drumcorpsfan4567

Was thinking this too

It makes musical demand significantly harder so there's that. Go Blue Stars!

RIP... gone too soon 😢

How is GE rewarding shows that the fans like when BD has won with boring shows most of the last how many years? I think shows would get more entertaining, not less, if designers didn't feel like they had to follow a specific formula to try and win.

Actually there's a super easy way to solve that problem. Make GE way less a part of the overall score.

This times 1000 and by the way, I'll add that I was on the staff of the Raiders that year (who I also donated today in addition to Legends) and the choice with that show was made SPECIFICALLY not to have any new props, uniforms, equipment, etc. because we knew that the corps' financial solvency had to be the #1 priority. We also stopped attending shows in Massachusetts and other places on the east coast before leaving for tour because of the cost involved in that. I haven't been with them since and I think they might have had problems in one of the other years since, but the point is that you need to live within your means as a drum corps and if you are promising a full tour to your members and asking a certain price from them for it, you need to be able to guarantee that you can back that up.

Saying that uniform costs are built into tour/member fees is exactly the same kind of speculation that everyone else is doing. We really don't know exactly how they got into this mess and the video from the corps director does not explain things entirely, which makes it seem like things were mishandled. And honestly, it's a sad activity when you have to "keep up with the Joneses" to survive. I gave $25 but I'm giving $50 to a lower placing open class corps that I used to be affiliated with because they seem to be making responsible financial decisions not to try to do too much with their money, but I'm sure they could certainly benefit from it.

Why shouldn't this money be going to open class corps who apparently have been more financially responsible? It seems like Legends, in addition to other things, bought new uniforms this year. I can't tell if they also bought new playing equipment, but it seems like they are trying to "have their cake and eat it too" here when other open class corps do not make the same types of big purchases to try to "keep up with the jones's" and therefore don't do as well competitively as a result. I know that it would be unfortunate for the drum corps to not go on the road for the rest of the season, but I think there is a valuable lesson for even the youth of the corps to learn here which is...it's a tough world out there where you don't always get everything you want and you have to be smart with your money and not put yourself in situations that will lead to financial ruin. I feel very bad for the corps but when you need 100k raised in 24 hours, that doesn't happen overnight...were they really being smart with what they were trying to accomplish this season.

I'm not in any way involved with YEA or the Cadets, but for the Cadets to have had the success they have had for all these years, George can't have been ALL bad for the corps...just saying. That's not to say these current criticisms are or aren't deserved.

Cavaliers have the first show that made me engaged the entire time.

Haha, guess this is what you get when you're not around the forum too much :P

For there to be some area of subjective critique is understandable but 40 points of it is too much IMO.

Well, I wasn't even alive during the tic system so I don't know much about it...all I know is I would be in favor of a more performance based system. I agree that I doubt we will see it, but I personally would do two GE judges who both are responsible for 10 points each. Then you could maybe add a guard judge (I've heard people say this is the most subjective performance caption, I'm not a gusrd person myself) and have both visual and music worth 40 points. This way GE would be more the icing on the cake which still helps to determine a winner and is still important but on the whole does weight the scoring more to objectivity.

Not necessarily looking for the tic system (although I think it might be a better one than we have today), I just think GE should be weighted significantly less. Maybe something like 20 points GE, 40 points each Visual and Music. I see what you are saying about the "best possible product". One trumpet frack or guard drop in reality means very little in the scheme of the whole product and how it is received. However, how a product is received is personal to each individual, even to judges who are using criteria, and I believe that the system is set up to value the personal opinions of the judges more than the summer's worth of work of the 150 individuals on the field working to perfect a show - something I don't think is right. We as obsevers will always take with us opinions about what product we liked the best, what shows we thought worked and what didn't, and which shows we will remember forever as great. They don't have to be the shows that come in 1st or 2nd at finals...and I think that is a-okay.

I don't disagree that MMs don't bear some of the weight in bringing a design to life, but far more of that burden falls on the designers...would you disagree with me that no corps on earth could have made 09 Phantom a better show than 08 Phantom? (In most people's eyes anyway) Yes there is subjectivity in performance captions, but if effectively monitored by the judging community as a whole, there should be very little subjectivity. A snare roll is either dirty or it isn't, for instance. As it is I think there is already much less subjectivity in the judging of performance captions than in GE captions.

We have judges VERY SUBJECTIVELY deciding this. Why should this subjective criteria be what determines the results? And I'm sorry, but while there are instances of subjectivity in evaluating performance captions, there are also many concrete factors which can lead you to objectively determine corps X did something better than corps Y. I was on an open class corps staff for 3 years and was privy to listening to GE tapes as well as listening to the GE judges at critique, and have worked (primarily with one) marching band for the past 7 years, including musically arranging our show last year. The tastes and opinions of GE judges differ quite a lot in my experience and it's not something I hold against them either way because they are doing the job to the best of their ability. It is a problem with the system.

Agreed with everything you say...now my question is, should that be the case? I think not...like I said there is no reason a show cannot be special to many people even if it doesn't win, and of course that is already the case in many instances (Crown 09 is perhaps my favorite show and it wasn't champion) but I personally think that the best thing for the activity is if the results were most determined by the work of 150 people on the field and not by the few designers, especially as design is more subjective.

Who is to decide if something works or not? Again, that is so subjective, and as you mentioned judges don't always agree on who should be the winner. My point is this is not the way it should be. If we made the results more about performance (which is much less subjective than GE), it puts the results more in the hands of the performers and gives us a better understanding of why a corps won or didn't win. I have no problem with, for instance, saying that Cavies 2000 should have been an outright winner than Cadets 2000 if we say that Cavies were the better corps on finals night. That doesn't have to mean that Cadets 2000 isn't one of the special shows in the history of the activity.

Someone answer me this...what is the "purpose" of General Effect as a caption? It would seem that many judges disagree on this.

Maybe entertaining isn't the right word...but I think that a casual fan most of the time wants to see the shows that they most enjoyed score the best. Any time that doesn't happen, it becomes frustrating unless someone can point to the reason being that the performers of a corps that was to that person more enjoyable did not perform as well as the higher scoring corps. When that isn't the case and when the higher scoring corps wins effect but not the performance captions, lots of questions are raised, the answers of which are usually hard to come by because, again, GE is so subjective. Yes the members have a role in bringing the design to life, but what design is "brought to life" and what isn't is far more subjective than "this snare roll was dirty, this brass release was bad, this guard member dropped her flag", etc. I would also argue that the designers have a MUCH BIGGER role in bringing a show to life than the performers...in my mind, no corps on earth would have made 09 Phantom better than 08, for instance.

Lower the amount that GE counts to the main score. Lower the amount that GE counts to the main score. LOWER THE AMOUNT THAT GE COUNTS TO THE MAIN SCORE. I have been saying this for years. In a "youth activity" there is no reason the work of a few designers should outweigh the work of the 150 members on the field, PLUS GE is the most subjective caption, PLUS the GE numbers are usually the most puzzling to the fans because entertaining shows are not necessarily rewarded (NOT a good thing for the growth of the activity).

I share OP's thoughts wholeheartedly and think he wound up being very right. The Cadets are incredible this year, but the concept held them back IMO. "Tilt" was an interesting concept, "Ten" is not.

It would look terrible if you had one snare drummer not playing, it would be bad for listening if one snare drummer wasn't playing, and not to mention you would have thousands of people talking about it all season. Glad to hear they have worked things out!

Back in 2007 when all the talk was about this show and the narration, I was very ready to dislike it. Then I saw the Cadets live in Hershey, and they BLEW ME OUT OF MY SEAT at their opening impact - I got up and went crazy for them. To this day that is my favorite drum corps experience. I'm still kind of glad they didn't win because I didn't want to see shows go in that direction, but they were one of the best corps I've ever seen.

I haven't seen them yet this year, but I think it's worth pointing out that BAC started slowly both of the last two years and were just fine by season's end. I wouldn't be too worried about them.