skywhopper

Seems like a good theory. Here's hoping they never find out about it. BD 2012 was indeed a great show. Way more interesting than this year's. I have issues with it, but I nitpick every show. As for BD 2010, I love the first four minutes or so. Then it all goes to hell.

Having watched the semis and finals stream, I can say that the audio on Finals night was much improved, balance wise between the field and amps. At least with the corps I was paying the most attention to. There were some weird things going on semis night with the audio, particularly from Crown. But it sounded fine on finals night. Obviously, the audio on the Blu-rays is completely remixed, but you can't fix everything.

You can only see it if you pre-ordered the DVD or Blu-ray with your Fan Network subscription.

I'm sure most arrangers would balk at the idea of writing music for four-part, 80-piece brass choir, too. Drum corps is NOT an indoor/concert activity. Anyway they did fine with marimbas and vibes for decades without amplification. Correct technique is different outdoors.

Of the subfinalist corps I think Pacific Crest has been the most steadily improving corps. If they challenge for 12th next year perhaps they'll continue rising. But, as Boston and Madison and Blue Stars have found, piercing the top six is hard to do. The G7/MiM/TOC situation is only going to make it harder.

Their brass was weaker than most finalists this year. I think they will have a hard time climbing back quickly. Perhaps they are the new SCV.

Not sure about this year, but since the Blu-rays came around the recording quality has been pretty fantastic, within the limits possible given the stuff coming out of the PAs.

S3 and I'm assuming MS's service allow for access control...

The Blu-rays are still not as high quality as I'd love to see, but they are so much better than the DVDs, that I wouldn't think twice about it. For every year since 2009 GET THE BLURAY.

Not sure about the 2003 proposal. I did find the text of the 2002 proposal (which includes a lot of language Hop re-used year after year in each A&E proposal). The reasoning goes on and on, but it's basically "I'm tired of having limits." And this is probably the most critical part of the reasoning: To me, none of that makes any sense. He jumps from "millions of kids march, so let's target them" to "marching music is a non-mainstream unrelatable relic!" He says the kids aren't in the stands, but then he says they are, and then he says they are most of the audience. There's a bunch more that I cut out, if you want to subject yourself to it. But no, he didn't promise it would shrink the pit. He did say it would not be mandatory, but it hasn't worked out that way, whatever the rules say.

So why are they using classical indoor instruments on a football field, if you can't hear them without playing in a way that gets you getting looked down on by symphonic percussion players? There are plenty of mallet instruments that can be heard just fine beyond the pit. Xylophones, bells, glockenspiel, bass drum, chimes, timpani (Crown has used timpani all the way around the field for two years now...). I assume vibes can be heard fine as well. If marimbas are unsuited to outdoor use, then don't use them--the guys on the field are using appropriate instruments.

Bwaha, I didn't even look at the URL. At least the filename is a UUID, making it hard to find others. But the fact that the software does no access checking... why that'd be like if the Fan Network only relied on the browser's URL field, which is easily enough hacked, to determine if you were authorized to access their videos or not. :ph34r:

Crown - 2012 BD - 2012, by far Cadets - 2013 SCV - 2013, by far Bluecoats - 2013 Phantom - 2012 Cavaliers - 2013, by the farthest possible distance Boston - 2012 Madison - 2012 BK - 2012 -- loved First Circle this year, but the narration and the ball were fails, imo Spirit - 2012 Blue Stars - 2013 Crossmen - 2012 Troopers - 2013!! Colts - 2013 Pacific Crest - 2012 Mandarins - 2013!!! Academy - 2012, oh my gosh, 2012

Jeff Fiedler proposed this method in 2007. It failed with a unanimous negative vote in the instructors' caucus.

August 12, 1991. I was 14. Went with my band director and a couple of other kids to the Little Rock show. I honestly don't remember the show per se, but I do remember the feeling of being blown away by the first corps, thinking that had to be the best group of the evening. Then the next corps came on and was even BETTER. And then the next corps was EVEN BETTER. And then the next corps was EVEN MORE BETTER! And then the next corps was (as I realized later) STAR OF INDIANA. I sure wish I remembered more about that show! Weird thing I guess is that I never actually thought about marching for drum corps. I can't say why, it just never crossed my mind as a possibility. I did other things with my summers that I'm glad I did, but I'm sure I would have loved marching drum corps as well. So I've made sure my daughter knows that drum corps is a possibility for her summers once she's a few years older. I think she'll make a great guard member, and I look forward to being a corps dad some day.

The jazzy hits of BD's show were from Brenzel's arrangement. The trumpet and flugel solos were from the Sebesky record. The rest was from the original... sometimes the Brenzel was relatively close to the original, so maybe that's the difference in our interpretations. If there wasn't a detectable swing, I thought of it as being from Stravinsky. The other factor in my assessment is that BD just didn't use all that much material from either version, really. Five minutes at most.

Well, three of the ten livestreams were TOC shows. Five of the rest were regionals and semis. Only two did not primarily feature the G7, although DCI West did have three G7 corps out of six WC corps on the bill. The Muncie show only had one G7 corps (Cavies). So yeah, what you said.

I think Apple allows a little more flexibility these days. There are audio products on iTunes that don't follow the "song"/"album" pricing model. I've paid $4.99 for a 30-minute comedy performance for example. There is the fee (I thought it was 30%) to Apple or Amazon for this model, but I've got to think the CDs have a smaller margin than that. Not to mention digital has no inventory risk.

The G7 in particular has advocated cutting DCI's staff down to a bare minimum. I'm assuming that would involve gutting what staff remains to work on Fan Network and audio/video products. Maybe DCI should outsource to BD Mediabox...

I think feedback from DCI staff in the past has indicated that if they were to offer Finals audio digitally, they'd lose enough customers for the physical product that they wouldn't be able to justify making the physical stuff at all. Same probably goes for video. That said, I think it's probably time to just move entirely digital if that's the case. Surely they could make a bigger margin on digital downloads, particularly if they improved their store interface. Or heck, just put it all up on the iTunes store and on Amazon...

Brilliant post. Says everything I seem to be unable to say clearly. Thank you.

We're looking at this from different perspectives. I'm not saying there are women being "passed over". I seriously doubt these jobs are ever selected from open application processes, anyway, so how would a woman who was interested apply? I'm not saying anyone is doing anything wrong, either, beyond perhaps not actively seeking to find qualified women to be part of their staff. The facts are that there's only one female corps director, and that there's but a small handful of female judges, and that there's a lack of women on corps boards, and that there are very few women in positions of leadership in corps staffs. Those facts *are* problems in and of themselves, regardless of how we got here. The paucity of women in leadership positions across the activity is a problem *in and of itself*. There are lots of things to be said for diversity of staff (in every possible way), but the most important implication of the fact that 90+% of corps leadership is men, that means that almost *half* of the best talent available for corps leadership, design, and instruction has been lost--undeveloped, unused, wasted. That concerns me greatly, I hope it concerns everyone who's aware of these numbers.

This is silly. The same arguments could be made about the brass and battery lines, which aside from the trumpets and cymbals don't even play concert instruments. Certainly very few concerts I've attended or played in involved running around, squatting, squashing bugs, and dancing while playing at fffff volume. Are mello players being ostracized by the French horn community? Are the battery players being ostracized? They don't use "concert technique".

The front-ensemble stuff sounds like something that has been mostly produced in a studio, which it has.

I'm thrilled about this, but perhaps the big reveal should wait until there is a more complete website... I'd love to see DCI more directly involved in corps startup activities. Even if the corps are not going to join the tour right away, DCI could do some pre-vetting and provide some guidelines for soliciting for interest to help ensure people don't get scammed. Also, just a tip, it doesn't build confidence when your website is hosted on a free provider like Weebly...