John Schmitt

"I know they don't use that much fuel while idling but still it always seemed stupid and wasteful to me, not to mention the polution." 10 gallons an hour actually.

A complete fill- up on 4 busses and two trucks is around 1100 gallons. $3850 at 3.50 a gallon. Selling the amps off might buy two stops at most. But seriously... how about convincing the entire world to base the energy market on something besides pure imagination and speculation? You know like real supply and demand numbers instead of fear and self- fufilling CNN profecies. Maybe go back in time 30 years and provide real working incentives to build some #### refineries. Oh yeah and nuclear power plants to ease the demand on petroleum based power plants. They're really not dangerous. With the exception of the reactor in ukraine a rather unintelligent night shift pulled all the control rods completely out of, they've been safer than coal- fired plants. Does anyone else remember a really crappy movie from the late 60s early 70s about an atomic bus? A previous post reminded me of that. And on the topic at hand... save money, limit touring from nebraska to iowa to nebraska to iowa to indiana back to iowa (I hated that) and pray.

97-01 and all tan lines are still present and accounted for. They aren't as obvious of course.

huh. well that's good news then. It must just be the monettes.

Normal mouthpieces will fit. The only real issue is with monettes and megatones and the like with the powerbore soprano from kanstul. It takes about a 1/2" more of the shank and the shanks on those kind of mps aren't that long.

... so if the mallet kat was hooked up to a transformer stepping it up to about 50 volts at low amperage and in turn hooked up to the back of a pitster's arm holding a mallet over a wood block... would that be an electronic instrument?

This idea of creating another more elite division has already been brought up. By DCI. Everybody hated it. #9 from friday is crowned div I champion then the remaining 8 play saturday for the open class title, or something to that effect. #9, you're the best one out there... except for those 8 over there. Kind of cheapens it i think.

I was in the upper deck for 99 vanguard

There are many good things I received from my drum corps experience. The following come to mind: God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. and the other thing that comes to mind of course is my fiance, whom I met whilst marching.

"but what was up w/all the brides?? " Yeah those were supposed to be some kind of fancy dress made by some fancy designer to "invoke an image of the alps," which is why they were kind of bumpy. They were a little too literal for my taste. If the military band was playing live, those are the best mics and sound techs I've ever heard. Balance was great. I could hear low clarinets! And it was really cold in the stadium. Cool they were able to pull that off.

on the list: autumn leaves for obvious reasons tied with 02. off the list: Red Cape part one from 2001

The kanstul site will allow you to compare any two mouthpieces they reproduce. They have just about anything you would look for if you know what they call it. They have "M" series for monette, "s" series for shilke, "BMV" series for bach mount vernon, etc. The numbering systems don't seem to have much of a standard. Even two mouthpieces with the same number from the same company can be very different. As a company produces more of a mouthpiece over the years the tooling slowly wears out and the mouthpiece gets smaller. Kanstul picked various specimines from a lot of companies and produces them in such a way as to avoid this inaccuracy due to worn out cutters.

"I THINK the only reason it was otherwise, was because there was construction at the time on the usual side." The music staff likes to face them that way so they can get a better balance read early season since anywhere else they go does not have the overhang. I can't remember if the pit was already set up when we got there, but I would assume they were already set up on that side from rehearsal. Great stadium for drum corps either way! The other good news is they sell way too many home show tickets for the audience to fit on the side without the overhang.

I'll ask my old roommate Ryan. I think he might know something.

...something about the bluecoats hornline...

99. the show seemed like a good idea. I guess I should have known something was up when I was the only upper lead at more than one camp. The "sticks," the bus company we had in the beginning, 54 horns, where'd the guard go, etc. On the plus side: It let us know that we were not invincible. I remember listening to semifinals scores in 98 and saying, "it's pretty close, i hope we make finals." a contra player (whose name i cannot remember) said, "of course we'll make finals. we're the bluecoats." That was an idea that had to go. I really think if 99 never happened, the bluecoats would be hovering between 9th and 12th right now.

24 powerbore G sops (5-6-6-7 or 6-7-11) 12 G mellos 16 kanstul bass baritone grandes (G) 8 kanstul euphs (...G) 14 deg magnum contra bass bugles or... skip the baris and go with 24 euphs. (not that anybody's equipment truck could carry 24 of those.) (74 horns) 9 snares 5 quads 5 plates 5 basses 10 pit (34 percussion) 25 guard 2 dm I wouldn't want the ardurus task of teaching that hornline, but that would be fun to listen to or play in. the battery should balance it on turf at least.

I'm still waiting for us to catch up with the technology of television's 24th century so I can march in any show I want. I like the pov camera idea for a show though. It can be a teaching tool too! "So Jimmy, why weren't you in your primary dress there?" "Shouldn't you be at 3's front to back there?"

Wayne Bergeron?

You mean like a brass quintet? That's probably the easiest to find lit for. Other than that, go to your school library and search the music and oversize section (scores are big sometimes) for "brass ensemble." We're somewhat spoiled at the university of akron as a previous university president bought the entire robert king catalogue for the library, but you should be able to find something. There's a lot of good stuff out there for groups of 2 to 30.

I use schilke slide grease with a drop or two of whatever oil is hanging around on the valve slides, then the red selmer slide/cork grease on the main slide so it doesn't get away. Liquid lanolin works quite well also. You can get it at some craft stores. I've heard of people using Dexron III, but I haven't tried that. About al cass... It's 99.5% Kerosine. The other .5% makes it not smell and ignite like kerosine. It does a really good job for a lot of horns, and not so good for others. I think the price of kerosine is the reason it costs so much now.

95 scouts (once on upper lead, once on mello) Adrenaline? I'll bet any member of that corps could have stopped a moving bus after that final release. 74 muchachos Older style, and hey... it's the freakin muchachos. 02 cavies #### 97 BD I saw this show about a million times while on tour and thought it was great. Then I still liked it a couple years ago when brigs did it most of it. B) Bluecoats 05 Honorable mention to 75 scouts because my current trumpet prof would have been one of my teks.

My ridiculous drum corps fantasy would be kind of like the movie groundhog day. Every season I wake up the day after finals to find myself at everydays in may. New shows, but it's always me 20 years old with my Kanstul powerbore soprano bugle, my dot book, and my blue coat. The dot book can be already filled out when I wake up of course. This would continue for about 9865169865169863546984 seasons or until time stopped. edit: I don't know why people talk about intonation problems on bugles. Mine was in tune.

They're both. This isn't a problem when it's one person picking a trumpet to play professionally with no more than 4 or 5 other trumpet players at a time. You can end up with an amazing horn partially due to the inconsistancies in their manufacture. The problem is it would take about 2 dozen horns per member to pick a good, matched set of 24. That's 576 trumpets for those keeping score. Yamaha and other brands have the advantage of being much more consistant. If the medium large xenos don't sound good, try the large bore xenos, and so on.

As far as I know, they make a 3/4 convertible tuba and a sousaphone. No big marching tuba with the valves in a more comfortable position. That could be a deal breaker. The other thing would be getting 20 trumpet players to find 20 bach trumpets that have a consistant sound and play in tune with each other. Nothing against bach horns. I have two. It's just not the kind of instrument that lends itself well to a very large brass ensemble.