Pete Freedman

Regardless of how many corps members are motivated to excellence by trying to beat the other corps, it's unclear that the competition's purpose - whatever that may be - would be improved by eliminating expectation bias (assuming that could be achieved). And if this effort in fact forces everyone to realize that considerable bias is unavoidable, how is anything improved? Just playing devil's advocate here (mostly).

I believe DCI negotiates price quotes (for video and audio sales) early in the process because the corps do tell them when they decide what they are using, including audio clips. Then they make the actual purchase after FInals when they know who's on the DVD and what they actually used. This makes sense, assuming DCI really has to pay anything, which is now in doubt for me at least. I was told the corps are generally helpful in providing info as soon as they decide what they are using. So while they could mandate that the corps do so, they feel that compliance is pretty good by the corps, so no draconian rules are necessary. (And anyway the BOD is the directors who wouldn't pass it). Still, in cases like Cadets 2012 and Peanuts, the corps didn't inform DCI at all until it was used at a show. Perhaps it was an oversight. Anyway it was too late to get the rights. And in the case Madison 2011 and ESOM, the rights were negotiated early, but were no longer available at buy-time after Finals. Everybody did everything they reasonably could do, but it didn't work out.

Dear beloved music teachers, We value our ongoing relationship, and celebrate your passion for and commitment to the development of music students. This relationship depends on our continued ability to extract funds from you that you don't even realize you may not owe. We cannot stress enough how important this is to our business model. It is vital that you truly believe that the fees you pay us actually go to the songwriters whose genius you so admire and teach your students to express lovingly, instead of to the "copyright holders" who are generally those who exploited the songwriters in the first place. Some of you have taken the unfortunate step of hiring competent counsel. This disturbing trend is disheartening, because it suggests that you may not entirely trust our judgement in your legal matters. For our part we remain your faithful opposing counsel committed to dispensing the best advice to you that is interpreted in the light most favorable to us. You can rely on us always to advise you in our own best interests. If you have a problem, call us. Talk to us. To us alone. Thanks again, and remember, we couldn't do it to you without you. All our love, RealNameMightViolateDCPTOS Music Service

Both Tresona's letters presume that the issue is teachers not paying their fees, not the actual issue which is whether they are obliged to pay those fees. Can anyone state the legal reason arrangers for non-profit educational institutions are supposed to pay fees? And by legal reasons I mean either the black letter law in section 110, or specific case law refining it. I'm not sure there's supposed to be an education copyright market at all. The premise seems to be you have to pay only if your work competes with the entertainment market versions of the piece. Thus, if you charge admission for profit, you must get copyright clearances. But if the admission goes to support the non-profit educational purpose, you don't have to? This seems to be a culture in which thousands of teachers without lawyers get their advice from opposing counsel, leading to predictable systematic exploitation. Another way of putting this is, has a non-profit teacher ever been found guilty of arranging music for their students without permission? Or an arranger for hire, even? Both are employed by the school to support the school's educational mission. Both take home a check personally.

Bingo. Without realizing it, this letter confirms that groups that retain counsel can thereby avoid some or all of the fees. Which is amazing, because if Tresona is in the right, and if they also have attorneys (in fact, they are attorneys) then Tresona should and would prevail. Thus this letter implies that Tresona is in the wrong. (I am a drum corps fan, not an attorney or even a music teacher.) But think of the 30,000 school districts in the USA: how many schools is that? How many bands? How many songs per concert? All those teachers without lawyers. A feast for Tresona and their ilk. According to this article, Tresona threatened a choir teacher with draconian punishments: Presumably it's $150,000 maximum compensatory damages or some such, and the copyright holders would have to show they were damaged that much by a school choir concert. Seriously? And a felony? Can anyone point to a case of a non-profit music teacher being convicted of felony copyright violation for putting on a school concert without obtaining rights? Criminal convictions are pretty much limited to people like Kim DotCom, I thought. In fact, has any non-profit teacher been found guilty of copyright violation for play/arrange/performing a concert? School budgets and legal matters are public record. The press would be all over that. The law seems to give teachers wide latitude to teach music and hold concerts without buying rights. This alleged exposure of the school to risk was one of the reasons Mr. Ellis got fired. (Not the only reason). I don't know who arranged Mr. Ellis's tunes, but if he did his own arrangements, would any money be actually owed to the copyright holders? Title 17, Section 110 (and the articles I've read describing it) would seem to indicate that he would not. Teachers who hire services like Tresona to tell them what they owe are likely to pay for things they don't have to. In addition, I think many things are not clearly decided by the courts, allowing Tresona to interpret the law toward their own interest and present it as presumed fact. For example, Observer, you seem to hire outside arrangers. That's a case that may not have been decided yet by the courts. The court might feel that hiring a private arranger doesn't change anything because the teachers also personally profit from their jobs anyway; it's whether the purpose of the arrangement is educational that counts (but who knows? Has it ever been decided). But until it's decided companies like Tresona would presume in their interest that it's a for-profit use. But then, a single court case could destroy much of their business model, so they might drop all cases where teachers hire lawyers. That would be consistent with this letter from Tresona. Anyway, thank you Tresona for informing teachers that they can avoid your fees by hiring an attorney. That's a big help.

I don't mean the judges directly motivate the students. What they do motivates the students, and the bolded line above reflects this. If there weren't judges and competition, you couldn't lose, and you thus would have been less motivated. If competition doesn't motivate students, DCI will promptly eliminate it, because based on what we know about the corps relationship to DCI the corps would much rather save the expense of the judges and have that returned to the corps. You could make the case that competition brings out the audience (or significantly increases it) and so the corps get more money from that than the judges cost, so it's all about money. But I don't think most people come for the competition. Even if this is a significant factor, I think competition in drum corps is mostly about the desire to win (or not lose) as incentive to excellence.

A zero is highly motivating. Specifically, avoiding the zero. And no, I don't mean that the judges should (or do) select their scores by choosing the most motivating number. They should judge dispassionately. I mean that the reason they judge is to help max out the student. The reason everyone involved in the activity does what they do is to max out the student, including the volunteers. Granted, many of them might not prefer the term "max out the student", but that's what it comes down to. Put another way, if exhibitions were as effective at improving students' skills over the course of a summer, then DCI might not bother with competitions at all. They are educators in an educational activity. Everyone involved serves that goal. Assuming all this, my question is whether it is judging honesty that incentivizes the student most, or the perception of accuracy influenced by the need for consistency. A practical example: Suppose brass judge A things tone quality is much more important than everything else, while judge B considers attacks, releases and timing to be just as important. Judge C things volume and screamers are the thing to reward because embouchure is king, and once you have the lungs and lips it's easier to learn everything else (a strength training approach). Should all three judges produce the same score by deferring to a consensus view rather than rewarding according to their own agenda? I think most teachers and judges would say yes. But is that possible if they don't even see each others' scores?

- IMO the main purpose of judging is to motivate corps members to excellence. Accuracy is primarily important to achieve that end. In other words, accuracy isn't as important is people think. DCI should always seek to improve accuracy, but not if that effort creates conflict that undermines corps members' experience. This new rule seems likely to risk undermining motivation if the scores appear to be arbitrary. It's an unnecessary risk on DCI's part. - Judges are human. Pick two experienced piano teachers and have them judge 12 top pianists on difficulty and execution. Demand and Achievement, whatever you want to call it. Their results will correlate (hopefully!) but not perfectly. And I think the difference between judges is easily enough to change placements a bit. So judges are a bit humble and defer in part to earlier judges decisions - thus committing a little bit of prior performance bias. So, should judges be denied knowledge of prior performance in order to force them to be brutally honest, but inconsistent? I don't know. 2017 will be the first year the corps members will march knowing how inaccurate the judges were this year (will have been, for grammar nazis). On the other hand the judges will have the aggregate brass/percussion/visual/GE scores (or some such) to base their bias on. So we may see the captions within each of these areas merging to be more similar than they were in the past. Anyway, if accuracy/honesty undermines student faith in the system, then many will wish this hadn't been done. Edit: clarification.

Carl spoke at his father at Bill C's HOF award ceremony in 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cadKndEPN4w And here is a nice tribute to Bill Cook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGLD6S93QY Finally, here is a playlist with several interviews about Bill Cook. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsLvHNXs74oCnIGszU-R-mWX6Q3cYMpAB All of this is off topic in theory (they are not about current investment), but I didn't know about these videos so here they are.

Interesting info. Have certain copyright holders granted Tresona exclusive power to sell to marching arts organizations? Or are they more like the contractor who reports your code violation, then shows up on your doorstep offering to fix it for you...

I wouldn't think so. All of these copyright threads, particularly over the last year of this particular issue, have been full of rumor and speculation. That's because we don't have the facts and so that's the best we can do. But that speculation has generally not included the idea that DCI knew internally - possibly all along - that they were exposed. Legal scandals in the media often seem to go that way: people go from "It wasn't illegal" to "We didn't know it was illegal" when in fact they knew it was illegal. He did not say they believed it was legal, only that they thought it was the right thing to do. I support Dan Acheson and DCI 100%. In fact my scenario earlier was based on the presumption that DCI corporate would never do this knowingly unless they had to. But obviously that was all speculation, as I said in that post. If you ask how DCI could do such a thing, you have to then describe a DCI/BOD politics situation enabling it. Nobody's evil, they just have interests that sometimes conflict with each other and certainly with the copyright holders. All I'm saying is, maybe they knew there was a problem all along.

That's entirely possible. It's a simple question: could old sync rights contracts reasonably be construed to cover streaming videos?

Maybe it was deliberate. Maybe the DCI BOD instructed DCI corporate to stream the archive without paying for it. That is, maybe DCI deliberately failed to pay for streaming sync rights for 40+ years worth of shows, while planning the whole time to claim they thought they were covered by physical media sync contracts in the event they got caught. But such contracts generally specify the use, as in the particular medium (DVD, etc), number of copies, etc. And while it all may be very complicated, I've never heard on here or read anywhere that a sync rights contract specifying a particular physical medium could be construed as covering unlimited internet streaming. Particularly one negotiated in 1984 for example. Perhaps on some contracts the wording is vague enough to potentially stretch enough to cover streaming, but everyone says these contracts are very specific. If I'm wrong about that, then this theory is wrong or at least shaky. Otherwise, this interview reinforces this idea that I've been suspecting for awhile now.. Exhibit A: DCI has paid "hundreds of thousands of dollars ... ". First of all, that's not so much really. $100,000 is around 1% of DCI's budget. That's for a single year. Obviously hundreds of thousands would be a big chunk to pay in a single year, but spread out over 40+ years it's entirely reasonable. The additional for streaming might also be reasonable, but would have been a big chunk when they started the Fan Network. Mr. Acheson didn't say, nor has anyone said, that they paid a big chunk of money when they started the Fan Network. Maybe they didn't. Paying sync rights for streaming might have been a nightmare, in that DCI might have had to keep track of views for each show and keep paying over time. So not only more money, but more complicated money. I don't know how that works. Maybe different copyright holders would have demanded different accounting methods, making it even more complicated. Maybe the BOD said in effect, "No way, just do it." Exhibit B: No mea culpa. Mr. Acheson did not take personal responsibility, but he did say it was DCI's fault in general (without getting specific). It follows that - bear with me - if it was DCI's fault, but not his own fault, then it must have been the BOD's fault, because that's the only part of DCI that he doesn't run. That may be reading into it a bit, but it looks to me like he (Acheson) may have been complaining about this to the BOD for years. They, in turn, may have responded with a directive to charge people $70 a pop, give the money to them, stiff the copyright holders, and leave show names and repertoires off the Fan Network (It was the only media product DCI didn't put this info on. Funny that, isn't it?) I wonder if non-profit BOD members are personally liable for their actions (i.e. their votes). If they are not (especially in such a 'minor' issue as a copyright violation) then certainly their corps are immune from liability. They may simply not care if DCI gets jacked up legally. They can just start another league, as some want to do anyway. This is all hypothesis. Maybe DCI went back and paid for all those years of sync rights before opening FN. But we should consider the possibility that this is the result of another example of nasty internal DCI politics.

Genes play a big role too. Also, a typical DCI drum corps trains 12 hours a day when there's no contest. That's seven days a week. 8 hours when there's a contest. A study referenced early in the thread found snare drummers received over 8000% of the maximum safe value over a 12 hour training day, as I recall. (Using their method based on db and time) On the other hand the maximum limits are probably set based on neurological evidence of damage, not necessarily perception of damage. Our brains mask a huge amount of damage by adjusting the volume on our perception. This effectively calibrates our perception to the amplitude of the "feed", so we don't notice any hearing loss until the damage exceeds our brain's ability to hide it from us. That might not happen until many years later after other exposures. Or it might be apparent immediately.

It would seem that most DCI drummers are likely to have permanent hearing loss from this activity, if the research and the people on here are to be believed. Although it may not appear until later in life. We can divide health and safety issues to two categories; "finals-high-risk", those that are a high risk of impacting finals performance and scores, and "finals-low-risk", those that are not. Finals-high-risk include such things as twisted ankles, dehydration, and even sunburn. Corps do a great job with these. BD even has a physical therapy group now. Finals-low-risk include hearing loss and stunts featuring a relatively low probability of devastating injuries. In drum corps, kids with no certification in stunts routinely perform stunts taught by guard teachers with no stunt certification, let alone stunt instructor certification. Their typical qualification is that they were in color guard, and now they teach it. Stunts are a profession. Stunt instruction is a different profession. Neither type of professional is employed in drum corps (typically). Any injuries would be kept secret of course, so we have no idea how many are actually hurt. They would only tell DCI if they have to, and DCI wouldn't tell anyone else. (And remember, the kids and parents all believe they've signed away their rights to sue. Those clauses don't mean much in court, but they would tend to cause most injured people to disappear quietly). So if you want drum corps to reduce hearing loss, you first have to get them to reduce the risk in general of injuries that are relatively unlikely to affect the score.

The corps have not been proactive on this. 'Encouraged'. Required but not enforced. "Do they wear them? They're supposed to...". That's what I've heard. You can go look at them practicing in the lot, or watch youtube videos of it. If you're close enough to see their ears, you can see that they are not wearing earplugs. If one corps enforces it some kids might join a different corps the following year. Major punishment for the proactive corps. Eventually some lawsuit will happen and they will all starting enforcing a mandate on this. Will that be a good thing?

I have to say I'm concerned about this. From George Hopkins statement they seem to be going in to this like lambs to the slaughter. I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect: - The four 'stars' will be paid most or all of their fee at the end if they perform throughout, and that will require increasingly questionable activities. - Various others may be contracted behind the scenes in case they are needed. They will be expected to do possibly aggressive behaviors or other unacceptable things. They may be trained before the season to perform. There's generally a bad boy (or two) on these shows who no one realizes is paid and trained to be bad. The fear and confusion resulting is then captured in interviews. Some kids might be willing to be kicked out if they are getting three times their tour fee back. They will find that kid. - They will shoot hundreds of hours of footage, most of it not too tawdry. But the tawdry stuff is what will be used. And the directors will not even be aware of the tawdriest stuff until they see it on tv, in endlessly repeated ads for the show. - The directors will have no authority at all. As I understand it, nobody gets final edit approval in tv shows. Even the production company's top staff have trouble getting that. Obviously after the investment is put in you will not be allowed to force the show to be made your way. It may not even be possible to kick them out. If they are contracted to be there, on what basis can you kick them out? And I don't trust drum corps lawyers on matters not pertaining to normal drum corps activities, if then. Hopefully I'm wrong about all of this, and the producers will follow the director's requests. But it will only be because they want to, not because they have to. If they're after the money. they will create and exploit every compromising situation they can. They will bring in outside 'talent' if they have to. Someone to seduce somebody's boyfriend on hidden camera. That kind of thing. There are plenty of available actors out there. And frankly, if it's sexy and scandalous enough, they can sell it to a much bigger network. That's what your kid may be facing if he/she tours with one of these corps this summer. Or maybe these two production companies will be as good as gold in their quest for sophisticated arts education programming for Fuse TV. Let's hope for the best.

In both drum corps and band, design is a means to an end: education. A poorly designed show is unfortunate, but not a critical failing as it would be for Cirque du Soleil, for example. There are many poorly designed shows, and the corps and bands survive because they are succeeding at their mission, which is education, not putting on great shows for audiences. I like to think that if I were a corps director I could find staff to deliver nothing but amazing shows, but I bet it's harder than it looks. And ultimately more expensive one way or another.

Following on what others have said, that Broken Arrow's design staff are in fact drum corps people after all, I would add that there is no reason to believe that a drum corps show would be better designed than a high school band show, given the same designer. A designer should always deliver their best, and since perceptions of quality will be based partly on concept, and there is huge variety in concept based on planning conversations with directors, etc. one should expect the resulting quality differences to be distributed pretty randomly between hs and dc. Thus, your favorite mb show will likely be 'better' (IYO) than some top dc show designs. However, the higher demand of drum corps is a double-edged sword: The performances are more impressive, but the higher skills allow for the expression of more abstract, complex ideas that many will not like. But in a 'that's over my head' kind of way.

Does anyone know if this rules congress will be discussing DCI rules other than contest rules?

Yes, my understanding is that they generally start the day in subsections, proceed to sections then do visual in the afternoon all together. Of course it could vary. This means that decisions to water can be discussed and decided the previous evening and implemented in the morning. Done and dusted before lunch, I would think? Also, if the visual difficulty involves running from point A to point B in a roughly straight line, well that's going to be tough to 'fix'. But there's generally going to be a direct path to simplifying the music: just remove some notes, Amadeus.

It seems to me they take lots of risk musically and make lots of mistakes. Even in the top brass corps like BD and Crown, I can hear errors. Granted, usually the errors are not in the most demanding material, which they practice relentlessly, but in the easier stuff. In Crown 2014 there's a crazy finale drill sequence which is performed extremely well (on the Finals video) but then they move toward the front and slow down and there's a few bad counts where it all goes south: clearly they are all taking a breath or panting or something. This happens all the time. BD 2011 comes to mind; there's a point where the trumpets are sitting down on props during a pop tune, then they stand and do a double-tonguing bit. It's good, but it's not perfect. And that's as it should be - if it's perfect it's not hard enough. Even so, I think you're on to something here, and here's why: It's part of a larger cultural context from outside the activity. There's a big difference between not being impressed with something and being actively annoyed with something. When a visual or dance move goes wrong, it's not impressive. It's an "Oops". But music errors grate on the soul. It's an "Ouch". So there is less tolerance for error in music. I think this leads to a culture in DCI in which musical demand is carefully crafted to exceed current skills only by a controlled amount, while viz designers can take a flyer and see what happens. People talk about solo fracks years and decades later (though tact may prevent them from writing about them on here). It's like a punch in the face, to be honest. It's ok, it's a competition, but obviously the whole horn line can't be doing that. But a whole guard can get pretty scruffy for a while and only viz people will cry ouch. So the music judges will have less tolerance for error, but those errors happen within that range just as often I think. Although I'm a fan, not an insider.

I didn't respond to this before. I think the pendulum may have swung just a bit too far in that direction. There's nothing wrong with letting GE judges comment on the whole show - that's a good idea for part of what GE seems to be. But it's a mistake to think that a music teacher with say, an MA in music education and a bunch of years teaching and evaluating music students can necessarily assess the demand of expression of dance choreography. I get that some of them have experience with visual, but not all. I suspect they know this too and put more weight in their own knowledge area, especially knowing that all three areas are represented in the pressbox. So it follows to label their titles appropriate to their background.

Ok, but the only electronic sound that happens there is the sound effects I mentioned, and the woman in front who is producing all the keyboard sounds. so if it's a keyboard it's a keyboard that is playing sound effects. Which actually supports your point, I think; if the kids on the field can be made responsible for the initiation of all sounds, there shouldn't be a need for someone off the field just to set the volume, the kids can do that too. I suspect they hire a sound person to do everything else, so they figure why not let him/her produce much of the effects during the show as well. To which the obvious answer is, because it's a youth competition. If electronics are important, then it's important that the kids compete in that as well. If they're not important, then they must not be needed. And also, any audio breaks can be fairly counted against the corps in scoring, just like any other frack. If a trumpet valve sticks during a show, that's no excuse, so why are they getting such a huge pass on electronics problems? (assuming they are - not everyone on here agrees I think) I'm liking this idea more and more.

Maybe it's because drum corps are arranging existing music, but actually 'composing' the visual. Thus visual can easily get as intense as judges and designers want it to, but arrangers have to find and tweak music to get it to fit, so to speak. However, they must be succeeding at that, though, because as you say, music is insanely technical today. It was hard before, it's over the top today.