Slingerland

If i remember correctly, the instrument you're referring to was akin to a modified slide whistle, which has been legal in drum corps forever.

Not bad, but the polaris on the front of the uni doesn't read like much from up top. A strong contrasting line like a sash makes more of a geometric statement than a logo. As for the headgear, hey, clearly it didn't hurt Crown last year.

Scrapers, scratchers, and a manual typewriter.

Stravinsky, Strauss, Glass, and Barber are all considerably older than you (and in all but one case, also considerably deader). Not sure how any of them would qualify as the 'younger generation' - unless you're talking about Stravinsky's rap alter ego, Busta Ostinati.

Cavaliers FB feed saying they'll be announcing over the weekend.

You're right. That is sad. You know what would be sadder? For those artists who actually have something to say and an interest in pushing themselves to try something new to stop doing what they're doing, because, after all, the kitten and clown patrons out there will never appreciate the work. Working toward the lowest common denominator because a big chunk of the potential audience has no interest in being challenged never leads to anything worth knowing. One of the whole points of reading, watching, or looking and listening to the work of creative artists IS to have your preconceptions changed and your tastes challenged. What would be better would be for those who don't care for something to ask themselves WHY they don't like it - and do so from the standpoint that it's perfectly OK to come to the conclusion that you didn't like something not because it was strange, but because the artist in question failed to do the thing that he or they were trying to do. I think that's the real problem in drum corps now, from an artistic standpoint. It's not the shows are too artsy, it' s that with too many cases, they're failing to deliver the goods.

Anytime I see a person complain about "modern art" being over their heads, the only thing I can think is "....well that explains who's buying all those paintings of clowns and kittens at local art fairs."

This is the future for today's Open Class drum corps. The economic sense of running a summer program just isn't there, but this would allow those with smaller, local membership bases to compete in a format that lends itself to their size and time constraints. And some of these independent units could compete in a Summer League version of this under DCI's auspices, if DCI took the next step and created it. SoundSport was always a logo and a general idea looking for a structure; have WGI create the competitive structure for winter, tweak it for the summer performances, and you could have year-round drum corps for those who want to compete but don't want to have to spend $400k a year to do so (and more units for local show promoters to use in creating their lineups).

Yes, it is. This is an outside fundraising/business opportunity that those corps have created. Other corps are free to do the same (or already are, as you yourself have pointed out). Should Blue Devils be required to give anyone else a cut of their Bingo proceeds? How about Troopers, since Bingo is a huge part of their financial picture too? The answer is no in both cases. Being in a cooperative to split up revenues from shared events like shows is not and should not be a life-sentence to split every penny you make on every aspect of your operations. If DCI wanted to produce a bunch of band shows as a way of helping to fund their operations, they've had 40 years to do it. When the non-G7 corps had carte blanche in the Boardroom, there was nothing stopping them from initiating the process. They didn't. So there's no reason to feel that those who are motivated to look for ways to expand their financial base and provide new avenues toward selling brand awareness for their brands shouldn't exercise those options.

I'd wager that the rule change was proposed to allow Madison to exercise an artistic concept that they had already baked into the show.

No. I also don't think DCI should be involved in Bingo operations, asking alumni to write checks, running corps souvenir operations, or anything else the member corps do to help support themselves. What you call "disruption" I call competition. Was it good for consumers to have other brands step up their smartphone games in answer to the iPhone? Yes. It might have 'disrupted' Apple to have more compeition, but it also works to keep them driving forward in providing better, cheaper products to the end users. So will it be better or worse for bands to have more suitors looking to present their work? Better.

BOA was an off-shoot of Larry McCormick's post-Cavaliers business venture, and as such, was designed to be a way to promote "corps-style" merchandise and arrangements to bands. Having the corps see some direct income from producing the contests that those bands compete in is preferable, to me, to having another organization that has nothing directly to do with promoting or funding drum corps seeing all of the money from the growth in "corps style" bands. Competition for the business of the best bands may end up being a net positive for all involved, especially if it drives down the fees bands have to pay in order to compete in those shows (currently in the $600-900 per show range). Making it cheaper to compete may increase the number of bands who want to start competing, and the more kids who are competing in band shows increases the potential candidate pool of kids for summer drum corps.

It's no more a conflict of interest than the home shows that each drum corps produces each summer, all of which are in direct competition with the contests DCI produces. Since DCI doesn't produce band shows, this is just a way for these 7 organizations to bring in some additional off-season funding for themselves, and as such, is no different than any other profit generating ideas they could come up with.

Drum corps has spent 25 years trying to recruit band kids to play drum corps by enticing them to become audiences & buy t-shirts (and occasionally be students at clinics). Having a consortium band together (no pun) to promote the work of the directors and bands more directly via competitions is a natural progression of the conversation. More drum corps should be looking to form more alliances like this to promote and produce band shows, both because it helps them generate funds for their own operations and because it gives them a chance to make sure that each kid competing at those events knows what drum corps is and how they can be part of it (and at a time of the year when the information is actionable, with fall/winter audition camps). I'm with Garfield. I think this is a very positive development.

I think that's a little simplistic. Both brass and percussion had build-up captions that gave credit for difficulty, so that even if a line was clean, but playing a relatively simple book, they weren't going to get the number of a line that played clean and had a lot of meat in the book. And "demand" as a concept, is a lot easier for people to agree on than "effect," simply because the judges almost always had personal experience writing, teaching, and performing themselves - they know what's hard to do and what's not. Judging "effect" is a slippery eel to begin with, but it's only made harder when the activity says that the design and instructional staffs can essentially dictate to the judges what is and isn't good design.

Not Saint Lucy's, it was St Vinnies.

The best experiment would be to have 2 or 3 willing junior corps say "ok, if we can raise $350,000 from the legacy fan base to buy new horns, we'll switch to G for three years, at which point, we'll ask for another $350k from those same fans to buy a new set to stay current, since the resale value on our old horns will be nil." The sound of crickets among "the fans" will be deafening.

By "bugle," what do you mean? A three-valve horn keyed in G? A two-valved horn? A one-valve/one-rotor horn? A one-valve horn? A no-valve horn? Only the latter is properly defined as a "bugle" - and it hasn't been used in this activity since World War II. As long as the sound is brass and percussion, it's still unique enough to qualify as whatever it is we call drum corps now. I totally agree that adding woodwinds and/or strings to the field ensemble would be a different animal, but as dumb as I think Madison's recent rules change proposal was, it won't significantly alter what drum corps has been for decades.

Shouldn't they be punished in the score if it's inappropriate or totally unnecessary? The mark of a truly great creative artist is that they know when NOT to do something, as much as how to do something interesting. Sometimes you have to let the book speak for itself - if you feel a need to throw in a gratuitous body shape thing just because or have your pit players "acting" (and the quotation marks are intentional) to help sell the concept, it only comes across as lame to most mainstream audiences. But I bet none of these corps hear any judge courageous enough to tell them "ugh, please don't do that," since the critique afterwards would be ugly.

If visual demand is considered on the percussion sheets (and it is) then clearly the visual elements are considered at every level. As for percentages, you could consider that there are between 110 and 120 performers in a WC corps who are there primarily as musicians (a kid who can play well but only march adequately will be taken by most corps, since they'll work to improve his marching, but a kid who marches like a sonofab___ but can't play well generally won't - yes?) So if 70-80% of the members are there to play music, shouldn't that be considered in weighting the scores?

The battery had no business playing at that part of that show (and the pit was playing plenty). It was aesthetically the right thing to do - and given that the battery then came out and played their arses off in the next segment of the show, it hardly put them in a position where they weren't contributing. I'd be happy to see more corps embracing that approach, making musical decisions that are right without being afraid that they'll lose points because they did the artistically smart thing. == The current system hands too much control of the score over to the design team (the visual team especially), and more or less forces everyone into a design box where the shows have to hit certain design touchstones in order to be considered "good." If the visual geniuses who drive the judging standards process were really artists, they'd recognize that a system that allows for the greatest range of experimentation is actually the system that will provide the greatest variety of results, because it provides the most freedom to create. Taking away points from the creative/effect side would actually increase the amount of experimentation going on. But that won't happen, as long as the current mafia of dominant voices in the room are who they are.

If a reference to Dadaism is "deep," then someone slept through 20th century history, art, or literature class. My problem with the show was its total lack of any actual Dadaist art. If the Devils' staff was using the idea of Dadaism for something other than WGI'ish window dressing, they'd have done a real Dadaist program, with 150 people spending 11 minutes each doing anything they wanted to, as long as it wasn't together. Since the expectation in drum corps is precision and uniformity, Dada would tell you that a Dadaist show should be just the opposite. Offending a bourgeois audience is the central tenet of Dadaism.

I don't see any professional choreographers, directors, dancers or visual artists - in see people who work in the incestuous little world of WGI and related "pageantry" companies. So the people who are judging are overwhelmingly people whose expertise was developed by and with the exact same people whose work they're supposed to judging.

The percussion and brass judges are all, generally, very well qualified to judge their categories, working as professional musicians and/or educators in non-drum corps formats themselves. As far as I know, there are no visual or guard judges who make livings as choreographers, dance critics, or visual artists. So THEIR qualifications seem to consist of "being really into guard/visual."

Only if you believe Muchachos fans.