DarrenE

What's going on here. Why does my computer keep posting.

Sorry. Double post.

Absolutely

Here is the ultimate solution. Get rid of the on-field judges. Who cares what the show looks like from the back hash? Since DCI tries to compare itself to the olympics with all its medals and major league talk I'll use a sports analogy. You don't see figure skating judges out on the ice following the skater around for a closer look do you? I believe I speak for the entire audience when I say this is a good idea.

Well, considering that I think if you went through the stands at a typical show and asked everybody what they thought of the G7 that 99% of them would have no idea what you're talking about I doubt if it made any difference at all. Most people don't read Drum Corps forums or read notes from DCI board meetings so I'm pretty sure the G7 is not very common knowledge among the average fan.

Then provide high and low quality versions. DCI shouldn't kill it for everyone because a few people are still stuck on dial-up. Bandwidth is cheap now and so is data storage. There's no excuse anymore for poor quality. This is why I haven't signed up. I have not heard anything good about the quality. There's 60 bucks they'll never see because of their low quality.

That was a really awesome report. They even had enough of the show and the right moments of the show to spotlight the big brass sound so you know it isn't just a normal HS marching band. I liked how they showed each section and then brought it all together at the end with the whole package. You even got the idea that the reporter spent enought time with the group to not sound completely misinformed. That's pretty unusual. Reporters on these types of stories usually sound like morons to anyone that some inside information on what they are reporting on.

What I am taking from this thread is that the people defending the current state of affairs have no idea what they are missing. They've never heard what we are talking about. I can't speak for others but I don't want to go back to the static drill and the flags in an arc in the back of the field. We can add all the modern drill and dance but don't take away the big brass sound. I could even deal with the amplification if I could get the horn sound back. Another point, there was a bit of disbelief earlier that a single instrument could be 3 to 5 db louder. I could believe it when a current brass section of 80 players can't keep up with what a line of 60 to 65 could do in the past. Don't forget that even if it isn't that much per instrument you need to multiply it across a whole brass line to come up with a final number. Where I've seen the most obvious difference is in the smaller corps. The groups with with 40 horns used to be able to pump out some serious sound. Way more than what you would hear from a marching band of two or three times the size. The talent level of the smaller groups is much better now than it used to be but they really don't stand out as much different in sound from a regular marching band.

I can't believe you just said the Phantom Guard all have humps. How cruel can you possibly be? /Troll

So it is just marching band then? It's not like these old corps we talk about were crap musicians. The musicianship was just as good if not better but it also had an element of majesty that isn't there anymore. It's probably getting to the point now that a majority of the people in the stands have never heard a brass line of g horns played by a top corps and so they say that what they hear now is just as good even though they've never heard the other version. I think a lot of these people would crap themselves if sat down in front of any of the top 3 corps from 1988. Even Star of Indiana with their Medea show which many people hated because they thought it was too artsy fartsy just about pealed the skin of your face at the end. What kind of an upside world have we come to when all the old fogies are sitting around telling the teenagers to turn up the music.

Well, the corps don't put out nearly as much sound as they used to even when you add in the bigger numbers and amplification so I would say that it is a terrible change. I went to the Kalamazoo show and only one corps came even close to having as big of sound as the top six or seven groups would have had back on the G horns. You argue that it isn't something to worry about but I would contend that the big brass sound was the number one attraction followed by the drums and then everything else. It just isn't as exciting without the big sound. It doesn't stand out from run of the mill marching bands. If you want to add all the other stuff I say great but don't take away the number one draw in the process.

Carolina Crown Phantom Regiment Madison Scouts

You made a mistake when you were alphabetizing your list.

I read it as Drums Along the Moon but I'll admit Moron is funnier.

I was sitting right behind the judges so I saw the whole process. There were several sets of digital recorders. Each set had a colored sticker and each judge had a number. On corps one the judges would all use blue recorders. (labeled with a colored sticker) After the corps was done the girl would come get the recorder and the sheet from each judge and then give them a yellow recorder. She would then take the recorders away and bring them back when she picked up the sheets and recorders for the next corps. She did get back too late once and they had to put two corps on one recorder and all the judges had to put notes on the the recorders that there were two sets of comments on one recorder. It took them about four corps to get the process ironed out so she wasn't racing back to pass out the new set right as the next corps was starting. It didn't help that the head judge refused to let them hand them down to each other so she had to take all the recorders from the one side and then run up the steps over around the back of the section and then back down the other side to get the recorders from that side. I did enjoy watching her running up and down the steps though. (don't tell my wife) I dont' know how many sets of recorders they had but it did seem like they needed another set to free things up a bit.

Yes, you see people trying to do multicam with a single camera on youtube all the time. Zoom, hard pan, hard pan, zoom, zoom, slow pan, fast zoom out, camera points at operator feet while operator stands up, camera back up, screeeeaaaaaammmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Heck, they scared my wife.

Nice troll. Loud isn't the only thing but it is one of the things that set Drum Corps apart from your run of the mill marching band. DCI even markets it. Let's face it. A drum corps show isn't exactly a night at the ballet and if it ever is it will be performed in front of audiences consisting entirely of the parents of the Corps members at small High School stadiums.

Geez, who ###### in your Cheerios. I also said "This is just my next day gut feeling on the shows and not any sort of technical discussion." Its not like I was sitting there with an SPL meter. I left it at home. Please learn to recognize a conversational writing style and differentiate it from a technical writing style.

Here's my 2 cents. I was sitting right behind the Music Effect judge right on the 50 yd line. It was very hot up there and the judges were all just about melting. They actually ran to get them all hats and kept bringing them water the whole time. One of them tripped and almost fell off the upper deck. Everyone jumped when that happened. This is just my next day gut feeling on the shows and not any sort of technical discussion. Crown: Seriously, they sounded twice as loud (yes, I know this is an exaggeration) as everyone else. Even my wife gave me a shocked look when they let loose the first time. This was the only group of the night that really sounded like what I remember from the corps of the past. Anybody here that has an opinion of Crown based on what they've seen online is hear-by on notice that their opinion is based on faulty data. There are some sections of the show where they were doing audio responses from one side of the field to the other that you would never pick up on through an internet stream. Half of Crown's horn line had as big of a sound as some of the other groups entire horn lines. The difference between Crown's sound and the others was not subtle. Crown had some very neat visual tricks that really stand out. However, they need to fix the end of their show. It doesn't stand out at all from the rest of the package. A double horn arc, a whole note, aaaaandddd we're done. Other than the ending they were my favorite corps. Probably because of what I said in my first sentence. Come on everybody else. Put some air through the horns. Bluecoats: They were good but I wouldn't make a special trip to see them. (I told you this wouldn't be a technical evaluation) Cavaliers: The electronic intro stuff just doesn't work. It's a neat effect but it is jarring when the horns and drums come in. I don't mean jarring in a kick### good way either. The Cavie fans were annoying with their cheering for individual rifle tosses but I can't exactly blame that on the corps. They actually put a little bit of air through the horns this year so that is something. The section where the whole horn line had rifles was pretty cool. Nobody reading this should think it looked like they suddenly had a 100 person rifle line. It definitely looked like they handed rifles to horn players who were trying to do their best to not hurt themselves with the things. They also need to fix their ending. The end of the next to last section of their show would make a much better ending than what they have now. One last thing. They could prescribe their encore show as a sleep aid. It should come with a warning about operation heavy machinery afterwards. Boston Crusaders: Were they the ones that were playing while jumping sideways? If so, that was pretty cool. Phantom Regiment: I have been a big PR fan since the 80's so take that bias into account here. They looked small. Seriously, are they smaller than everybody else? I wouldn't think so. My opinion on this was validated for me when the old lady sitting behind me asked the people who brought her "is this group smaller than the other ones." I don't know if it is the visual design or what but they gave a visual impression of being small. Probably not what the visual designers wants to hear. They don't sound small though. I just love their sound. I could listen to it all night. They sound cleaner than everybody else. Everything is just crisp. I actually got chills once during their show and that doesn't happen to me very often. That chevron thing at the end of the show is just cool in an almost take your breath away way. (That wasn't the section that gave me chills.) I don't generally like down endings and this one fell in line with that. I wish I could have seen them after the sun had gone down. I have a feeling that their visual show is dramatically damaged when they don't perform under the stadium lights. Blue Stars: I couldn't tell you much about this show. I was too distracted by the two girls in the pit dancing behind the keyboards. I kept looking over there and never once saw them place their hands on the keys. It was like the visual designer told them they had to do something since they weren't playing so they just did this head-bop knee bounce dance for the whole show. Seriously, thats the only thing I remember about the show. (Yes, this critique of the corps is grossly unfair and I really hope neither of those girls or their families read this because frankly it just isn't their fault. Somebody told them to do that and they were rockin' it but man was it distracting to me.) Madison Scouts: I was geeking out when I saw the 20 contras. Unfortunately, I didn't really notice any difference in the bass sound than from the other groups with 12 to 16 contra. Their show was really entertaining and they came second to Crown in volume so that bumps them up my list. Regardless of their placement I would rather watch them than most of the other corps. I fear that having accessible entertaining music is a competitive disadvantage to them and that is something that I fear is going to hurt DCI in the long run. Spirit: They gave me a lead-in to tell my wife about the 1980 Spirit of Atlanta horn-line that used to hire themselves out as an alternative to industrial sand blasting and how all the corps just haven't been as loud since they started using band instruments. Teal Sound: I don't care what anybody else says. I liked them. They obviously aren't up to par with the later groups but I enjoyed them. Crossmen; I thought the skull guy was cool up in the stands at the beginning of the show. I also think it is cool that they raise their flag through the top of the bus when they pull into the parking lot. General comments: 1) I hate when soloists play into a microphone and their sound gets pipe through crappy wedding-singer grade speakers. I'm going to let all you guys in on why you hate the electronics and the singing and talking during shows. You are sitting there enjoying a top of the line show in "Musics Major League" and then in the middle of the show somebody decides it would be a good idea to try to fill a huge football stadium with sound using the same set of speakers that you would normally use for a High School dance in a small gym. You can't do it. It isn't possible. There is a reason these stadiums have massive stacks of speakers and pay sound engineers a lot of money to design and install the system. Also, there is no time for them to do sound checks in these stadiums so it is pretty much turn them on and hope for the best. The talent level on the electronics is so far below the rest of the captions that it is glaring. It doesn't blend with the rest of the show so you notice it every time and it distracts. If these corps are going to use electronics they need to bring in some experts on the subject and not just let the guy who didn't make the snare line be in charge of it. Do it right or don't do it at all. They don't half-### any other caption of the show. (I'm going to end this here or it will be a 20 page dissertation on the dangers of handing a bunch of amateurs a microphone) 2) Back in my day the corps were much louder than they are now. Now get off my lawn.

From the same parade. Crowd doesn't seem to upset. My first thought when I saw this was how much more the crowd would love this than marching in perfect lines while playing Sousa marches. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carolina-Cro...v=1441113101779 Even the group following them in the parade is rocking out to the music. I hated parades. Wish I could have done this.

I hated that Crown didn't insist on going on last at the Decatur show last night. Cavies were a real letdown after Crown. Bored out of my skull. I realize that "LOUD" isn't everything but the Cavies should be embarrassed. They were like the fourth loudest corps. Seemed like they weren't even trying

NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <**>

From Dictionary.com "ubiquity: the state or capacity of being everywhere, esp. at the same time; omnipresence" I have heard a lot of cymbal lines and I can't really think of a situation where I felt like the sound was coming from everywhere at once. I guess I just don't understand exactly what you are trying to say.

It sounded like they had microphone stuck up inside one of the sopranos. It probably wasn't nearly as bad live. At least, one can hope that it wasn't nearly as bad live. Have a great Air Force day!