TAFL

:rock:

Pioneer has spots open--Donny would be happy to have you. I imagine most of the other non-G7 corps have spots to fill, too. Just sayin'....

Note the extra G7 shows are on nights where audience turnout can be expected to be at its highest. That means the regular DCI shows in the area are relegated to nights where audiences are likely going to be significantly lower. So, less exposure for non-G7 shows and lower income for non-G7 shows. Any non-G7 show on the same night within reasonable driving distance can also expect diminished attendance. There's also the consideration that a G7 show is going to have to be logistically feasible in terms of driving time for the corps, so will likely be reasonably close to the site(s) of a non-G7 show. That makes it likely that some folks would skip the non-G7 show entirely and drive to see the G7 show. The loss of revenue that is likely to follow for those non-G7 shows is probably going to mean that the corps that perform at them will get reduced or the shows will simply fold. With non-G7 shows folding, the other corps then have even less revenue from appearances, less exposure for recruiting, fewer opportunities to sell souvies, and so on. The G7 plan appears to be nothing other than an attempt to drain revenues from other corps as way of strangling the competition for performance fees. It's presented as something that won't interfere with regular DCI performances, of course, while the effect over time reduces the money available to support other corps--the whole "wolf-in-sheep's-clothing" approach. Instead of breaking off from DCI and creating a circuit just for themselves--and having to build a new brand from the ground up--the G7 corps appear to be trying to poison all rivals and walk off with the cachet of the DCI brand in their pockets.

Football and basketball and baseball all draw on the same sort of ideals--it's the fundamentals that separate them, such as the ball used, the way play proceeds, how a team scores, and so forth. What you described can apply to pee wee hockey, little league, and a host of other activities. It's the fundamentals of drum corps that makes the activity different than pee wee hockey--things such as playing brass and percussion instruments. The fundamentals of drum corps also serve to separate it from marching band and brass band and pipe band and fife & drum corps and so on. So, please, explain what you see as the fundamentals of drum corps, and not the ideals that drum corps shares with a multitude of other activities.

Go to Open Class shows, Granny, and no corps will get any of your money unless you shop the souvie stand.

So...are you Nagy, his little sister, or simply a sock puppet? Just joined and your first post is to tell folks who have seen corps come and go, good startups and bad, that they don't know anything about how to launch and run corps. I'm guessing that you won't admit to being Nagy, so it's a sockpuppet account.

Not showing anything I really want to see. Toss in shows from earlier years and some Open Class shows and I'd be interested.

I think, at this point, the best support you can offer for your position is to stop posting. You've taken what was first a reasonable rebuttal to an ancillary issue and morphed it into a gross caricature of a reasoned line of argument. The libel involved in that last post was well over the top and highlighted the many problems with the argument as you've expanded it. Speaking as an semi-interested onlooker, I have to say that you're working against your own cause at this point.

Welcome to the neighborhood!

Look for our inaugural show in 2011. For those interested, it's a matter of time-a lack thereof. Both staff members are currently being run ragged with other obligations (lots of overtime at work for me) leaving us without enough time to chase down everything we need in time to put the show on. We do have quite a nice jump on next year, however.

The musical "A Little Night Music."

It won't make any difference. There'll still be ######## jumping in to muck up the discussion.

Thanks!

I'll suggest rereading the thread from the beginning. We've stated that we're not looking to build Open Class corps nor go on summer tours nor anything at all like that. We're working on getting local circuits going that don't require dropping large sums of money by members. The economic burden for what we're discussing doesn't rest on members. It rests on the organizations. The units have to find the support to buy equipment so that the members do NOT. The units have to provide the opportunity while keeping the cost for participation minimal--that's the only way it can work.

And the local WGI circuit isn't amenable to working with anybody else, nor allowing any non-WGI unit--like a brass unit nor any of the local drill teams--to perform at their events. The only guard show any type of group can perform at is the jamboree (not a competition) at the beginning of the year. That's how it's been explained to us. In other words, there is a need for an organization to provide the specific support we'd like to see.

I can see how a national organization would be useful. Yes, there are local indoor circuits in some places in the country. Everywhere there isn't one, however, provides both an opportunity to build one and a need for information on how to go about doing it. I would love to be able to get information from a national organization that specializes in exactly that process of building a local indoor circuit, particularly dealing with poor, urban areas. The circuits that you mention--do you have a list of all of them? Is there any place to find such a list? Do the folks who run those programs offer information to other people interested in building similar programs? Is there any way to get information and advice short of trying to find somebody involved with one willing to spend some time talking? A national organization can provide information and contacts. That would be highly useful. I'm not looking to build a DCI corps here. We'll offer places for kids in our corps, certainly, though that's also not the primary purpose (we hope the visibility afforded us with sponsoring/running the junior events helps us recruit parents and other adults). We do think the audience for the local circuit would boost the audience for any shows we'd host with DCI and DCA corps, though--and that's the link from the local circuit to DCI/DCA. I come from a poor family. Music scholarships helped put me through college. Summer tours helped show me the world outside my hometown. I figure helping other poor kids see life outside the ghetto and an avenue to use to help escape from it is a good thing.

You can push people to achieve better without the stupid crap. A positive approach doesn't mean nobody gets pushed or nobody gets chastised for lack of focus. It only means using techniques that aren't dysfunctional and disrespectful.

Some of the kids we're aiming at can't afford an Open Class corps, nor a competitive DCA corps. The high school band programs may not offer any exposure to drum corps at all--and even if it does, the cost still keeps it out of reach. That's why we're discussing ways to offer those kids a chance to do drum corps locally, without it costing them much of anything. Why? Because everybody should be able to experience drum corps if they're interested. Everybody should have opportunities to participate in music and possibly excel, despite a background lacking resources. That such efforts also increase the visibility of drum corps and can lead to opportunities for everybody else is a bonus. If we can get a small metro circuit established for drumlines, then we can also provide more show opportunities for drumlines nearby. If we can expand that to include horn lines, then we can end up with a mini-corps circuit in our area that can then expand into offering all-ages groups more performing opportunities. And that can build an audience for full-blown drum corps shows on a more regular basis and provide shows for the DCA corps to the north and south of us in the central region to participate in as part of building the region. We can also leverage that to tie in more shows for DCI Open Class corps (and we're trying to get a show put together this year that includes DCI Open Class and DCA/SDCA corps). The short form of that: we can add a good deal to the drum corps community by working to include more people.

We have an alum of the Argonne Rebels we're working with who has ties to the school band community; he came from the urban core to march when he was young and wants to help other kids from the city get a similar experience. We're working with him to get a drumline camp of sorts running this summer. Just last week, he contacted me about working with an all-star drumline project for a performance at a drill team show in April. His brother-in-law is spearheading the effort and we can enlarge the number of slots for that effort by providing drums and an additional instructor. The kids involved with this all come from urban areas. We're looking to organize some drumline shows for next winter, to give winter lines someplace to perform and compete with each other. We're looking at trying to expand with contacts made with school programs to build a summer brass program of some sort, if not just get kids to play with the corps when we march parades and such. We'll be inviting lines from the entire metro, urban and suburban schools alike. Eventually, we may be able to get a regular competing circuit established in the metro and recruit brass players and guard members to wrap up with the drumlines--then we have corps. If we can get three or four small corps solidly supported, I'd be so very, very happy. I expect a corps or two in the urban areas as part of that (one in KCK and one in KCMO, then another one or two in the 'burbs). Provided we can find volunteers to staff them, of course--I can't run all of the rehearsals by myself! At this point, we'll be working primarily with kids in school marching programs, so we have to work around the schedules for those. We have battery equipment for one large line or a couple of small lines, so the kids don't need to provide drums for that. We're talking with the Parks & Rec department in one of the 'burbs about teaching classes using its facilities, so we may get novices showing up there. (This effort is waiting on me returning to work so I know when I can schedule classes.) If that works well, I'm going to try to do the same in the urban core, whether through P&R or through a local arts organization. A lot of this depends on finding other folks interested in teaching and running programs. Jeff and I can only do so much, and even joining forces with Greg and his BIL only gives us so much capacity. We will certainly need to find more people willing to work with the kids. I think that's the single largest challenge confronting us--finding enough interested people willing to put in the time and effort to help.

Preach on! What happens in military training is actually done for several reasons, only one of which is to promote focus. There aren't many activities that share all of the same goals that approach serves, so there are very few that should share that approach. Drum corps is not one I would number among those. When my tenor line munged a section of a tune, that meant we all spent extra time working out that section. If one of my guys were having significantly more problems than the others, that meant I spent even more time working with just that one player. I got a 14 yo added to my line in April of one year, an awkward, novice tick box both in music and marching. By the time tour rolled around, he was sick of me pushing him and all the extra rehearsal--and the line was real #### good. I doubt we would have been near as good had I wasted time with pushups or running or other stupid crap. Our instructors also never used any of that crap.

I was going say use a triple-stroke roll...flam taps are pretty much equivalent.

Quartet, Jeff...quartet. The contra would have made a quintet. We had two baris, one mello, and one soprano and rocked the joint. The anthem, a march, and some swing--gave the crowd a variety.

Heh. We played a gig today with just four horns: two baris, one mello, one soprano. With minor juggling, we adjusted and sounded solid.

You can minimize the loss if you plan for it. We're now using a standard scoring approach of seven parts (much the same mix as that in this thread, only with mellos in place of flugels). The upper six parts are harmonically complete, so if the contra part isn't covered, we've still got all we need. In our parade tunes, the melody is always covered in two parts, so one of those isn't necessary--we can play any tune with five players. As we can almost always count on having two baritones, I concentrate the heart of the tune in the bari parts, 1st mello, and 1st soprano; we can play much of our book with just four players, though it will sound thin in places and can require a bit of bouncing parts around for a section of a tune. When numbers are a major concern, you adjust for it. Yeah, I'd rather be able to count on 48 horns. I have to plan for six to ten, though, so I adjust.

Meh.