euphononium

I was also there that night, also. It is absolutely possible that they had a bad night. In my opinion they did not. However, I watched the PA judge stand in front of Empire's drum snare line on the field for roughly 90 seconds. He spent the rest of the show on the track behind the drum major. If that's not bogus, then I don't know what is. The scores for ALL groups that night were questionable at best. This happens every #### year at Kingston and all the homers get a huge chip on their shoulder for two weeks over jacked up scores. But apparently it has been discussed elsewhere, so that's all I will say about that.

It happens every year. Judging by a majority of people's posts, I think it is less of a pro-Cabs thing and more of an anti-Statesmen thing. All the predictions always have them down in 5th, sometimes 8th place, but every year they find themselves in the top 3-4...

THIS! Overbalancing problems got much better as the season went on. Apart from a few corps, the issues seemed to be a once in a while thing, rather than something that seemed intentional or consistent at all. 2010 will certainly be a memorable year for both circuits, and I consider myself privileged to have seen nearly all of the drum corps perform.

I need to go ahead and respectfully disagree with this. The drum scores from Kingston are incredibly hard to take seriously and Empire nipped at Reading's heels in this caption last week. Empire should absolutely be feeling confidence at this point. They've got the crowd into their show and they're to the point where they're starting to win sub-captions. The horn line was better two weeks ago than they were at finals last year. The drum line has incredible sound quality and their technique is much improved (see: Cicero recap). I could go on for years about how improved their front ensemble is over years past. They actually have a well defined technique that is being achieved and they are playing a ton of notes t(hat will require a little more cleaning before Labor Day...) The visual program is in very capable, knowledgeable hands, and it is finally starting to show as far as feet, movement, and timing go. There are very few details left to be desired at this point, and that's not something I've been able to say about the Statesmen the last few years. These are all huge improvements for the corps over the last few years. Sounds pretty #### good to me, regardless of who they end up beating or not beating in the next 3 weeks. Now there's something I can absolutely get on board with. Here's my prediction: Buccaneers - 93.3 Statesmen - 91.5 Hurricanes - 90.9 Caballeros - 89.7 Bushwackers - 86.3

This is quite possibly the funniest thing I have ever read.

It seemed to be a rather large crowd, but definitely not the most I've seen there. I was a bit thrown off at first sight because the last time I performed there, the upper section was still condemned..haha, so I was remembering that bottom section being PACKED and thinking wow, there's a much smaller crowd here tonight!

After seeing Crown three times this weekend, I have to 100% agree with your thoughts on the rewind. It is completely forced and seems as if the design team had the idea for this show and up until now not a clue what to do with the ending, so they reached in their back pocket and reused everything they've already done for the past 5 years. I love Promise of Living just as much as the next guy (probably more), but seriously Crown, you couldn't come up with an ending for 2010 that was completely new and original? It was totally disappointing to me.

Loved the stadium. It was a really cool location for warm-ups n'at, very remote. Hated the weather. It was so sticky. Ugh. I'm a brass person originally, but have also quite a bit of experience playing mallet instruments, so my thoughts are a little more focused on those aspects. I'll try to say something about every section of every corps. Jersey Surf: I LOVE THEIR UNIFORMS!! great up and coming corps. bari soloist was outta this world. brass line seemed to struggle with keeping a nice, characteristic sound throughout the show. some performers seemed to struggle a bit with marching. drum line and front ensemble had a nice quality of sound. guard was a nice touch. overall - a wonderful start to the show and a good solid world class show for surf. Crossmen: circular idea was pretty cool, not well portrayed throughout the show. i liked the first half of the show, then it just kinda seemed to lull. there were a few very noticeable drops in the guard, but i really loved the flag designs. horn line seemed to be pretty good tonight, especially trumpets. heard some dirt in the drum line, but i really liked their sound quality. honestly don't remember much about the front ensemble except that there were three...THREE synths. WHY THREE?! is that really necessary?! it was nice to see bones back there in his old home ;) overall - a step up from surf, don't see it scoring very much higher without some major changes (and it is way too late for that) Blue Knights: still am a huge fan of the show, love the changes they've made, but the corps is still having performance issues. i really thought the brass line sounded great the last time i saw them, but for this viewing i was much closer to the field than i was before and heard a decent amount of bad sounds/attacks/releases, etc... guard is by far the strongest section of the corps. their costume changes are amazing, the colors are perfect, and those girls and guys are performing the crap out of their show. did see a flag drop..which is rare..but nice recovery. overall - a good solid show, probably will end up around 8th or 9th place. Phantom Regiment: by far my favorite show of the night. favorite flag designs and second favorite costumes of the night. guard did a wonderful job (and confused the hell out of everybody when they started the show by themselves). loved the body work that the horn line does. i heard one or two trumpets pop out of the ensemble, but other than that, the brass sound was out of this world (i have a hard time picking my favorite between crown and phantom...) love the effect from outside of the stadium/under the stands. flugel soloist had one minor blip, and didn't take the last note up the octave, but sounded phenomenal otherwise. drum line is smokin'...so is front ensemble. bass synth didn't bother me too much, but i was outside the 35, so i may not have been in blast range... overall - i realize favorite does not mean best, but i think this show will definitely be Top 6. Blue Stars: got back a little late from intermission, all i can say is i liked what little bit i saw/heard. brass sounded great especially baritones. drum line is playing some notes man... i liked the "gimmicks" that i could see and am glad to see this show actually taking shape. not too sure about the new uniforms...overall - can't say a whole lot, but of what i did see, i can't say i agree with them being so close to phantom. Carolina Crown: what to say that hasn't already been said a thousand times on DCP... love the brass sound. heard more individual problems than phantom had. not entirely impressed with the visual side of things (NOT including the guard), but i really don't like all the brown on the field. guard was very entertaining to watch! drum line seemed a bit off tonight. the whole 7 snares thing is killin' me. front ensemble was amazing as always. overall - to be brutally honest, i love the performance, but don't really like the show. maybe not at all... Cadets: WOW!! what an awesome show!! although..the whole jeffrey thing got old. so refreshing and SO GLAD they took out that "old school" junk! for a young corps they are doing so well. they're moving and playing just like the cadets we all know and (sometimes) love. i've never been a big fan of the cadet's "sound", so i'll just leave it at that. they are moving. A LOT. guard was great. drum line was not as good as i've remembered them being. front ensemble is playing tons of notes. gotta love the home crowd reaction. I honestly saw it like this: Cadets 94.0 Crown 93.9 Phantom 92.0 Blue Stars 89.0 Blue Knights 87.5 Crossmen 83.0 Jersey Surf 78.0 Wow.. that came out more positive than I thought it would.

I have texts from some non-drum corps friends at the show.. here's a few highlights... Please remember: NON DRUM CORPS PEOPLE. Teal Sound: weird hard rock guitar feature that we're not liking at the beginning of the closer.. ugh. Pioneer: not bad! lots of hats...rough time with the marching Pacific Crest: these guys are really good! they march funny though Madison: ####...holy ####! 20 contras playing the feature from rhapsody in blue!!!!! i need a new pair of pants!! Boston: okay.. same as usual Phantom: that was...different. sounded RIDICULOUSLY GOOD, but show was anticlimactic Vanguard: show is cute!! kinda ridiculous Overall - here's what i'd like to happen: Phantom, SCV, Madison, boston, Pac crest, Teal Sound, Pioneer

then there's that.

I don't remember where in Iowa, but there was a pretty severe microburst. From what we could see, a large wall of orange came at us from miles away. We were just watching this thing come at us during visual rehearsal. It was kind of cool until we started getting hit with debris and then saw the scaffolding blow over on the field over yonder and went "oh ####! run!" The next day during visual rehearsal we were hit with severe weather again, only this time the tornado sirens went off several times before we decided to take cover in the school. Man.. tornado drills were my favorite in elementary school.

You sound like my bitter, senile orchestra teacher who hated drum corps. If you'd actually listen to the #### show you'd know that's an incredibly uninformed statement.

Warm, lush tones from the stands don't always equal blended, tuned, appropriate sounds on the field (although, in theory it should...) What you hear in the stands can be vastly different from what you hear on the field amidst the horn players. Don't even bother trying to figure out the brass caption from the webcast... waste of time. I have watched BK's horn line warm-up at three different shows and have left with a bad taste in my mouth each time. In the lot, I thought that the horn line had several intonation issues, people popping out, and lacked a favorable quality of sound overall. I honestly don't know how they sound so good from the stands, because I really think they have a good ensemble sound (I've sat underneath the box on the 45-50 every time I've seen them). Also, I think that BK's drum line has one of the best qualities of sound in DCI this year, however, it does NOT mean that they are clean. BK's pit sounds phenomenal, too (although I have issues with the composition of the synth transition into Enigma, but the performers don't have any control over that one, so I'll leave it alone...) So really, the scores make sense to me. The corps seems like they're pretty talented, but young and immature as far as experience and competition goes. I said a few weeks back that though I was rather impressed with the corps at that time, I was pretty convinced that the staff and membership wouldn't quite know where to go with their success after a couple weeks. Let's face it, this is the best program the corps has had in years, and certainly has been getting more crowd response than the corps has gotten used to. It seems to me the inconsistencies in numbers can't be entirely the judges' faults - this corps' performance is probably just as inconsistent as their scores are, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. BK will figure it out, but I don't see it being this year, or even the next. I just seriously hope they continue down the awesome path they've laid down this year.

I really think it is the audio.. I've kinda thought that for the whole webcast. Levels that aren't normally bothersome to me have been really weird tonight.

I think my biggest beef with this show is how ugly that darn heart is. Ugh..

Cavaliers

The Bluecoats can think whatever the heck they want. If they'd like to look forward towards the 2 corps ahead of them, that's great, but I hope they don't forget what's lurking behind. There's a few corps back there that typically have a late season surge that they might not be able to keep up with. I honestly think the top 6-7 corps right now could shuffle out any way come Finals night...

i think firefox figured it out since the real fan network site is in my history?

You forgot.. FREE TOM D'BOMB!

Don't do this. Seriously. Your band director won't be teaching you at drum corps, nor will you or him know the correct technique just because you can watch it on TouYube. Corps don't care if you show up and are able to automatically march their technique, they care that you have the ability to learn correctly. Things like attitude, posture, foot timing, ability to adapt, etc.... are what will make an impression. I'm sure they get a good laugh out of people who do show up on day 1 and think they have perfected their technique before ever being taught how to correctly do it.

I'm becoming more of a fan every year. There are tons of Class A corps around that have gotten seriously good, and new corps are popping up all the time. Class A represents all that is good in this circuit right now - growth, improvement, excitement, competition (for all places). I know there is a time issue, but I would love to see Class A finals expanded to more than 4, especially since only one corps won't make Open Class Finals this year... Also, I think I'm being confused with euponitone again...I guess you can call me Nick if you really want.

I think the competition for Class A will be tougher and more exciting than ever this year. Lots of little corps are making big moves. At least we don't know who is going to win.

This. I forgot I had one until I saw this thread.

He who shall not be named's wife.

Likewise... I chose Allentown. If the weather is crappy Friday night, there's still Saturday