Phantom1701

Thanks for a great season Phantom! One of the best PR shows in a long time. The activity as a whole may have turned into a one-horse race, but you just keep doing what you do best. Keep pushing, keeps striving for excellence.

I tend to agree. PR was sharp beginning to end. Great energy. Mandarins started out flat. To their credit though, it got better as it went along. Never know how the judges will see things, but definitely felt like PR was at least a couple of tenths above Cadets and Mandarins tonight. Guess we'll see.

It definitely feels like PR has the most inconsistent reads at the moment. It could be down to the performances and what is happening on the field each night. From what I've seen so far it feels like their score can catch up to the corps in front of them once they are able to clean and work on some of the GE points. Almost feels like they are trying to do too much and not focusing on key moments. If you look at the tops groups, aside from strong performers, those shows really come down to key moments and cohesive story.

Really excited about the new staff announcements! I don't know how they managed to convince those guys to come back, but glad they did!

And you are qualified to say this because you have an equal amount of musical knowledge and experience as JP? Yeah, thought not. 😉 It's all good. Personally I think SCV's pit has put them over the top on more than one occasion. Just as Rennick's pit (or his wife's) did in 2010. Battery wise.....there are harder books out there. Clean, absolutely, but content.....meh. Go listen to Cadets 2016 or even Boston's battery this year. I would put either of those over SCV, yet SCV took the Sanford. So it's pit+battery, not just one or the other.

Just go and listen to any of JP's tapes. His musical knowledge and acumen is in a different stratosphere. He can pick out the 4th inner beat of measure 5 in a 12 measure passage. His ear is unreal. Anyway, total jealously of his skills aside (answering EXITMUSIC's question) the actual number a judge puts down is of course completely subjective. It's not like the judges remember exactly what they saw back in minute 3 of a 12 minute show, but it's an overall impression of a performance at the end. General effect is one of the most vague categories IMO since it doesn't look at just one thing. It's basically if the whole production "works" according to the requirements on the sheets. That has little, if nothing to do with what we as fans think of the "effectiveness" of a show. Most of the time we are just left to guess.

JP is one of the best judges in the activity and I believe he calls it like he sees it, without bias. If he had BD on top last night, then there is likely a good reason for that.

I can imagine how hard that must have been. Sometimes things that seem so obvious to the staff just doesn't translate to the judges or audience. It happens. Really sad to see both Cadets and PR struggling this year. Kudos to the other corps that have passed them, but just a shame from a strictly historical and emotional standpoint to see these amazing corps struggle. If they don't get things turned around, eventually the talent will just give up and go elsewhere. As much as kids may just want to march, they would also like a chance at a medal. It's human nature.

It certainly does feel like it is heading in that direction, yes. I just hate seeing a DCI institutional corps getting squeezed out because they didn't choose to play the games a other corps have. An off year here or there, fine, but Madison has never fully recovered and maybe never will. Short of a Bill Cook type of monetary intervention that can buy and retain a top staff for years to come.

I completely agree with this statement. Kids these days do follow the top staffs to whatever corps they are at and those corps in turn are the ones who are succeeding, competitively. Hiring from within is great and may pay dividends in the long-term. Short-term however, it could get rough. The question is will you stop attracting the top talent in the activity if too many years go by without enough competitive success?

Sure, but that was 20 years ago. Don't get me wrong, Lee has a great resume and reputation in the activity. So it's not as though he would be a bad hire by any means. Just saying that Cadets might be better off turning to a younger, up and coming writer/caption head that can bring a fresh perspective to the corps. Perhaps even a protege of Rennick or McNutt.

Fair enough. He's definitely a top-6 type of writer, though I don't believe he's ever had a line win the Sanford. I could be mistaken.

Really? Not a big fan of his writing, but he definitely is a well-known commodity in the activity. So who knows?

This exactly. 1000% spot on. I think sometimes people assume that judging is a science and that judges evaluate captions in some sort of a vacuum. But the truth is judging is very much an art, and a subjective one at that. When I would judge high school bands, I would absolutely reward the smaller groups if I felt they were maximizing their show, whereas most of the other judges waited for the 5A and 6A's before giving out top box scores. But to me each sheet is specific to the group in front of you and they should be rewarded for what they attempting/achieving relative only to themselves. If that is top box worthy, then it is top box worthy, regardless of any other factors. DCI on the other hands is very good about lining up the captions close to the order of finish. Yes, there are exceptions, like with the Rennick's were with Phantom (and probably a few more), but for the most part it seems as though your caption scores/placements goes as your GE and overall placement goes.

I'm not sure how exactly? I said that DCI is going the way of WGI, but that doesn't mean that someone of Gaines' quality can't see both activities for what they uniquely are and write/design accordingly.

I fear that drill will continue its slow death spiral as DCI goes more the way of WGI, though there were a few corps this year still carrying the torch to some degree. What is Gaines even up to these days? I haven't followed his whereabouts since he left the Cavies. Hard to imagine he would want to reinsert himself into the activity as it currently stands, but who knows.

Any number of things. -Certainly judges bring their own preferences and biases to each competition. If you are doing things that they do at their own schools, corps or indoor groups, then they are more likely to give you a favorable score. -The influence of WGI cannot be overlooked here. -Greater emphasis on GE, story-telling, and visuals.as opposed to the music itself. (again, see point 2) -Judges like clean. To them clean > demand. -Due to the fact that the GE and visual packages are more important to judges, they will forgive reduced wind/percussion contributions as they know from their own experience that there isn't enough rehearsal time to do it all. So something has to give and it would seem most judges and directors are content with that being the wind/percussion generated music. Just my 2 cents of course, but in critiques I've not been shy about questioning judges as to the reason why they score us (or other groups) one way or another and much of what you see above is straight from the horses mouth.

As an instructor at the High School level, I can tell you that judges routinely reward groups that play less notes, but sound cleaner. Also, since judges are judging the quality and effect of the "music", how that music is created seems less and less of importance to them. (i.e. synths) We've been told this during critique on any number of occasions by judges. They certainly don't reward you for playing more notes by way of non-electronic based instrumentation (winds, drums), nor are there any compulsories with respect to the length of time that non-electronic instrumentation is used. So in theory you could roll out there with a predominantly electronic show and win music. We've actually seen this happen on several occasions. In fact, one time a judge remarked how much demand and quantity of notes we played and suggested we water it down because it gave them too much material to "judge" and scored us much lower than several other groups who played very little via winds/drums. Also, judges don't seem to reward anymore for playing difficult musical passages while marching. "Park and bark" hit sections sandwiched between scatter drill is apparently just fine now. Another thing, our pit plays some amazing runs compared to other lines, but if we aren't "expressive" enough, then we score below other groups who, again, are doing less, taking less risks, but have the better optics. Don't get me wrong, it's all important, but they are basically saying that optics are more important than the notes themselves, both in terms of quantity and quality. So I can't speak for DCI, but judging at the High School level is going in the completely wrong direction by rewarding form over function, while allowing electronic instrumentation to count for as much or more of the musical score as winds/drums.

You must be young. ;-)

I was there in 1996 where a certain corps from Rockford came into quarterfinals seeded 5th and crashed the party. So anything is possible. Now, is it highly unlikely that Cadets could crack the top 3 this year, yes, but it's not impossible. It all comes down to who will do the best job with changes and cleaning by finals week.

Wow! That was an impressive run. Love all of the changes musically and visually. They make actually make a push for the top 3 after all. P.S. Cadets: DCI just dropped off a note saying that they liked the changes as well, but asked if you would be able to incorporate some slides into your program? Not sure what that is all about, but apparently that's a thing now. Also, if you could add a bit more synth, that would be appreciated as well. No one get bent out of shape. Just a light bit of levity for your Tuesday . ;-)

Anyone have an update from the show? My daughter is performing and wanted to see if the weather was holding.

Teal Sound comes to mind.

Exactly how long have you been following this activity? ;-)

Which is why I believe that all of this was really done just to punish fans and DCP. Or to insulate the judges from being ridiculed on this forum and others. This has little to do with anything of a competitive nature, because as you say, you judge based on what you see and could care less about what X corps/band got the week before. I'm sure most judges in the activity feel the same.