Derek Smith

I'm pretty sure he's still at Furman, or at least he was about 8 years ago when I did their summer music camp. And I had a good friend recently graduate from Furman, and she had mentioned Bocook before, so.... I'm pretty sure he's still there. He teaches brass majors or something?

Order / Scores in 18-23 are questionable, therefore suspect.

Somebody before hit on it; a change in taste occurred and the members on the field started MOVING FAST. As that occurred, a shift in musical arrangements occurred to make that possible. If you want to get rid of the pit, then you've gotta get rid of the hornline's ability to move fast on the field. Has this shift made the activity accessible to a wider audience? I think so. To the average person (who as we know has absolutely no musical taste), they're going to get excited by the hornline creating energy with their movement and velocity while playing less involved parts, and they won't know that the horn book may not be the hardest thing in the world because they'll still be satisfied with the overall musical product. I think people that don't appreciate the pit would be amazed if they heard a top 5 show from last year, then heard that same show with just horns/drums. It would probably be surprisingly boring to listen to.

Screw the pit. They need to limit the number of trumpets. I mean, who ever heard of trumpets?

Their buzz roll books are consistently superior to EVARY1z. SUCH MUSICAL WRITING!!!! :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy: :worthy:

I think I remember reading an explanation here about why it would cost SO MUCH more to put out finals as a BluRay release, but I really don't buy it. If the Blue Devils, one individual corps, can afford to put out a BluRay release of a percussion video (AND AT AN EXTREMELY REASONABLE PRICE!!!), why can't DCI work it out? If there's an obvious answer that I'm glossing over, somebody please enlighten me. I was just tremendously disappointed in the 08 DVD set (video quality, audio quality, special features), and I'm waiting for a price drop or two on the 09 DVD because I don't think it's going to impress me much more than the 08 one. They'll get my money again when they go back to less corps per disc (choose not to sacrifice a/v quality), include the stuff they used to give us, or pump the thing out on BluRay which will allow them to easily do all of that.

I agree that they don't sound the same as I am a human being who has semi-functioning ears. This is what I was trying to say: WGI lines used to have timpani that they were writing bass-like parts for, then the electric bass rolled around in the activity and a lot of those groups found that they could ditch the timpani and have that musical role performed by the electric bass. Maybe indoor lines were more willing to ditch the timpani because the 32's are just such a pain in the ### to get through doors into gyms, but I think drum corps would be just as willing to get rid of them as they're just so unmanageable on tour. With the exception of a very few groups they just get lost in the sound anyways.

Oh. Well I definitely missed that! I still haven't seen all of the shows yet from this year, and for some reason I had thought specifically that electronic stringed instruments were illegal, but obviously not. I wouldn't be surprised then if we saw a few more groups get rid of the timpanist this year, and more the next. I don't really like it, but lugging timpani around really is a pain in the rear end (can't imagine marching with one, haha), there aren't enough good timpanists out there to play these electric bass parts on timpani, and the people who are writing the drum corps shows are already writing the indoor shows that use a bass instead of timpani. I just don't see them lasting much longer on the field. I haven't seen much (really any) BOA stuff, but I know most of those schools pits are basically circuit city. Is it still popular to have a timpanist at these BOA schools?

Timpani in drum corps will disappear when the electric bass is legalized. Look at WGI (that's why we have synths now, isn't it? so all of the WGI guys can write in the same style for drum corps?). DCI timpani parts nowadays are basically electric bass parts anyways. It's awesome to find a timpanist who can play like that and who is willing to march drum corps (there are very few timpanists good enough to play what these guys are writing), but the drum corps style of playing is rather far removed from how the instruments are used in a wind ensemble / orchestral setting in my opinion. Also, I don't know much about the synth tech out there and mixing patches or whatever these fancy machines do, but all of the midi timpani I've ever heard is a complete lolocaust, so I doubt that the timpani voice will be replaced in the synth section by midi timps.

Well, the second camp got cancelled. There goes a placement at finals.

"Battle on the Bayou" in Monroe, LA. ...actually, scratch that. The 4th of July parade in Bristol.

If they're so "competitive", they sure as hell aren't competing for votes like these guys are.

That would be the worst possible summer ever. First of all, (at the corps I marched, and probably others) the sound equipment was only used during ensemble rehearsals, so that cuts out 70% of the day for someone who is the "sound guy". They get to do misc. tasks all day, or walk around and look for a CVS down the road to buy a gatorade, etc. This is probably different now that there are synths and the pit has to be plugged in all day to rehearse on their own (or else just tell the synth player to take the block off when it's pit-only time...) Either way, that would be a horrible summer of boredom that nobody would choose to go through as a member. A paid audio engineer the staff picks up because somebody knows somebody at school for audio who's interested in drum corps, sure. Having a member sit full time at the sound board would be the same thing as having a kid stand on the sideline with a trumpet, and bring his horn up and down with the group without playing a note or marching a step. He would attend visual rehearsal every day for a 4 hour thrill ride of perfecting his posture and horn angle then kill himself before July. (Sorry for the gender bias in the post... pretend I wasted my time using "his/her" and similar things fifty times.)

I think the most important thing regarding the shower is to MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SHOWER SHOES (flip flops, sandal of some type, etc.). Every year there are a couple people who march that go barefoot into every shower across the nation the whole season, and it's completely disgusting (to me). Clogged drains, hair, gross standing water, etc. are all things I never liked the idea of stepping in barefoot, so shower shoes were totally clutch. I remember we stayed at some school in Texas in maybe 07 where there were a ####load of very large dead roaches in the shower, and drainage didn't exist, so a couple brainiacs dragged a bunch of chairs into the shower to make a pathway to the one or two haggard cold shower heads, rather than stand in the foot of ###### bug water. Ah, memories.. drum corps showers.. very fun bonding time, but there are some really miserable showers in these public schools out there. Oh, and you'll have less of a chance of slipping and busting your ### if you have shower shoes. So yeah, shower shoes = get 'em.

I haven't seen all of the shows ever... but I think Crown 07's opening statement arrival chord should earn a nod as far as long chords go.

Well, this already happens a bit i think in the percussion world at least. Line A playing Book A cleanly with no visual demand Line B playing Book A cleanly with lots of visual demand Line B gets the bump almost every time

I love SCV and all, and 04 was an incredible year, but all of the lot videos I can find that have the cymbals there are what I was talking about above -- 95% percent visual. Granted, they look extremely ###### and are very precise with everything they do -- drum corps excellence -- but their book is one note a bar, two notes a bar. I'm going to keep checking them out and doing my research so I'm not a complete jackass (maybe they had some super tasteful notey cymbal feature that I've forgotten since watching the actual show years ago) -- but the writing is extremely sparse to allow for the clarity of the drum parts to cut through (even despite super wet quads).

That was my favorite moment this summer as well. I feel like as they went through that phrase and added in the other pit instruments that was pretty brilliant writing as well.

As far as performance goes, I don't know anybody that has an attraction to / preference for an electronic drum kit. They're fun to screw around with in a practice setting, and if you live in an apartment / shared housing situation (and are loaded and can afford one) they're fun to just plug in the headphones and practice on instead of an acoustic kit (no neighbors calling the police etc.). There are drummers out there that have a mixed setup with a few electronic drums in the mix (Danny Carey from "Tool" comes to mind) and use them tastefully to add effects... but electronic drumsets are just not acceptable instruments. The feel and response is just not even close to the real thing.

The style of writing employed by most of the top lines nowadays doesn't really allow for a marching cymbal line. When the judging community hypes hearing extreme clarity from a million notes a second from the battery instruments, who would willingly cover up all of that with bigger and longer rhythms? I'm completely aware of the multitude of cymbal techniques out there, but I just think the marching cymbal line has become incompatible with a successful top drumline. Have you noticed that the top lines that still have marching cymbals don't really write a whole lot for them? It seems like what the cymbal lines out there do nowadays is 95% visual. I'm not saying this is bad, or even correct, just that it's my perception. There are a lot of college lines out there that utilize cymbal lines very tastefully, but the style of drumming is less intense than top drum corps, and there aren't guys in green shirts out there trying to hear extreme clarity to give you that 19.9 or whatever. Oh, and I read this article a while ago that I thought was interesting -- any of you guys teaching / writing for lines that march cymbals should check it out. [ http://www.clemson.edu/tigerband/CUD/Downl...eCymbalLine.pdf ]

My memory is a little fuzzy, and I wasn't a brass guy, but I'm almost certain it was 05.

The DVDs don't look that great either. I mean, they don't make you want to vomit like watching the compressed-to-hell fan network videos, but they are still offensive to watch as a fan. Granted I paid $100 for them. But if I was willing to pay let's say $45 (an extremely high price for the amount of content, but reasonable for DCI being desperate for the money and all that) for the best product they could offer (less footage per disc for higher video quality!, use some of that freed up space to bring back a couple of the other video tracks, at the very least the alternative audio tracks), I would rate the 08 DVDs as something I'd expect to see in the Walmart dirty dollar bin for $8ish. As a FMM and paying customer, the quality of the DVDs (for the price) really offended me a lot. Sorry about the rant, this isn't a topic about the DVDs. On topic: the video and audio quality on the fan network is a lolocaust. The fact that they charge people to access this content is criminal and outrageous. If you're going to have this sort of content, fork out the cash and get the server space -- it's as if they're hosting the entire fan network on somebody in the office's dirty old laptop.

HAHAHAHA LOOOOL

If you've noticed Crown's stuff the last few years, Beddis likes to write the singles ramfest right before the tag at the end -- a nice mix of the old and new styles maybe.

The same thing happened to them for the 09 season, though. A lot of vets didn't return after 08. People were worried for a while, but it ended up alright, I think. Still, it would be great for them if they got everybody back that they could.