actucker

Stop putting words in my mouth. First you accused me of making a personal attack, which I didn't, and now you're confusing someone else's responses for mine. I didn't tell you to start your own corps. I told you to take your grievances up with the drum corps in question rather than ranting unprofessionally on a public board. I didn't say you don't have the right to do that either. I'm simply suggesting that complaining about something to people who have no control over it is hardly a productive thing to do. Do you really think Blue Knights management is reading this board? The chances are far greater that their members do. What do you think a current member would think of a post like this? You have every right to say whatever you wish. I also have every right to tell you that its in poor taste.

Seriously, what kind of drones are they using to get this kind of footage? Anyone know? I want one.

Is it a direct parallel? No, but you have to admit its a considerably more valid comparison than a fan of a team criticizing said team on a message board. The fact is, like it or not, when you identify yourself as an alumni or member of an organization, you have created a connection between what you say and that organization. There's a reason I'm vague about what places I teach/have taught/marched on this message board. I have strong opinions, and don't want those opinions or points of view to be taken as that of groups I have been or am involved with. I owe it to that organization to leave them out of it. If the poster had not identified himself with a connection to BK, I'd have less to say about the situation. But if I were a BK alumni, or a marching member, I'd be pretty furious with his behavior.

Again, there's a difference between constructive criticism with the organization in question, through channels designed for such conversations, and calling them out on a public web board where they have no opportunity to address the issue before its in the public eye. If I were to openly criticize my clients on this web board without taking my issues to them myself, they would have every right to fire me without a chance to explain myself.

There has been no personal attack. I don't know you, so how can I comment on your character. I can, however, comment on your behavior in this thread, which has been deplorable. As several other posters have mentioned, this is a conversation best had with your corps. I haven't taken anything personally, as I am not a member of Blue Knights, nor have I ever been. I have friends who have marched there, and that's about the end of my connection there. I'm simply pointing out that if you were a member of the corps I marched, I would have every reason to take your behavior very personally.

Sure I watch sports and have favorite teams. But no. I don't vocally protest with 11 pages of complaining on a public message board when I don't think they made the right call. Why? They get paid to do this stuff for a living. I don't. They're the experts. I'm not. The biggest difference however, is that you actually represent Blue Knights as a former member. Again, if I were a member, or alumni of Blue Knights, your childish whining and public criticism of the corps in the manner would be embarrassing.

By that logic, then visual would have multipliers as well, as they also have 100/100 to play with, and their score ends up 0-20 range. You've got me on the music caption. Wasn't aware that there was a proportional split. I'm kind of disappointed that that is the case now that I know it. However, GE still remains split evenly between the two halves of the sheet.

For Phantom, I'd say that's a pretty consistent top 6 placement. 12 - 17 is only a 5 placement spread. Sure, there's movement, and corps have their outlying years but the fact remains that most corps live in a general range of placements. Blue Knights aren't alone in this, and they certainly aren't the only one who would like to move up. We're not talking about some kind of anomaly. It took a catastrophic year from the Cavaliers for Boston to get an opportunity to break the top 7 in 2012. Prior to that, they had lived between 8th and 10th since 2003, almost a decade. Bluecoats have lived in between 4th and 7th since 2002, with one bronze medal as the outlier. Its difficult to move up a to the next level of competition. If it weren't it wouldn't be worth doing.

I don't care what your investment is in the other corps. That wasn't the point. The point is that all of those corps are trying to achieve the exact same thing. Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do if the other team does it better. But you don't want to hear that. You want to suggest that your corps isn't doing what they think will get them to the next level. It doesn't seem to register that they're competing with several other corps with the same objectives, not to mention some very well established corps that have an advantage in terms of recruiting and sustained success. This is now the 10th page of you refusing to listen to several sensible posters who have pointed all of this out. Again, if you think you have the answer, call the corps. Bashing them on a public forum is unprofessional, and inappropriate and if I were an alumni of your corps I'd be embarrassed.

Fair enough. What about the rest of that list?

Neither is complaining on a message board... As for your reference to their trajectory - the same could be said for: Spirit of Atlanta Blue Stars (barring the one year they popped up to number 8) Troopers Crossmen Colts Or for that matter: Vanguard Bluecoats Phantom Regiment Most corps live in between a few placements, and it takes (as I said) a certain amount of the stars aligning to move up and stay up.

My old roommate had a saying when we'd watch baseball together. Any time our team would get beat, he'd say "they're allowed to play baseball too". You don't think every other corps in world class is trying to move up? Its not as simple as you seem to think it is. The suggestion that you get on staff was simply a reference to the fact that you seem to think you know how to fix it. You're here pretty much bashing everything your corps does, from membership retention to design decisions, but are refusing to accept that maybe getting above the top ten isn't the easiest thing in the world to achieve. If it were, it wouldn't be the top ten, or the top 6. Management and staff can talk until they're blue in the face about how the corps is a family and members should stick around, but the fact is, if a kid wants a medal around his neck, he's more likely to go somewhere where he thinks that's going to happen. That's not a Blue Knights problem, its a cultural reality in our activity. It takes a lot of hard work, planning, and frankly, a lot of luck for that kind of program development to happen. Crown happened to be able to pick up the right guy for that brass program at the right time. But that's not the only thing that played a role in the development of that program. He had to get the right members to show up to auditions. Those members had to have a reason to stay. He had to bring in the right staff, and those staff members had to have a reason to stay and develop a rapport with the membership. The corps also had to have the right design staff for the instructional staff. That pairing had to work well together, and develop a relationship that would also grow to the next level of instruction and design. All of that is just to develop a championship BRASS program, not to mention guard, visual design, percussion etc. Look at the development of a baseball franchise. Its not so simple as to just say "I think we'll win the world series this year". You can spend all the money you want on free agents, but if the free agents you need aren't available, or are offered more money or a better situation elsewhere, you're out of luck. You can pour all the resources you want into your player development program, but sometimes your prospects just don't pan out. Sure, you can chose to invest more money, and that will improve your chances of signing free agents, or increase how much you can spend on development, but at the end of the day, the players and coaches have to play the game. The Yankees have been the number one spending franchise in the majors for over a decade. They've won precisely ONE world series in that time frame. You think you have the answers? Call Blue Knights. I'm sure they'd love to hear from a concerned alumni.

There are no multipliers in percussion captions in WGI. Music and Visual captions are split 50/50 between composition and performance.

Subjective? Yes. Policital? I think you underestimate how hard it would be for one person's political agenda to affect the overall score of a drum corps. We had a champion just last year that was 6th in a caption and still won. So unless you're prepared to offer some kind of evidence supporting a conspiracy to keep one corps out of finals over another then all you have is an angle to whine when the corps you think should have been in finals wasn't.

Some of the stiffest competition occurs between 10th and 15th place every year (give or take a place or two). There's a lot to evaluate, from execution to content. I'd suggest taking a look at the sheets to get an idea of what the judges are looking for.

Sure, you'll never see the details from that far off, but when you see someone walking down the street with rolled up blueprints, you know that those look like. If they didn't have the white lines (even though you can't see them in detail), they wouldn't look like blue prints. The same can be said for Crown's drums last year. You could tell they were a chalkboard, even though you couldn't make out the equations. Sometimes its about the texture, more than the detail.

I know you said that raising the money will be a project, but just to throw this out there, Colts are looking for a mellophone player and a euphonium player for the current season. Its not Open class, but would definitely go a long way towards preparing you for Coats if that's where you want to end up.

It occurs to me that I should have mentioned what I AM excited about. I can't wait to see what Rarick/Thrower put together with the Coats' musical program. All of the source material seems right in their wheelhouse as far as the room for creativity, and rhythmic/harmonic intensity that I've come to love them for. I'm also excited to see Sprit, as I know some people who are involved there and they will do great things together. I've heard good things coming from the Cavaliers camp as well, and with that brass staff in place, I am looking forward to seeing the improvement that I think they will bring to the green team. Honestly, I just need some drum corps in my life. I haven't been this excited for a season to get started in a long time.

Oh for sure, and I could be pleasantly surprised. Being a percussion guy myself, however, its going to take something very special to top the 2004 section. It was one of the best percussion sections in the past 15 or 20 years.

I think I'm the only one that isn't excited to see Vanguard do Scheherezade again. They did it so well in 2004, and that percussion section was so ridiculous. Its going to be very hard for them to live up to that.

No, I don't think you'll find any particular drum corps that is more equipped than another.

Given that its all of three days into their spring training, I'm thinking its a little early to need to "re-think" anything at this point. That being said, I've heard really good things about the show, the corps progress, and the students. I'm excited to see what Spirit does with the show.

I don't know that any particular corps is more equipped than another, but I'd imagine there are more folks in our activity that are on the spectrum than one might immediately guess. It depends on how high functioning those individuals are. I've had friends and students that show up on the spectrum that function fairly normally and would, to someone who didn't know about their diagnosis, simply come across as strange or a little awkward. All of this, I'm sure, you already know being that you're on that spectrum yourself. So without knowing more about you or your specific limitations, its hard to say whether a drum corps would work out for you. Obviously, when auditioning, you'll want to be up front with the administration and your caption head. My advice would be to try out a few places. Assuming you can pass the audition, the corps that makes you the most comfortable is the one you should call home.

This all sounds great in theory, but the problem lies in how many things that identify a corps also identify the show and create effect. Flags, uniforms, drum finishes, props, etc... all change how the show is perceived, so naturally the scores would be very different from your hypothetical Friday night to your hypothetical Saturday night. I don't know that it would be particularly revealing to see those scores flop and change. Also, a blind music evaluation can take way one of a percussion judge's best tools. How else do you evaluate things like technical uniformity without the use of your eyes. Obviously, a blind percussion judge wouldn't be able to get out on the field and hear those nuances either. The same could be said for a brass judge. In short, I think the idea of a "blind" show might be intriguing, but there's just no way to make it happen and get any kind of realistic sample, much less reveal any issues in the judging. Any attempt at that sort of blind performance would mean changing the judging paradigm enough that changes in score from blind to not blind performances would be easily explained by those changes.

I think one way of putting a finger on it might be that they haven't developed anything that they are sort of known for as of yet. Some of that comes with consistent design teams and instruction. Think about it. Bluecoats developed a sort of musical style while Mac was writing there. At the same time, Rarick was working with them, and took many of those ideas and continues to use them in his own way in his writing for Coats. Things like 9lets in infinite variations, super contoured triplet rolls, and unparalleled continuity between battery and front etc. At Cavs, where Mac has been writing for several years, you have absurd rhythmic pairings, hand speed changes, and tons of groove underneath the battery beats, paired with the characteristic Cavaliers front sound. Blue Devils have been playing completely absurd battery notes that are super angular since the 90s. They've also brought to prominence the metric accelerandos and rallantandos. All of that coupled with a ton of 16th note runs in the front. Cadets have the 6 stroke roll and paradiddle market cornered, often playing more notes per square inch than the rest of the percussion community, and bring a very orchestral approach to the front ensemble. I could go on, but the point is that each of those groups that routinely live in the top 5 have developed something that they do that is recognizable. You hear those things and you immediately think "oh, that's line x". Boston hasn't developed that yet, for one reason or another. I think that's part of why they don't get mentioned right off the bat in these conversations. Do I think that's the reason they don't score in the top 5? Not really. I give the judges a little more credit than that. Those recognizable styles haven't stopped them from putting Madison in the top 5 (they don't really have a percussion identity yet either), or leaving the Blue Stars out of the top 8 (they definitely had the "Box 6" sound last year). Anyway, just my musings on why they might not enter the conversation as easily as some others.