skywhopper

And people like you will never admit there might be a problem to be addressed, no matter how much evidence is presented.

No limits. Anything electronic is okay. EWIs, guitars, effects... Totally. There were multiple solos this year that were miked and effect-ed up in such a natural-sounding way that it honestly is impossible to tell how much is the player and how much is the effects rack. Nope. We already have several corps marching just 12 or even 10 contras. I'm sure you'll see them shrink further. Perhaps they'll become the cymbal line of the 2020s. No rules. The only restriction on electronics is that you can't use "musical" samples, ie singing. But the corps are using sampled singing all over the place without apparent penalty (Blue Knights and Bluecoats are using clearly sampled singing--I watched Bluecoats' synth player to see if he was "triggering each note" but no, the singing continued even with the synth player's hands down), so either that rule has been changed or reinterpreted since 2009, or there just isn't any enforcement.

This is not true at all. The school administration or teachers or coaches cannot organize prayers, but the students may do so, and in fact, they often do, yes on school grounds, and hey, it's totally legal, in fact the ACLU defends the rights of student groups to do such things!

Why would the ACLU object to the existence of a private religious organization? Guess what, the ACLU is in the business of protecting such organizations and individuals from discrimination.

Sounds GREAT!

Goo is evil.

I think the current situation is so far away from 50/50 that it's worth discussing if anything could be done. It's not a matter of whether anyone is "sexist", just a matter of trying to figure out why there's such a wild disparity at the director/design staff/caption head level that doesn't exist and hasn't existed in DCI's membership ever. How do caption heads and judges and board of director members of the various corps get chosen? Are there open interview processes going on to give everyone a chance and find the best person? Unlikely. I'm guessing it's generally be a matter of someone knowing someone and offering them the job. When it's 99% men in charge, turns out that most of their friends are also men, and so the people they "know" the best are men, and that's just who they go with. So whenever those decisions are getting made, the people doing the choosing should be asking themselves if they are overlooking qualified folks who they just don't happen to have a connection with, who maybe are younger or whatever. They need to be asking themselves if they are encouraging the right people in their own instructional ranks to take on more leadership roles, and don't just stick with the people who push their way into those roles. Just some ideas here. No one is talking about forcing anyone to do anything. But I think the lack of women at top levels in the activity is something we should be talking about. Jumping straight to reactions against quotas and sexism and 50/50 doesn't help.

Quotas are not the answer. On the other hand, hiring decisions aren't as clear-cut as you make them. There's never a fixed slate of applicants with obvious rankings in which your scenario of "preferences" makes any sense. However, all other things being equal, more often than not choosing a candidate that brings a new perspective to your organization is the best choice. That different perspective might be in where they grew up or how they came to drum corps or what their education was or yes what gender and race they are. But it's the hard choice to make sometimes, to choose someone who's *more* different from you.

I can get behind this idea!

Book of Mormon indeed has some great music. No need to censor anything if there's no singing.

Scores are relative. Perfection is impossible. I agree that giving a 20.0 says something more than whatever spread exists with 2nd place, but it's not perfection.

Certainly there is some ABBD sentiment out there. Some of it is just the usual dislike of the default champion or of BD in particular. A lot of it, though, I'd wager MOST of it, is that Blue Devils' shows these past few years just really are failing to connect with the audience. A lot of people find the shows confusing and bizarre. When someone watches finals and can enjoy every show but one, and then *that* show wins, it's very confusing and makes the whole thing a lot less enjoyable.

Usually takes them several days. They have audio input from about 10 different mikes and they usually remix them to make them sound better than the live stream/VODs do. (Then they remix and improve them further for the CDs.) We also used to have a DCI insider who would post on here to let us know when, but that person has moved on, unfortunately.

BD should do Max Richter's "Recomposed" Four Seasons: (Listen to the whole piece .)

YES PLEASE

That view was a lot less blocked than the actual view from behind a mello, since the camera was probably up at his hairline...

Maybe they should get BD's MediaBox team to take over Fan Network...

So long as the visual judges feel free to max out the sheets, I think the music judges should be doing so as well. Otherwise, visual has too much of an impact on the final score.

Perhaps "Corps" stands for the visual/body movement stuff and the "and" is the guard.

Well, and I couldn't tell at all! I mean, I could tell that Crown's drumline wasn't doing the insane crazy stuff that BD and Cadets were doing. But in terms of fitting the music and sounding good, they sounded great to me. Obviously I'm not hearing what the drummers among us are hearing.

Best I can tell from DCI's corps listing, the only woman director of any DCI corps, World Class or Open Class, is Vicki MacFarlane of the Colts. She just moved up from being the Colt Cadets director when Greg Orwoll stepped aside to lead their fundraising efforts. Boards of directors, the easiest place to get a better balance of women and men, are very unbalanced. Blue Devils have five women on their board, out of 14, and they have one of the best ratios. Vanguard has three women out of nearly 20. YEA has three out of about 10. Crown has no women on its board. Phantom has three out of 16 or so. Bluecoats have three out of 18 or so. Design staff and caption heads may be worse, if I'm remembering things right. Lots of women at the lower-tier instructional level in guard, but very few women leading the design or choreography. A handful of women in instructional roles in other captions, but next to no women caption heads anywhere but guard.

I just watched this earlier today and I thought he was playing very difficult stuff on the move quite a bit... same could be said for most every year. I was just rewatching 2012 and 2009 for Crown and they're playing very hard stuff on the move, often while running. (Not making a statement about Devils or anyone else, 'cause I haven't checked that out, though I'd love to see a VOD cam of a BD show. Same goes for everybody!)

Maybe Madison should take over Phantom's all-girl guard. That would solve a couple of issues.

Right, I thought about 2011... I liked that show but I thought they'd gotten a lower ranking, but they made 14th with it. So yeah 2011 was better than 2010 and 2012 in every way. However, this year and 2009 were just brilliant.