MikeRapp

Academy last year, Mandarins this year, both due to show design! Next year, who will it be? I’m gonna guess that Scouts will come back into the spotlight with a great show concept and land back in finals, and music city climbs close to contention for Saturday.

Does anyone know what the Flo contract looks like? Is dci tied to them for the foreseeable future? I would love to see them land on one of the Directv ppv channels, so we weren’t having to constantly deal with the streaming challenges of Flo.

I really love the ending to BD, but I sort of feel like they made some staging missteps this year. The main story telling stage is just so far away from the crowd, the scale is all wrong. Kind of how I felt about Scouts’ Judas show, you had to squint to see what was going on. The Tempest and Dreams shows did a great job of pushing the main story milestones front and center, so you could be drawn through the show. Same with Session 44, you literally couldn’t get Olivia closer to the front line for most of the night, amd at times she is on a stage with the corps pointing to her to make sure the crowd knows where to focus. Nighthawks is such a cool idea, but the story is all over the place visually, so you never really get much of a sense of what is actually going on. The ending sort of ends. It’s really cool, but it falls flat mostly because BD spent 11 minutes dazzling you all over the field, so you sort of have to mentally piece the show back together at the end.

Isn’t this the same percussion judging crew that nearly got run over several times in prelims, and registered whacked scores for most of the top eight? Maybe DCI had a sit down with them over the last two days and told them to get their crap together, so we don’t end up with a bunch of frustrated, cynical fans and corps directors at retreat.

I believe that is accurate. Stupid business model, but what do I know.

Try to keep their design staff at Mandarins. Because right now they are out-designing all but three or four Corps. That show, with the percussion talent of any of the corps that will finish above them, might launch them into the top six.

In the case of Vanguard Cadets and BDB, it’s the exact opposite. Those two corps have more financial stability than most of World Class. They aren’t performing in that group because of how those two organizations are structured.

If the Bluecoats team have brought anything of lasting value to drum corps, and even band in general, my hope is that this is it. You have so much fun watching them because you can only imagine how much fun it would be to perform their shows. They have somehow bridged the gap between technical achievement and fun performance. Each of their shows from the last five seasons stand on their own, because they created a unique space for 11 minutes—both for the corps and the audience. If the judges see things they love, great, but if not, it’s their loss.

Well, there really is only one question, who wins silver? It’s set up for a...tie.

So they read the scores for all but BD and SCV. But they haven’t posted the last grouping through Bluecoats. Could it be because the rankings are changing between two and three?

Dunno. Boston is right in that mix now.

I have never watched a flo broadcast in which audio didn’t progressively lag behind video. Unreal.

Yes, and a really bad tear in smooth criminal. Very rough show. Don’t look now, I won’t be surprised if Bloo moves ahead to silver.

Do you think Phantom’s relative struggles are due to arrangements? I don’t know how much input or control Will has in the overall musical direction, or even song selection, to say nothing of show design and visuals. To me, it feels like Will is boxed into a framework that pretty much dictates most of what he is doing. Phantom is at a similar crossroad to Scouts. If their alumni and supporters refuse to accept a new kind of Phantom, you’re gonna continue to get dark, moody black and white shows that are relatively similar to the last three shows. it won’t be much longer before Phantom isn’t making finals. Academy, Mandarins, Atlanta, Music City, these are Corps with no baggage and are willing to take risks.

Im not disagreeing with what you are writing.

Not saying that everything that is popular now is a product of BD. What I am saying is, BD has design patterns that are pretty obvious. That isn’t a criticism unless you choose to take it that way.

Blue Devils have a way of designing, staging, and performing shows that is quite predictable. That is also true of other corps, but other organizations don’t have the clout that blue Devils does. Blue Devils can influence the entire direction of the activity, and they can influence it in ways that benefit them more than any other group. That’s just obvious and a fact of life. Whether you like or don’t like the design patterns of blue Devils, it is unhealthy for the Activity called DCI to have one group essentially determining or dominating the styles and design decisions that are required to win a medal. If bluecoats are in fact being punished for not having at least one obvious “March your percussion group front and center and ram a bunch of notes into 30 seconds moment,” I think that sucks for the entire activity. We should be applauding and rewarding the entire design concept over what I would call the skill demonstration aspects of the activity. I would hate to see other groups start to design shows that included waving your hair around in the air simply because they know they will garner more points.

Do these penalties effect the combined scoring totals for the captions?

Yes. Agree. It’s our nature to affirm success. DCI is a unique activity, very insular, so you have to be very proactive to recognize this and try to stop it. Everyone wants their favorite corps to win medals, but it is inarguably that a successful activity of any kind does not empower one member to always win. Sure, the Yankees are always going to be against anything that lessens the likelihood of them dominating baseball, but baseball can’t survive if the Yankees can dictate the system of baseball to ensure their future success.

Every top 10 World Class Corps has what we in UX call design patterns, ways of doing things that are associated with the brand. Some of those are intentional, some are not. Design patterns are useful in product design, because they help the user understand your intent, and what will happen when something happens. Cadets’ z-pull is probably the best current example of this. Where design patterns become insidious is when you don’t know you have them, and don’t realize you are using them over and over again. Or worse, you think you AREN’T using design patterns, and never have. Blue Devils has a clear set of design patterns they have used and relied on for much of the past decade. They are steering out of some of those, recently. But still, they use their tried and true concepts as the glue that holds the parts together. Scatter drill, “hairology,” high brass sound and tuning, staging concepts, color palette. These are, to the aware, quite obvious when you watch a BD show. How you feel about that largely has to do with whether you like those patterns and ideas. Where I believe DCI needs to continue to address, very aggressively, is the creeping danger of making design patterns a necessary aspect of successful scoring. This corps didn’t do a symmetric drill, therefore they aren’t going to score as highly as one that did. This corps didn’t do a staged drum feature, that show didn’t feature a huge set concept. The frustration, imo, with BD is that their artistic presence has been so dominant that many feel that their design patterns have or had become the only de facto way to be successful on the sheets. It’s a chicken and egg thing, to some extent, but somehow the activity has to be really self aware about allowing styles to become scores. Otherwise, you get sameness that kills the activity. There is always going to be only so much elite marching and playing talent a available. If one or two corps can dominate that talent and at the same time dictate what style is a winning style, then you have big problems.

If Bluecoats can do shows like Session 44 every year, I’m perfectly happy with bronze. I’d honestly rather have fun and be “that show” and be rewarded for it by the fans, than sell out with sops to the sheets every two minutes.

I don’t think there will be an order change in the top seven tomorrow, but I for one am surprised at the narrowing margin between BD and Bluecoats. With five days off to do nothing but rehearse, I expected BD to close the gap a little with SCV. Instead, Coats are actually within striking distance of Silver now, with a growing gap between SCV and BD, and Bluecoats and Crown.

Sorry if already answered.

Oh Prosperie, where art thou?

Keep up the fight, Scouts!