run correctly and on solid financial ground.
  6. I think we have quite enough G7 threads.
  7. I'll be at the Fort Worth performance December 22. Dallas has one December 24 but I'm out of town.
  8. I seem to recall that while it held some potential on the judging side, it did pretty poorly when you tried to use it to actually write drill.
  9. I don't think it would hurt...but honestly that's pretty surface level. The problems drum corps are having funding themselves are endemic to the basic way they operate as businesses, and it really isn't relevant what kind of shows they do if they don't have steady funding sources and a good manager.
  10. Honestly, I can't recall a single year that we didn't have at least a few people in the corps that weren't switching over from woodwinds, especially in the hornline. The mello and bari sections seemed to be the heaviest recipients, but we had at least one contra player that switched.
  11. What kind of hippie date are you sending these people on? I'd pay real money to see that.
  12. But is it that "DCI is broken" or is it that we have a disagreement over how DCI should be run on a fundamental level? Just because a disagreement exists doesn't preclude those who disagree from being wrong or from their actions having far more detrimental effects than they could ever imagine. Throwing in the towel seems like the wrong way to go about this.
  13. Best, least poisonous/corrosive solution: clean your horn ahead of time and make sure everything is oiled up, oil will drive out the moisture that will freeze.
  14. Dave

    Valve oil?

    That can be helpful, but usually the best way to get the gunk out is to fill up your tub with warm water and some sort of mild detergent like dish soap. Take all the slides and valves out and let the body soak in the tub for a while. Take it out, dump the water out, oil/grease and reassemble, and most of what's inside should be left behind in the tub. Anything more serious than that, I'd take it to a reputable repair shop.
  15. *shrug* I've never messed with their stuff. I believe it's Chinese-made, which means YMMV depending on how well you take care of it. My company has its own line of Chinese-made marching brass, which has done decently for us. Everyone's familiar with the typical problems of those horns--quality of materials, attention to detail in the workmanship, etc. A Google search should give you an idea of experiences people have had with those horns.
  16. Dave

    Valve oil?

    I have to agree that Blue Juice is not all it's cracked up to be, and also with the idea of at least flushing your valves out with water if not having it professionally flushed before using a bunch of different kinds of oils. Having said that, Hetman is a fantastic oil, and I'd recommend either the light (#1) or classic (#3) piston oil. It's got really nice temperature tolerances and I've found that I don't need to use nearly as much, even on older valves like on the 20s-era sousaphone I do a lot of gigs on.
  17. They're cheap because 1) they're made with much lower manufacturing costs both in material and labor, and 2) Jim Laabs is both retailer and distributor--a classic "we've cut out the middleman" scenario. My company does the same thing, we sell Schmidt brass instruments that we both distribute and retail, which means both the ability to sell much cheaper and a much higher profit margin.
  18. But if that C&D comes, won't it be coming in the middle of the marching season when suddenly having to remove a design element from the mix would be much more problematic? Or, will it end up being as it is in this case--with them coming post-finals and the final product needing editing? Or, let's say that we slide by through the process without getting permission, make it through finals and produce the DVDs and related material...and after all that, the originator of the quoted material hears it and brings a suit. What sort of legal penalties and costs is DCI and the offending corps looking at for that? The "shh, don't tell anybody" approach just strikes me as unwise, and the easiest way to deal with it is to at least require samples to be original, if not to simply re-ban them.
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