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I don't think you understand the point. It's not the programs or music that's played, but how the program is designed, how much demand, how much props are relied upon to generate "GE" (whatever that means these days). This sentence from another post sums up how much simulated (demand, sound, drill, recordings) is ascendant today: "Staging trumps drill every time. WGI style > Brass theater style > DCI drill. The simulacrum wins. It's cleaner and easier to judge. It fits what the sheets ask of it." It's similar to the judging of olympic figure skating. Imagine if a quad jump that has a wobble on the landing were given less points than a "well-staged" perfectly clean triple toe loop. ​What's getting rewarded these days is cleverly risk-managed sleight-of-hand "demand". It makes me feel fooled, patronized, manipulated, not awed and inspired like I used to feel watching DCI.

\ This is exactly the problem: corps directors (i.e. DCI) have agreed to certain rules, and the format for judging. Some kind of addition needs to be made to more highly value demand and risk-taking, to value real over simulated demand, such as drill vs. staging. Also, a rule that bans amplification to augment brass lines should be passed. Most importantly - GE should have more sub-captions, more guidelines for what constitutes GE. No one knows what the heck it refers to - how much 'effect' a run and gun drill and simultaneous playing generates? (not anymore). Or how well risk is managed, body movement is integrated, and how cleverly a 'production' is 'staged'. (dominant today). I'm sure other rules need to be passed. What do the experts and fans on this board recommend?

The show that received the highest score ever, many have observed contains more staging than drill. Elecronics were used in that show to supplement the brass line, particularly in the bass register. We've discussed the Coats simulacra aplenty, not just the pitch bend, but also amps supplementing the brass line, and it was a major reason that they passed the Cadets. And the Cadets used narration - recorded and live - throughout, as well as plenty of props, colossal pics, and other overt gestures to tell a story that their drill and music wasn't telling. Never have I seen more body movement replacing real drill from top to bottom in the top 12. I could go on, but I hope, really hope, you see that this is far far more than just electronics I'm talking about.

Rather than focusing on the word and wordplay, the essential question is why are we condoning and highly-scoring simulated demand (marching, music, marching+music, electronics)? Why is the simulated valued higher than the real (as in really demanding marching+playing at the same time)? And is it a good thing? The more we value the simulacrum, the more of it we'll get in shows. And I don't think people necessarily like it more. (Just because people were yelling and screaming at a pitch bend just means that compared to the other simulacra on the field this year, that was the best. People yell and scream at Skrillex pressing buttons on his Macbook all the time, and he rakes in millions doing it. Hence the SNL skit I linked in the original post making fun of the sheeple who like such electronic "performances", and the faux skill that it requires to execute it.)

I'm not talking about 'cribbing' other work from other idioms (broadway, film, etc.), but simulating things like demand, or simulating brass sounds themselves.

Homunculus! One of my favorite words. You, sir, are the winner! Woody Allen used it as an insult in a movie somewhere. Skrillex is more homunculus than actual performer. A simulator-stimulator. And the tarps in a certain narration-laden show were not of real people, but homunculi, which was why the audience had so much difficulty identifying them. We could talk about the triumph of porn as Simulacrum too, but I'm not suggesting that as a show design for next year. 2016 maybe.

Intended. Try to narrate THAT, you narration loving show designers!

Yes, this. I'm talking about simulated difficulty in drill, simulated difficulty in substituting body movement for drill, simulated difficulty in sleight-of-hand staging and arranging that avoids moving while playing, simulated sound, simulated GE (props galore, uniforms varying year to year, or within shows). And scores that seem to reward the Simulacrum. I want real demand, real drill, real acoustic sound, and real achievement awarded by real scores.

A lot of the electronics mania generated by a simulated pitch bend this year reminds me of the idea that "live" DJs are "performing", when at best, they're manipulating the Simulacrum. Much in our culture no longer discriminates between true performers and manipulators of sounds, or the Real and Simulated, though, so I'm sure my opinion is invalid and that I'm a cultural invalid. Have Grammy-award winning rappers like Eminem or Weird Al (who deserves a whole topic on his own here, the guy who satirizes the triumph and fakery of the Simulacrum in pop culture, like Stewart or Colbert in their areas (remember "truthiness"?), and the endless possibilities that satire could bring to DCI, which we've sadly lost with the death of VK and Bridgemen, and DCI by glorifying the Simulacrum has become so much HEAVIER and sickeningly EARNEST, even self-righteous, in the last unsatirical decade as they desperately try to manipulate the Simulacrum to add simulated profundity to show GE just as they try to add profundity to baselines, scrambling to balance out the Simulacrum with Seriousness and Meaning, and thus jumping the shark with tasteless desperation in design all too often), achieved the same level of mastery as musicians and performers as a pianist or violinist? Many in the young generation would say yes. And they'd say that piano and violin music are boring and irrelevant. We're doing the same thing in DCI, enhancing world-class horn lines with amplification, or using voice samples instead of live narration, and talking about the "performance" if narration itself as if that's impressive or important (because, after all, narration is performance right, and it's just as hard to talk as it is to play difficult runs that would make for a great Arban exercise while marching backwards at 220bpm, and it's just as impressive for Drake to perform a rap as it is for Hilary Hahn to play a Bach Partita). Same thing substituting and equating body movement with drill in terms of demand and GE. Simulated drill, simulated difficulty, simulated GE. We see body movement as so often ridiculous because it's filler, simulated demand, like lip-synched 'singing'. We can't even say on these boards anymore that such and such a corps has lower demand, that body movement isn't as difficult as run-and-gun drill, that it's lower level for one corps to play much or most of the time when standing still, versus another corps playing and marching simultaneously for virtually the entire show. To the judges, and increasingly, to the audience, it's the same. Viva la Simulacrum! The Simulacrum now dominates DCI. As expected, as WGI is recorded-music based, and relies on staging instead of drill, and especially because our culture is dominated by the Simulacrum - photoshopped social media pics, plastic surgery, marketing, corporate everything, national myths, etc. Recognizing this, I'm waiting for the next step in DCI/WGI "evolution": live DJs. They are our culture's grandmasters of the Simulacrum - sampling other people's compositions, mashups, simulating live performance by pressing buttons on their MacBooks, and earning six and seven figures for simulated "concerts" in huge clubs worldwide. The Cadets were the first corps to introduce minimalism into DCI, a music that was initially - and still - mocked by the classical music establishment as simplistic, repetitive, and not nearly as rigorous as, say, serialism. The Cadets will retake the title of "the thinking man's drum corps" that they held for at least two decades if they introduce Dub Step into DCI. To quote Vanguard at the millennium, it's a "New Era". I'm waiting for the Cadets, or a hip, innovative corps to stage Skrillex. (And I mean stage, because these days, you don't need drill. Corps members could do choreographed and blocked dancing, stop to play when needed, or pretend to play when the amplification takes over, because it is in the nature of amplification to take over.) So many possibilities to grow the activity and reach out to new audiences. I'm waiting to see something like this on the field in June 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCawU6BE8P8 No more throwing babies. We'll have heads exploding. Next year, whichever corps embraces the Simulacrum 100% will be the first corps to top 100. Let's all learn to love the Simulacrum.

This is pretty much it. The Cavaliers during their run in the early 2000s, were the first corps to figure out that it's absolutely unnecessary - ever - to play and march difficult drill simultaneously. All their famous difficult drill moves I can recall were done without playing. BD took this a step further - they almost never do truly difficult drill, playing or not. The quote above basically describes the 'staging' approach to drill writing. It's more like blocking than drill. A lot of scatter drill - move over there, do a bit of body movement to satisfy the WGI judges, and then play mainly while standing still, sometimes with a bit of body movement thrown in to seem difficult. No need to take the risk when the judging community sees things from the WGI perspective and values staging and cleanliness over demand. And because WGI people have never played a brass instrument or a drum, so they have no idea what that demand is. All they look for is design and execution. GE generated by demand has gone from DCI. So now we have low-demand staging, and to me, it's not exciting and not very interesting.

To my ears, most of the amplification detracts from the show. I liked the 20 seconds of pitch bend, especially the first few times I heard it, but it wore on me a bit, and I would have loved even more to hear what they could have done with their chops instead. I've never heard anyone but a soloist try a pitch bend, but a great brass line like the Coats - they could have done it. So no, I'm not a fan of amplification. Narration is just a part of it. If there is any electronics, it should be applied in dribs and drabs, and should never augment or cover the brass sound, but add another voice of counterpoint. In fact, all brass samples should be banned from DCI, so no one could try to imitate wind instruments, just add other 'instruments' to the mix here and there, more like counterpoint than unison.

A great post below. Right on the money. My comments are in italics.

It's the most convenient measure twelve hours after the competition. But my real measure is did every member, and the corps as a whole, create a beautiful work of art. And if you think that more than 1% of the audience think that the Cadets had the best show design this year, you're kidding yourself.

Some people who hated narration and amplification of any kind jumped on criticizing 2005, and criticizing Hop as the narration lightning-rod. Some people were annoyed at the Bjork imitation, but it wasn't widely reviled. I first saw it live first mid-season in Des Moines, and the very apple-pie boy scout crowd loved it. They were on an entirely different level than anyone else, but with a lot to clean at that point. After the first 30 seconds of the show, heck, even after listening to the brass line warm up in the lot, I had a strong feeling it was a championship corps and a championship show. Chalking up this year's failed design decisions to "haters will hate" is about the dumbest, delusional, and artless viewpoints I've read on this forum. If the Cadets staff - and some fans - don't see reality for what it is, next year we'll get a show called LEADERSHIP, complete with motivational quotes from corporate CEOs, and a design package chock full of corporate logos and jingles and greenwash-marketing.

I "just didn't like it"? Can you think of any corps design package that was widely ridiculed more than this year's flag wavin' narration-and-tarpfest? I am certain that - to a person - doing "just fine" is far from well enough for the 150 ultra talented Cadets members this year. The kids may have won a bronze medal, but the staff lost at least a silver medal, possibly gold (no way BD has such a high score if the Cadets actually had a show package that could compete.) And everyone in the corps and 99% of the people in the audience know it too.