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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.

The most creative, challenging, and innovative show will win highest score and greatest audience approval.

Congrats BLOO from a former Clevelander with several friends who have marched! You didn't win silver in my mind. You won white gold.

It was a slap in the face of the Cadets ossified design team, not the kids. Still, I deeply feel for the kids. They deserve MUCH more creativity and innovation from their design staff.

NO NO NO NO! They will doom themselves out of the gate by rehashing ANYTHING from the past. It failed this year, and it will always fail. People are bored with retrospectives, and it always ends up being navel-gazing and egotistical anyway. 1985 is among the five most innovative shows in history. How can you beat that? They should INNOVATE. Fans want something they've not seen or heard before. That's what the Cadets are about. ZAG!

And I can't think of a better way to show that the vast majority of fans prefer art over propaganda/marketing than this, a resounding roar of approval for innovation, art, and the accessibly abstract: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oeyFOKesbg&feature=youtu.be&t=43m40s Too bad we have to have our focus group on finals night, rather than in October 2013.

Comparing this year to 2005 is delusional other than both groups had similar talent. That show wasn't hated any more than Cadets 2011 or any number of BD shows in the last ten years. The narration in 2005 wasn't pounding people over the head with patriotism and propaganda and MEANING, wasn't so darn LITERAL, and wasn't so darn HEAVY that it collapsed of its own middle-aged white male political weight. What so-called 'narration' there was was mostly drumspeak, something no one had tried before. Ain't no meaning in drumspeak, or the nonsense-speak of Bjork. 2005 was about art and concept. It was abstract without being inaccessible. I wasn't a huge fan of most of the stuff coming from the mics in 2005, actually, but at least the show was doing something new, rather than trying to be the opening sequence of the Colbert Report. 2005 also - like a lot of great art - didn't take itself so seriously. It was whimsical, odd, fascinating, full of potential interpretations. Heck, they even ribbed the judges at the end of their finals performance when the girl came out with a clipboard and judges shirt. What's so disheartening about 2014 is that this year's group was as talented as 2005. The design team didn't cast their net wide enough last year, didn't solicit their fan base's opinions about planned design ideas soon enough, so they made a doomed choice in November. As soon as I heard the music choices announced, and reinforced when I saw pics of the stage in spring, I knew the design would hold this group back. Yes, this group of kids getting bronze is a failure. They have gold-medal talent. With a better design, they could tie or beat BD this year. BD's and Coats' designs elevated both groups all year; Cadets design had to have hobbled them emotionally and motivationally, especially toward the end of the season. Bluecoats (and don't take this the wrong way) aren't quite as talented players or marchers (drumlines are equally talented though), but they had a design that had them playing a bit over their heads, giving them more motivation from an audience that was rooting for them. I venture to say that 90% of the audience was happy to see the Coats pass Cadets. What a letdown to be in this year's group and see that the design team wants you to jump the shark with tarps, etc. That's what dragged down their performance in the last week or so, and I think the patriotism schlock also began to wear very thin on the judges. To me, it's good news that the Coats got silver. It means art triumphs over agit-prop marketing and jump-the-shark, Spinal Tap design excess. I hope this failed experiment is the last of its type for the Cadets design team. I hope the Cadets staff learns the following lessons: 1. Anytime you repeat old material (a la Appalachian Spring) you will unfairly pit this year's group against another, and the comparison will always fail your current group of kids. (I've made this criticism of the Cadets in the last 10 years before, on this forum, when they've rehashed old material, but it seems they didn't learn the lesson.) No one on the planet would or could like this year's Appalachian Spring more than what more people cite as the best show ever than any other show: Cadets 1987. So before this year's corps even took the field, they lost vs Cadets '87. (Scores don't matter - I'm talking about the sheer beauty and impact and staying power of a show.) 2. Narration is - thankfully - becoming passé. You can do different things with mics and amplification than TELL US WHAT IT ALL MEANS like we're drooling idiots. You can Tilt, for example. 3. Patriotism and political speeches carry way too much baggage - to put it mildly - to succeed as art in DCI or anywhere, ever. Especially as this country bankrupts itself - financially and morally - with corporate-sponsored militarism. 4. The design team needs an infusion of ideas, new creative voices, and a new focus on innovation, and needs fan response to its ideas sooner, like in Fall. Since they seem to like business and marketing and politicians so much, haven't they heard of a focus group or a political poll? Why can't a certain degree of crowdsourcing be used every year? No corps has a greater number of fans, many of whom have quite some creative talent, so why aren't the Cadets using them? I congratulate the kids for more than maxing out this show. Their talent this year is among the very best in Cadets history. They were just not given the product to match their potential. I anxiously await a true ZAG with Cadets 2015.

This really is the issue: not allowing imagination and interpretation from the audience because everything is explained. GE seems to be a measure of how much you hammer a message into people's heads via every channel of communication possible, now including narration. I just find it uninteresting. I like how stories can be told with music, drill, and dance, maybe a few props. We've lost something essential to drum corps in the last 10 years. It's not more complex with more stuff. It's just more obvious, and anything obvious is just not that interesting. Because NO ONE really knows what GE is, we've allowed many WGI judges to stealthily redefine it to mean "shove the design concept at the audience from any and every communication channel possible, and the more channels, and more messages, the higher the GE". So GE these days basically is marketing. That's an awful trend we've allowed to have taken over. It will only get worse unless GE can be redefined to be artistic effect.

No. Not until the Cadets become the leaders in design again. Not until they stop using crutches, groveling for GE instead of creating it. Until they stop pantingly trying to SPELL IT OUT for everyone, as if we're WGI and not DCI, as if we're in ninth grade and have ADD and no nothing about music, dance, or art. I take it you didn't watch the stonehenge clip I included in my last message. A tragic mistake. Watch it, savor it, chug it like syrup at Denny's at 3:45 am, bathe in it as if it were a vat of warm cheesecake, and Granny Smith were with you to massage the meaning into your quivering loins. I take it you didn't learn that the excesses of SPELLING IT OUT for everyone, dramatized in the documentary of the legendary mega-group Spinal Tap, should be a lesson for us all. And as a special present for you, in return for your love, I'll leave you with the last stanza of my favorite poem, which just might be included in the 2018 anniversary/revival/tribute of Cadets 1998 Stonehenge, complete with narration, props, tarps, pods, the color guard tossing stones and spinning henges, and the drumline dressed as Druids, with the word "DRUIDS" embossed down their sleeves, so we….understand. "And where are they now? The little children of Stonehenge And what would they say to us? If we were here… tonight"

Can I also say that the transition between the last two sets before the big first hit in the opener, about 60 seconds into the show - abstract curved form to solid triangle - lasts about three nanoseconds, and is the fastest transition between two sets I've EVER seen, so fast, in fact, that it's actually dangerous. That's the kind of Cadets I've always loved - right on the edge of possible/impossible. Telling stories with dance and drill. Allowing individual members to express character individually. I don't want anything spelled out for me. I don't want narration. Big pictures. Nothing obvious. Ambiguity, a certain elusiveness of fixed meaning, effusiveness of multiple meanings that leads only to further interpretations. That's classic Cadets. Imagine if they had a narrator for 1998 Stonehenge, and tried to make it DEEP and MEANINGFUL, with lots of props, tarps, and a stage? "In ancient times, hundreds of years before duh dawn of history, lived a strange race of people…The Druids. Nobody knows…who dey were…or…what dey were doing. But their legacy remains, hewn into the livin' rock, uh Stonehenge!" - Nigel Tufnel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC3n7YKjsjA

I watched the 2000 show myself, as relief from the debate this year. WHAT a FUN show that isn't about anything but time, life, living, and individual expression. Extremely difficult, fast, whiplash drill. impossibly exposed everywhere. A phenomenal performance. (Maybe not their very best run of that year, as if they felt the Cavaliers breathing down their necks, who had no pressure on them, no target on their backs all summer, but still amazing.) The show is uplifting because it isn't heavy. What's making this year so lugubrious is that it's so HEAVY, so earnest, so much to lift in its clumsy bombastic effort to be uplifting, so much MEANING, everything is weighted, freighted, and dated. ENOUGH ALREADY with being so profound, Cadets. Tell a friggin story without making it a history, make it abstract, make it layered, complex, hard, virtuosic, and NEW. That should be the theme of 2015 and going forward.