Dave

What someone thought about bells or the pit thirty years ago doesn't make my impression of synths as way over the top, completely out of the ensemble and obnoxious any less true or relevant. Or are you saying that I'm obligated to match my opinions up with DCI rule changes?

Whether that's true or not, that doesn't make low-end synth any less obnoxious.

No need for it. It's like pulling into a horn arc with a train horn; put that mess away.

They don't sound anything alike, especially unmixed. The best synth in the world will not duplicate the sound of an actual contra line, and in fact the artificiality of it is what vexes me when hearing it.

Fixed.

What DcFr3aK said is true, go in with what works best for you. The staff may make suggestions as they figure out your playing, but how much they will mess with success really depends on your skills. If you're a solid performance major-level player working with what makes you sound good and you're able to play in tune and in tone with the line, I wouldn't worry about it. If you're some punk walking in with a dented dime, yeah, they're gonna have issues, but you don't see much of that these days. It's also a matter of how much of an issue you want to make out of it. No contra tech was going to tell me to change pieces, but then, I never had to have that argument. I've never bought the arguments behind the "same mouthpiece" philosophy because unless everyone in the line has the same face, they're going to need equipment that fits them and the horn.

He's been writing stories about the corps since at least 02 or 03, so he probably figures folks have enough background by now.

What, no Railmen?

Yeah, that's not true. There's nothing magical about any key that makes it for "indoors" or "outdoors." There are design issues you can change to make a horn better-projecting in certain environments (even just the minor differences between a 37 and a 43 Bach Strad can make a difference) but key is not one of them. And speaking as someone whose horn is miced for gigs, miced brass in drum corps is exceedingly lame.

While I agree with Bozz that the 80s/90s uniform was the best, and I don't know why it ever merited the multitude of changes it was put through post-02, I like this. I'm glad to see a corps designing something that looks like a uniform, rather than some kind of bodysuit or modern art project, sleeves or no sleeves.

There's a minor difference, but not that much. It's one of those "if you were blindfolded, you'd never know" situations.

All good recommendations. Rubank Intermediate going into Advanced is good depending on his age and experience. There are tuba Arbans out there, but they vary a lot. There's one that contains almost everything if not all of what's in the original Arbans, but many are also heavily edited. That might not be so bad, though; the Arban-Prescott is heavily edited but what it has is very useful. Or, you could save yourself thirty bucks and buy a trumpet Arban and he can learn treble clef. Well, the best way to do it is to just read it as though you're playing your normal horn, not try to do any weird fingerings. When I played solos or etudes while I was on tour, I just read them with BBb tuba fingerings. The lower pitch on the G horn made it like running with weights on but it was a good exercise.

In 2000 we got ahold of one of those and tried to experiment with drilling holes in it to change the pitch. I don't think it really made a difference.

Moving to Historical.

As a non-profit does DCI have the right to refuse making the minutes of its meetings public? How does that work? This is a serious question, not a jab.

Dude, I don't care what your screen name is, but it doesn't make sense for you to get touchy about it after choosing that name. If you really want to change it, send a PM to MikeN with what you'd like your display name to be.

That still doesn't answer the question of why you picked it for your screen name if you don't want people to refer to you by that name.

Then why did you make Howdy your screen name?

19 or 22, the way he was going about setting this group up was at best inadvisable and at worst very foolish. Thankfully it doesn't seem like it got to the point where it could have burned more bridges the corps community can't rebuild to potential donors, or so one would hope.

I'm not just "assuming," I'm judging based on past experiences.

As virtually everyone who came up through corps can attest, every time someone's pie in the sky scheme for creating a corps goes awry, a great deal of damage is done to the activity. The service being provided here is that the collective experience of the drum corps community can be pooled to tell the difference between "new corps" and "highly questionable." Go read through the archives, there are a lot of new corps that have appeared or announced, and by no means are people overly negative towards every new group that pops up. The huge number of red flags in this organization have been enough to send even the most reticent critics of new corps to a point where they are willing to say "something's wrong." Howdy is but one very visible problem; the fact that there are people coming out saying "I never agreed to be on staff for this corps, I have repeatedly asked them to remove my name" is even more significant. Some time ago there was a corps announcement about a group that turned out to be a compete fiction, a fabrication from someone's imagination being sold as legit. When people started pointing this out others came in with your "stop being so negative" attitude, but the skepticism was very warranted. There are a lot of reasons being on this or any forum can be frustrating, but no matter which side people fall on various trad vs. evo issues, I've never seen people band together to baselessly go after a new group without good reason. If drum corps is "ultimately for the members" (which is a whole other issue) then the logical extension of that is, the members deserve to be protected and made aware of shady dealings in a group they're considering.

We're this far along already, with stuff everyone was absolutely certain would never fly in competition. Seems silly to assume it would stop here.

If this is true, why was this necessary at all? If it's already legal, why the need for a "rule change?" The only reason I can see is to get the next camel body part inside the tent.

Bach is part of Conn-Selmer, which is itself a division of Steinway after both C.G. Conn and Selmer were acquired by Steinway. Yamaha is unrelated.