karuna

bump!

Everyone's BUSY at Crown!

It will be interesting to watch exactly who April brings on to the guard staff. She's got a very talented and deep pool of instructors who might find it difficult to say no if she asks them! She's...persuasive 🙂

Core staff at CrownBrass is unchanged. Probably more accurate to say Crown launched Evan VanDoren to SCV with their blessings. Much the same way Kevin LeBoeuf was launched to the Cavaliers. Both of these Crown Alums naturally sought out other Crown Alums to fill out their staff. So no -- it's not true. Very cool to see Crown Alums teaching at so many places.

There’s a world of difference between active recruiting and choosing to follow an instructor.

If you look at the current membership as a "resource" of the Flying Fish, when a FF employee leaves to teach at the Growling Groupers, are they permitted to take corps resources with them to GG? It's not about loyalty but outright theft. FF worked hard to produce that roster. In a sense that roster is their most valuable resource. I realize this is "stretching" things a bit. But it's not about loyalty. Members should be and are FREE to march where they wish. But actively recruiting members is far different than an independent choice to follow an instructor. There's a teacher-student relationship being exploited improperly. Anyway it's now the new normal. So w/e.

Social media makes it child's play for departing staff members to recruit former students to move with them to their new corps. This used to be considered "bad form" but is now commonplace (even if it is taking place in "private" groups). Sad but true.

Bring back the separation of Music Effect and Visual Effect. Rewrite the guard sheet to make it a performer-focused caption not a designer-focused caption (ie an almagam of the EQ and MVT sheets in WGI). These are real, achievable changes that will bring more balance to the adjudication.

Cadets should do a show about trains! Yeah that's the ticket. Fast trains 🙂

As maybe the biggest Crown honk here... Yes, I was disappointed with those two results. No, I don't think they were "ripped off". Judges have their opinions and preferences. Sometimes they align with mine, sometimes they don't. There is no such thing as objective scoring in drum corps. It's all just opinions.

Henry Higgins?

Only if they somehow tie the whole show into to Elon and SpaceX! Maybe a "hopper" form 🙂 And of course you have to reference some Test Shot Starfish music in there somewhere. ok i admit it -- i'm a big spacex nerd!

Do what you do well. Hire other people to do what they do well. Sometimes Almost always "bringing things in-house" is a terrible mistake. I think DCI is quite correct to outsource their streaming. Is Flo the best vendor for that effort? I don't know -- maybe there's someone else better they overlooked. I will say: Flo is doing an adequate job most of the time. Yes they underprovisioned bandwidth for Finals. But the rest of the product is "ok" and I think it's shown improvement each season. I expect them to properly over-provision for Finals bandwidth next season. And heck -- if you time your subscription right, you can get the last full month for $30. It's really a fantastic deal.

Flo just doesn’t provision enough bandwidth. Yeah their “directors” mostly suck but the quality is actually ok until it’s a BIG show. You need to be willing to pay for capacity that you may not use in order to ensure quality streaming. Eventually you get pretty good at anticipating demand but you should always over provision.

Don't worry CrownFans. The Cadets excitement does not affect our visual design team 🙂 (sorry -- is this a rumor? i'm not sure )

We are in complete agreement!! (Of course this is NEVER going to happen. The guard judges are quite happy with the latitude the sheet provides. They can (and do! ) hold forth on anything at all and stay in caption!).

Cool stuff. Jumping back to Sparke, if I were selecting music for Crown, they would play Sparke every year. Two "filler" years with already published stuff (music of spheres is a good start ) meanwhile commission a show per year 3 years out. He's NOT a radically expensive guy to commission and can you IMAGINE the stuff he'd bring to the table? If someone were to play it, Spheres might the most challenging brass band book ever brought to the field. It's just absurd and beautiful and I love it.

Aren’t two (four at finals) GE judges enough?!?! This is exactly why the caption is a mess. Focus the caption on the performers. They deserve it.

Have you heard a good WGI equipment tape? It's as close to analytical, objective guard judging as I've ever heard. That's why I think the issue is the sheet not the number of judges. There are enough GREAT EQ/MVT judges out there to judge the caption without all the subjective (design) commentary inherent in today's sheet. There are more than enough voices chatting about show design already! Clean up the sheet and you clean up the caption. Just sayin'.

I'd like to hear Klesch/Crown take a stab at some Sara Bareilles.

Much as I love Yes, I've heard too many people try and fail. Maybe Thrower and Bloo could pull it off?

Bloo Crown BK Cavies BD

Blob-fluttering to a prop and standing/barking is nothing new either. Been done far in to the past (as has choreography in the horn line). The only thing "new" is that mic'ing everybody and their brother let's you IGNORE whether a section or player has been staged properly to be heard. To me that's a WEAKNESS not a strength. My "issue" with blob-flutter if you will is: Both blob-fluttering and drill serve to transition musicians from one "hold/impact" to another. But the drill is far more demanding in between those moments. There's ART in the creation of form to form to effect a restaging. Furthermore it requires far more simultaneous responsibilities from the performer. Lastly you can PLAY while you restage. There's no art in running. I don't care if the flutter technique is uniform or not (in fact it's actually NOT uniform but the fact that there's no "timing" involved makes it extremely difficult to evaluate.) And no one can play and run. At it's heart drum corps is dong difficult things well. When you dilute the hard stuff, the product is weaker.

ElectroDynamics: A horn line (previously noted for BLATnSPLAT) miraculously can play in tune at FFF.

CrownGuardCam!😍😍😍