RickCogley

Santa Clara Vanguard members and staff: thank you for the wonderful show this year, full of incredible music prowess, visual beauty, and even some magic!

yes, absolutely true. It's much better clarity-wise, which makes any M&M error stand out. I noticed some interesting difficulty today on the Cincinnati Flo stream: there are places where the drill is symmetrical but super spread out, so you'll have a "pod" of four people doing the same thing on side A and B, which must be a bear to clean since I'm sure they can't see each other through all the prop-age lol. The sop, I mean trumpet trio was out of tune again, but at least the one guy corrected for it with his slide before the big finish. At least, to this drummer, that's what it looked like. I was disappointed to see that the score went down vs Allentown. Annoying.

Lots of various improvements at Allentown, I thought. Among many things to love, I especially loved the guard work at the end, and it looked like the brass really worked on those horn snaps. I suppose it could be purposeful, given the idea of "chaos to clarity", but there seem to be a number of marching mistakes in big moments however, with a member or two out of some major form. If they are just mental errors, I'm hoping for good concentration and focus for the next few shows, to bring that drill perfection!

speaking of saffron, I really loved the colorguard costumes in 2009 for the "ballet for martha" show. Just a gorgeous design and color.

Loved the new ending, and how the visual is just starting to "click". Looks like there was a collision at the start of the "nirvana roll" section. A snare went down and somehow recovered after colliding with a guard and horn member it appears? Hope nobody lost any teeth.

Yeah SCV, that was slammin'. Things are really coming together. Second movement brass entrances were perfect with the percussion this time, wow, just great. Love the sparkliness of the new uniform tops, though getting the tunics off was a little clumsy in my opinion.

But gosh Flo multicam camerapeople, can you stop flicking around from scene to scene? You can't even see one thing develop.

Wow, Bluecoats just cranking. What a show. I for one love the keytar. The color scheme is so consistent it's almost monochromatic in a way. I imagine the wheel prop pusher people are yelling "Duck! Duck! Duck!" as they roll over the brass near the end!

man, that hit the spot Cadets, great stuff. Appropriate theme for this point in their storied history, putting all that Hopkins stuff in the "rear view mirror". Good for them!

jeez louise Cadets are really something this year, wow!

I love how you can hear the brass parts in your mind when you listen to the (stellar!) perc parts. Also, did they wear these new unis at Denton?! Nice! 😍

Show is really starting to come together, watching Broken Arrow on Flo (despite the wonky mix). Visually they are getting clean finally, and the impact is starting to "gel". In some photos from Dynasty on the SCV Instagram, there were percussion instruments in the props, which is kind of cool. Purple is usually a contrast color to green, but it's so desaturated (or, something) that the guard seems to just fade into the background. Somehow they need to have some more pop. Something, anything. Percussion is the total package, with superior integrated writing. Good on them for the 18 in BA, and I hope they keep up that momentum thru San Antonio.

One's I think mvt 4 from Ligeti String Quartet 1, Metamorphoses Nocturnes.

A lot of holes at the Stanford CA show. Hope all those members are ok!

I think they got hit hard by illness, there are a lot of holes in the corps, and of course it's having an impact. Hope they can recover...

This particular year, yeah. I don't post all that much, but this situation compelled me to say something. Anyway, I got it off my chest. Time to let it go.

SCV's 2019 show did not get a lot of love or "buzz" online, for whatever reason (this was a comparatively quiet thread), and maybe it was because there were too many WGI elements being incorporated, which are too hard to read in a stadium. Still, I loved the show, and especially the individual characters you could see being developed, and, way they pushed the envelope on choreography over the hornline, essentially making them into an adjunct guard. And percussion? So stellar. Absolutely dominant all season, with a well deserved Sanford win. If you watch some of the "cams" coming out from their front ensemble, you'll see some virtuostic playing. Some really hard stuff.

I strongly disagree with Prosperie's finals percussion judgement, and it made me lose respect for a judge I had respected. SCV percussion played more, for a greater portion of their show, and were clearly dominant at every show this year. Their front ensemble alone had some jaw-droppingly hard parts, and should have been way up for that reason alone. Finals was a stellar run from SCV too, and second in drums was an insult. It makes me question what his motivation was, since here we are, all talking about Prosperie, and not how absolutely great SCV percussion was. The ump made a bad call on the last play.

12 minutes until awkward post-show interview for Dan*.

Turn me on, dead man!

Cool to see Crown's drums rooting for the horns from behind the prop in the ballad!

Thank you Blue Knights for being you. Great show!

BK, goosebumps even via Flo. Nice!

Enjoyed hearing about it. I thought they should have done this earlier in the year! It's very interesting the level of detail they are going for, although I am not sure it translates, especially on a smaller screen at home. In essence, there are parts where the whole corps is doing guard, and it's not just watered down stuff either, but really good choreo. Come on SCV, knock one out of the park in quarters!

Go SCV!