Dave

Already a thread here.

A-freaking-men. I don't know what they were thinking with that show, but good LORD was that obnoxious.

No offense, Mike, but...it wouldn't be the Blue Stars. As to all the visual criticism of the helmet and uniform...honestly, I don't really care. I consider the visual identity of the corps more important than some designer or judge's subjective view on the matter. Now, talking about creating a newer uniform that incorporates aspects that are still uniquely Blue Stars but is more modern? Absolutely, I'm open to the idea, though I'm not exactly the one to do a rendering of what that would look like. I'm not saying that the corps needs to perpetually look like the Blue Stars Monster, but the whole "they kept the star" in thing...the star's never been part of the traditional uniform, so that doesn't really sway me. I'd like to see what a modern take on the classic would look like, if Madison can do it we sure as hell can.

It's the corps motto, Finis Coronat Opus, which is Latin for "the end crowns the work."

Indoor drum corps is lame. Weather happens, we've dealt with it God knows how many times since the activity was founded.

Always wear gloves, AND change them often. The stuff the repair guys in my company use is Hagerty's, which sprays on and has great results with a lot less effort than a lot of creams out there.

System Blue is dealt regionally, unlike the other Conn-Selmer lines of instruments. That means that you just need to locate the dealer for your region and they can order the horns for you, and they'll probably be one of the best ways to find out how to get ahold of the used corps horns as well. The Texas area dealer for the SB horns is Brook Mays Music/H&H Music.

As long as it's drum corps, they're contras. Key be ######.

Staff salaries are not the problem. No corps staffer, even the most successful ones, is doing it because it's bringing in serious cash; it's very much a labor of love. Now, is there room to talk about some sort of parity as it relates to what corps get paid? Sure, although it was a rejection of that idea in part that resulted in DCM dying out. But there's a big difference between income parity for the corps/profit-sharing/whatever else you want to call it, and "salary caps." And just because people disagree with you, doesn't make them "trolls."

Already a thread here.

Let's keep the Teal Sound stuff to one thread, please.

Lots of good points, but I'll speak to this one: expense of woodwinds outside is a huge roadblock to including them.* Marching brass, for the most part, is typically built a little more in favor of "take a beating" over "sound perfect," but it's still possible to build a quality performing brass instrument that can be built to stand the abuse of summer. With woodwinds, this just is not possible. Way too many moving parts, and WAY too high of a maintenance bill, and this is before even getting into issues of things like reeds and mouthpieces. For woodwind durability, you will have to make a significant sacrifice in quality of the instruments and quality of sound; for sound quality, you will be spending a fortune on maintaining your stock. And no matter what kind of instruments you buy, you will be replacing pads daily, probably require at least one full repad a year (which can run anywhere from $150-$400 depending on the repair tech and what else might be wrong). For marching bands, where the kids have their own instruments and people don't really care if the clarinet section is carrying their beater plastic models around and most of the biggest expenses therefore are absorbed directly by the students, it's not a huge deal, and of course they don't rehearse nearly as much as a drum corps. But for a corps you're talking both huge startup cost and very significant maintenance cost, speaking as someone who sells and works on maintaining these instruments for a living. *Notwithstanding the fact that the day DCI approves woodwinds, myself and a lot of other people who have had mixed emotions about changes like electronics and amplification will basically call the whole activity a wash and walk away. If you don't care about that, it's fine, but I do, and I don't think the activity benefits by ejecting every single element of itself that makes it unique.

Dude, what?

One of Jupiter's biggest problems is material. They just aren't using the same quality of brass as the better brands, and it is noticeable. One of the first casualties is solder points; they overbrace to try to make the horn stronger but all it does is unbalance the horn and make it heavier than necessary, not to mention creating more points to break and create vibration. Conn-Selmer's not giving hornlines away, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for, and a free Jupiter hornline even for a couple seasons...well, that's about what it's worth in comparison.

The modern tuba was developed specifically because of the undesirability of a directional horn on that voice. The popular horn in bands around the turn of the century was the helicon, which looks like this: Because of the wrap, bore and bell, it is a very directional instrument. John Philip Sousa didn't like them, he found them too brash and so developed the sousaphone in conjunction with either J.W. Pepper or Conn depending on who you ask. The original sousaphone had an upright bell, which lead to its modern nickname, the "raincatcher." It was also a larger-bore instrument, with a wider bell and bigger throat. The idea was to have it more like an upright tuba, but it had design changes that carried back over into the concert horn world: European horns still tend towards longer, narrower bodies and bells (relatively speaking in the case of some horns like the 6/4 Rudy Meinl beasts) but the most popular American tubas are short and fat with wide bells, like the classic York played by Arnold Jacobs and the many horns that descend from it in design (like the King 2341 or my own horn, the Getzen CB50). We like our tuba sounds big, broad, and dark, and an in-your-face contra wouldn't provide that in a concert setting.

The Rath CB mouthpieces are starting to become very popular (at least, as popular as something for a rare instrument like contrabass trombone can be). Last I checked he had 0, 1 and 2 sizes. The horn itself that he makes is also top-quality; it's in F instead of Bb, which makes it a lot more manageable than some of the other models out there, since it doesn't have the doubled-over slide.

Why do you want to change mouthpieces?

It's true. There's a real "it's the equipment" attitude these days which I think is driven by a lot of things--not the least of which is commercial hype, as with every other product on the planet. Not to say that you may not find benefit in things like a mouthpiece, but developing your playing skills will go a lot further towards your goal than investing in 9 different mouthpieces. A good teacher can help you find a mouthpiece that will help you go further, but hopefully will do a lot more than that.

This is very true, and is by and large why a lot of bands aren't able to succeed: creative people and business sense often do not go together. I can't say how this applies to Chris, but I can say this: reading his Twitter feed, it's clear why he can't seem to make anything last. All his posts reaching out are requests for people to help him "refine his pitch," like a politician who's being called out for overt lies thinking that the problem is that he just isn't communicating clearly enough. His problem is not his pitch, it's his follow-through and his truthfulness we doubt.

The copper vs. zinc content of the horn can make a difference because it affects how the metal vibrates. Brass with a higher copper content (rose brass, gold brass, red brass) tends to have a darker, warmer tone to it. Most horns are typically made with yellow brass, which usually is around 70% copper/30% zinc. Silver plating adds weight to the horn, and it will add a little darkness to the sound, but I think arguably the reason most corps use silver horns is because silver plating has a longer lifespan where it still looks good if properly maintained, and can be recovered from tarnishing more easily. Lacquer will wear off relatively quickly especially in the harsh environments of outdoors in the summer, so a lacquer hornline will deteriorate more quickly, and you can't polish up a lacquer horn the same way you can polish a plated horn. Now if you're talking about something like matte finish vs. dark lacquer finish...no, I don't think that affects the sound, at least not significantly. That's just a question of cosmetics.

If you're referring to the Helleberg, that mouthpiece actually has a sharper rim than Bachs which is one of the reasons it's popular for corps: a sharper rim means cleaner articulations, generally.

Well, G bugles are not more "conical" than their Bb counterparts and sopranos, arguably, are actually more cylindrical than a similarly-designed trumpet. Sopranos tend to have a wider throat and narrower bell flare which gives the visual impression of "conical," but the way manufacturers made the horns was to use the same tooling as for the Bb horns but extend the slides the necessary amount to drop the horn's pitch. This is one of the reasons G bugles have the tuning issues they do. We've gone around and around about tuning and sound and all that, I will say that playing a G contra helped me develop a more solid ear to take back to practicing for my performance degree. But at the same time a good teacher can impart those skills to his students no matter the key.

I too marched in the era that was right around when cell phones were slowly becoming more commonplace. I had one of those TracFones, but it was mainly for emergencies or if my mom absolutely had to get ahold of me right now, as using it outside the "coverage zone" (read: virtually anywhere we might be on tour) ate up the minutes very quickly. I didn't get a regular cell phone until after I aged out. There were a few phones on tour when I marched, but they were pretty rare and virtually everyone had a calling card in case they needed to use a payphone to call somewhere. Rarer still was Internet access. Most schools had Internet back then, but it was pretty well locked down and wifi spots were few and far between, if you even had a laptop that had a card. One particular moment of getting in touch with the outside world that sticks out in my mind is my ageout year, 2003, on the night of II/III semifinals; one of the kids in the pit had a cell phone and a laptop, and the ability to hook them up to get Internet access. We did the usual stuff with what little signal we could get: check email, look up what was a fledgling DCP in those days to see what was going on, check up on the 3 months of news we'd missed and the like. I was surprised to find several emails from close friends and teachers of mine in college telling me that a friend, a girl who had played trumpet with me in a brass quintet for the last couple years, had been killed in a car accident on the way back to Kansas from a trip to North Carolina for some kind of music camp. I didn't really know how to absorb it, and it took me maybe an hour before it really sank in. By the time I saw the email, the funeral had already passed earlier that day.

"People" is kind of a stretch when it comes to Mountaineers. "Person" is more like it.