ouooga
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Posts posted by ouooga
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Just now, Cappybara said:
The difference though is that the person who makes the burger is doing everything every step of the way. The members are performing what was already made for them.
I get what you're trying to say, but that analogy doesn't really work.
And I am sure SCV's members are going to take it very seriously that a brand new poster on DCP decided to write a dissertation on why they didn't enjoy the music they were given to perform
Downplaying the hurt doesn't make it ok - I agree most SCV members won't read this and even fewer will really take offense, but that doesn't seem to justify that it's ok to provide that level of hurtful critique to something that so many enjoyed and worked hard to deliver. The words weren't 'bad' or even 'I didn't like it'. The words used were 'epic musical fail.' That's as far away from sugarcoating as you can get before DCP's language filters kick in.
Also I'll concede the analogy isn't 1:1. I had more, but it sounds like you get where I was going anyways.
The poster wrote a dissertation of why what people liked is bad, and continued to say that most drum corps fans are not intelligent enough on the subject matter to know the difference. That's hurtful. That's literally bullying. You can't reason with that, you can't rationalize with that. And in the instances where others (myself included) have tried to at least counter with our own knowledge/degrees, we've received criticism from the same poster. Somehow the OP is an expert in all things, including our own enjoyment and careers, and the original post's only goal was to make us see his light so we can renounce our ways. It'd be like a high school bully making fun of your lunch just because he doesn't like it, or saying you're shirt is ugly because he didn't like it.
There's plenty of ways to say you don't like something without being hurtful or telling people they're flat out wrong. And in the event that you do choose to go down that path, and you use your expertise and education to justify your rationale, it's only fair to concede to the expertise and education of others when they discuss the situation from their point of view. OP opened this conversation disrespectfully, and has kept that trend going throughout.
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Just now, Cappybara said:
He is Criticizing the arrangements of the show. I'm not sure where he ever attacked the members. If he did, I'll gladly retract my statement
Outright attack, no, but it can't feel good coming home from three months of practicing a 13-minute show that was eventually hailed as the world champion among its peers to hear that people are saying what you did was an 'epic musical fail' and placing the justification of that assessment solely on a single music degree from a school that doesn't have any direct link with drum corps. Even the world's greatest cooker of steaks has no right to tell someone their burger that they're proud of is an epic failure, based solely on the fact that the burger doesn't fit into their idea of a perfect steak.
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1 minute ago, Jeff Ream said:
in nevada in august.
We don't actually have a Bloomington. It was a nudge at 08.
My dad told me jokes are funnier when you get to explain them, but I'm not sure that's the case right now.
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35 minutes ago, BRASSO said:
True, but I'll only point out that each generation of Drum Corps loses a significant, sizable numbers from the generation that went before. I suspect that this will continue. I would imagine that a significant numbers of the young that follow and prefer todays style of " Drum Corps " will leave when it changes once more... for example when it adds the rest of the conventional MB instruments, ie the woodwinds, clarinets, what have you. The notion that the young fans of todays style of Drum Corps will be following the new and improved version in another 10-15 is dubious at best. I highly doubt it. Most of them will walk away then too... to replaced by a new and younger generation that will love the woodwinds in Drum Corps, or whatever new incarnatiion develops in the next 10-15 years. So the current young fans of todays Drum Corps that prefer todays style, certainly must know that the next generation of fans is not going to prefer the current 2018 model. Will there be any remaining vestiges of single gender Drum Corps in 10-15 years ? I don't think so, 'really doubt it. Change takes place in Drum Corps, no doubt, but with that change comes many former fans going out the exits, and other newer, younger fans coming in the entrance. Same as it ever was. What evidence is there that this 60 year trend of massive transformative changes in the Drum Corps genre will somehow slow down, abate, or reverse course ? None, as far as I can envision at the moment. And with that, fans coming and going will likely continue uninterrupted in the activity long into the future as well, imo.
Imagine if the McDonald's marketing strategy was "once they've lost interest in the Big Mac, I'll forget about them. There's new people being born every year, and I'll just sell Big Macs to them. Close the test kitchens!"
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8 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
the activity tried for 20 years to continue to try new things AND appease the older fan that only liked their version of drum corps. And it didnt work. Going back to solely what was isn't going to work. going forward, even at a cost, has actually helped. so stay that course
I'm a proponent of staying the course. That's my point. SCV 2018 seems like the kind of show that a former fan would still be interested in.
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23 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
submit a bid
Gotta get closer to the stadium being completed. Start now, everything moves forward, we set a date, and suddenly the stadium isn't completed on schedule and we're forced to drive to Bloomington.
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7 minutes ago, BRASSO said:
Exactly. Drum Corps show appeal has never been directed to general audiences. The largest demographic at Championships before DCI were military veterans/ families, with a mix of Drum Corps marchers family and friends mixed in as the 2nd largest demographic that were there at the Championships ( American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars ). Today, DCI target market are H.S./ College Marching Band students, and it is this audience that pays to march, and is watching the shows by similar demographics. Its mixed in with the older hard corps fans that still remain and follow the activity/ shows. Few are " general audience " level folks however. Same as it ever was.. Most in attendance at shows now have either some prior experience as marchers in MB or Drum Corps, or are the young that hope to march some day. The others are family and friends broght to the shows as a result of family connections to the participants, ie are mothers/ fathers/ current boyfriends or girlfriends of current participants and the like. This has not changed much in the last 35 years, and I expect it won't in the future either. So the OP's comment that DCI Drum Corps does not, will not appeal to " general audience " is only commenting on the obvious, imo.. Its never been DCI's attempt to appeal to the taste of the " general public ". This is nothing new under the sun here with that however in Drum Corps. Drum Corps has never been " general audience " appeal throughout its history.
'Everyone' should not be DCI's target audience, agreed. But the audience I that's constantly forgotten is the former fan.
Assume right now there's three sets of audience members:
1) People currently involved in marching band in some way/shape/form
2) FMMs
3) Family/friends of CMMs
2 is us, and we're pretty die-hard fans. 3 is probably difficult to retain once people age out, though the ones who enjoy it to enjoy it might stay. But 1 is the one that's forgotten.
It's easy to sell more traditional drum corps shows to people who are involved in marching band. High school/college students are playing that kind of music, and it resonates with them. But it seems the current marketing model just assumes that, as those people lose interest in marching band as a whole as they grow up, new people will fill in to take their place. Those people just have different tastes as they get older.
But some importance on developing a more accessible version of the activity, not necessarily in all corps but definitely in some, would be the way to retain those individuals. It's not like they stopped listening to music entirely, they're just not immersed in scholarly band anymore.
For one third of the audience (I'm estimating those are three equal buckets, not sure if they really are), drum corps' goal from a marketing standpoint is to attract new people rather than retain. Marketing 101 teaches us that that's a much more difficult model to sustain.
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Just now, xandandl said:
at what cost??? to each corps, to DCI.
Most corps found renting these same types of facilities in greater Indy quite cost prohibitive.
Add to all this the travel time to Vegas for the tour, the sparsity of population in the between areas, and the need for housing and show sites for corps along the way.
I edited my original with a lot of that information. After looking at it for so long, my assessment is that drum corps folks are scared of change regardless how well the data says it'll work. It would be a big shift, I understand, so I realize why it's so hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around this one. All good man.
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5 minutes ago, MikeN said:
Yeah, but with 40+ corps in town, only the big corps are getting that a/c controlled space.
Mike
There's literally 11.5 million square feet of convention space between Las Vegas and Henderson (adjacent city), more than any other area in the U.S. The majority of hotel properties have at least one indoor facility that can accommodate a full corps rehearsal, and there's nearly 90 properties like that on the Strip alone.
Edit: I should probably mention that I'm one of the guys who crunches the numbers on Las Vegas tourism for a living. Being an avid drum corps person, I've done the math on this, from number of available rooms and the average cost per room/flight, and in all scenarios the cost goes down unless you live basically within driving distance from Indianapolis. I've also talked to some of the appropriate folks., from city-wide entertainment initiative people to convention facility and hotel sales people. Without a stadium, we're obviously a ways away from being able to do anything but hypothesize, but so far I've yet to find an actual hurdle.
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2 minutes ago, xandandl said:
it's those 200 degree outside temps that the mms have to bear in rehearsal which is a major reason that this youth activity doesn't succeed in Sin City. The kids deserve better.
That was the vacant indoor air conditioned convention space part I was talking about......
I edited my original to make that clearer. Sorry for confusion.
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On 8/13/2018 at 6:17 PM, NorCalDad said:
I'm not sure corps members would appreciate outdoor practices during the daytime in Arizona or Nevada in August leading up to finals. Think that 110-118 temp might be a little much dry heat or not. Heck, I'd love if the finals were outdoors here in California but reworking the whole schedule to make that work isn't practical.
12 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:it's all about the $$. it's been said on here by people in the know that the more DCi draws, the better the deal is for them. They won't get that deal going to cities like LA, Dallas, etc. it's the same reason DCA is going to an average at best PA HS stadium for the next 2 years....the deal.
Plus, they can basically keep the same tour schedule year in and year out.
Just to continue beating a dead horse, Vegas has vacant indoor air conditioned convention space in abundance in August so practices can be held indoors. Vegas is incredibly good at making amazing deals for events that come here, especially multi-day events. Add in room blocks to match corps with their fans, and convention space costs go down dramatically. Can't sleep in there, still gotta house kids at schools or rec centers (of which there's plenty), but I'll safely say that Vegas would love to have drum corps in any way/shape/form after the stadium is ready to go!
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44 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
i went in 10 and hated the sound, so i stopped going since i get Allentown the week before and you can watch online. i'm not opposed to going back, but i now have a wiggly 6 year old that isnt going to sit for all of that, and i am not ditching the wife to go solo or ditching the kid and dropping her at grandparents.
3 year old and 1 year old, I understand. That's been my other hurdle as well, though we're talking about Denver next year.
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3 minutes ago, jeffmolnar said:
You could say this about most championship shows for the past twenty years.
Where have you been?
He was busy getting his music degree from Julliard! Didn't you read?!!
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On 8/11/2018 at 6:50 AM, Tim K said:
Interesting the city asked them to stay. DCI would not be a major employer. As far as conventions/events go, DCI does fill the hotels, I suppose the restaurants do well, and finals attracts a respectable crowd, but unless you arrive early, you don’t have time for the touristy atttactions, the shopping, or the things that really bring in the bucks. I know that people taking advantage of the whole city is what Boston, Philadelphia, and New York hope for with conventions.
Heads in beds = economic impact. Stadium costs money, hotel rooms cost money, people eat, people buy souvenirs, people fly in/out, people fill up gas, people explore bars and such after the show. Every one of those is revenue, and the revenue gets dispersed among employees, and they spend the money again. The former is direct economic impact, the latter is induced, the combined is total economic impact.
Cities market themselves to events and sign multi-year deals so their economy grows. This is especially true for cities like Indy, which have a pretty strong convention presence which mostly wanes in the summer. Indy's set up really well for this, since their downtown/hotel district is so close to the stadium that the travel/tourism area stays largely the same throughout the year.
On 8/13/2018 at 8:39 PM, ajlemm said:After about 7 years of going to Indy, my friends decided they didn’t want to spend vacation time on the “same old Indy”. They were really hoping we could use it as an excuse to go to a different city and get away from the wives for a couple days.
So now I go by myself. And while I wouldn’t mind if Finals week moved around, now I can finally focus on drum corps and doing some unique things that I knew my buddies wouldn’t be interested in, such as going to the Indianapolis Art Museum (now called Newfields) and searching for the Edward Hopper paintings I was inspired to find due to the Blue Devils show.
This was my problem. I went to Finals every year after I finished marching, but after two years in a row in Indy, I unfortunately haven't been back.
I'm not necessarily needing Finals to move anywhere, but it would be great if the big spots on the national tour changed around a little bit more.
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15 minutes ago, SWriverstone said:
Sorry ouooga—let's see how the activity is doing in 10 or 20 years. Then tell me if SCV 2018 is marketable. And anytime you'd like to convene a focus group of people on the street and ask them to compare SCV's music to the examples i posted above, I'd be happy to do it with you if we can find funding to do it. Because I'm 100% certain the average person on the street would NOT find this music satisfying to listen to. Sure, they might be impressed with the visuals...but not the music.
Scott
Wait, you get to be a music expert AND a marketing expert? I knew I should have opted for the music degree at Julliard......
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Since we're throwing around degrees and how they apply to drum corps, I have a BS in Marketing, an MA in Psychology, and myriad certifications mostly leaning toward the former. SCV 2018 was cool, and it is marketable.
There's a handful of shows and a handful of corps that are really great at creating accessible shows. Accessible to the common viewer (so, not drum corps people, and borderline not even music people). SCV 2018, Boston 2018, the second half of Bluecoats 18, all of Bluecoats 16 and 17 (I'm forgetting many many, but you get the tone I'm talking about) are perfect in their ability to showcase the activity to a wider audience. There's goosebump moments, wow moments, and in general just coolness. They don't lack cheese necessarily, but they do it in a way that doesn't make the eyes roll. They don't try to showcase nuances that only a hard core fan would get, but instead focus on drawing everyone in. They appeal to the masses the same way a Cirque show might - I assume most people in a Cirque du Soleil show don't have an intimate knowledge of acrobatics, but they definitely enjoy what they see.
I'm not sure what the goal of this original post was, but my own personal goal, or vision, or whatever you want to call it, is to make drum corps easily appreciated by more people outside of the activity. Not mainstream - that'll never happen - but requiring significantly less explanation for the laymen to appreciate it. There are many many parts of this year's show that could be chopped into snackable social media content, and it has the potential to be shared outside of drum corps circles. That's marketable, and I love it. SCV 2018 achieved something that can be appreciated outside of our die-hard audience, and for that I applaud them.
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10 hours ago, BigW said:
Yeah... I also referred to it as that in the "ABC's Of Modern Music" program BITD.....
Though I do have to say the original piece is a brilliant modern work and when done well, exciting and intoxicating at moments. A lot of good performances of it on YT and spirited debate about the interpretation of it of various conductors. Marin Alsop's version is quite good... Personally, I also like the Swedish Radio Symphony orchestra's version, especially when the Lead Trumpet fist-pumps after nailing the High D at the end...
I've never heard the original before. That was fun!
Side note: it's normal at this point to hear a drum corps play classical music, but it still always feels bizarre and too tame to hear 'drum corps music' (ie music I first heard in a drum corps setting) played classically.
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2 minutes ago, Mead09 said:
A guide to the answer may be : Would the majority of us look forward to a 2019 season where every corps in prelims ie all day Thursday duplicating their visual/costume and musical style?
If the answer is YES then it is indeed epic and a truely welcomed activity changer. If NO then the reverse is true
I literally cannot think of any show that I would ever specifically hope to see duplicated by every corps - hell, even a few corps - in style/tone the following year.
So, no show is epic in my book?
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Ya, I'm gonna need to see some credentials of your ability to have an opinion on this type of thing....
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1 hour ago, Minimaster said:
It should show up on the sheets though.
It’s like a guard spinning well, but with no body underneath.
Demand is on the sheets, right? Marching/playing isn't the only thing that determines demand. On that note, if the sheets need to be updated to account for demand differently, the corps (especially those at the top) will adjust. But SCV, like several corps (this decade especially) looked at the sheets/rubric and found the best way to score the highest within that box. It's all in how you play the game.
Also, hey seat partner!
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Mandatory late season west coast tour. This needs to be a rule!
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2 minutes ago, Freanz said:
yep, appears my statement is limited to those areas / districts where the band directors expect the members to control everything that contributes to the show.
Interesting you said Texas though, where a lot of drum corps people live.
I'm torn on this one. Everything I gather, a sound designer/mixer (of which I am neither) is usually not on the field, instead sitting somewhere in the stands or box to gauge/adjust sound. So based solely on that, it shouldn't be a member.
That said, it's an individual who has a specific responsibility during the 13-minute performance that impacts the final product of that particular show. No other staff member position claims that responsibility - frankly most staffs can sit/watch/enjoy/critique/yell in anger/write up punishment plans for the next day - but that's exactly the definition you'd give to a member.
As for the grey areas - it takes skill and proficiency, not just anyone can do it, it's not someone actually performing - I feel like a lot of them could be applied to drum majors, and obviously those are considering performing members.
But I really don't know enough about sound mixing, so everything I think/say should definitely be taken with a grain of salt on this topic.
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7 hours ago, Freanz said:
Absolutely like it has to be for high school shows - sound has to be controlled by a band member.
Ya, I ran into an old buddy of mine at the Pasadena show, and he said he's had to learn live sound mixing purely so he can still have a job teaching high school pits, and he definitely does the mixing for those shows.
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Regarding the mello not moving/playing a ton, this is just smart designing.
There's an episode of Binging with Babish where he makes lemon pepper seasoning from scratch, and by the end says there's no discernible difference between the hours of work he put into his creation v. the $2.99 store bought seasoning.
This is exactly what I think when I hear about a championship show where members may or may not have had easier drill. I don't care about the difficulty, I care about the show. Granted, difficult often can translate into cool, but it doesn't always have to be difficult to look cool, and not everything difficult looks cool. Cool looks cool. If a designer can get there without having its members march/play too much, that means they're going to get fatigued less. This isn't lazy or easy, it's efficient!
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SCV's show was an epic musical fail.
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
To be fair, I'm more triggered by the lack of tact than anything else. Also I was told by a person with a music degree that he knows more about music than me (I'll concede that) and marketing (that's where I'm going to draw the line). Finally, the entire opening of the discussion was explaining to me that what I like is wrong and I need to become educated so I can finally know what to really like. Altogether, I came away from the original post offended, and feeling like I just received a lecture from a bully.
After that, I've mostly been addressing the 'what's' to illustrate the points. Though I'll stand by, as a writer too, 'epic musical fail' is bordering on the words I'd use if I wanted to hurt someone who was proud of their music.
As for the members, I guess that's a personal question, down to each member. On my end, by July, the show was mine. If someone didn't like 'the show', I assumed they were judging me, not the thing someone else wrote for me a few months ago. OP did say "SCV's show was an epic musical fail,' and the members definitely are the composition of SCV.