pudding

Front ensembles are going to drive Talen Stadium staff nuts tonight

Used to be, sure. I hear this oft repeated when discussions of "proper etiquette" arise concerning classical concerts. However, I am of the opinion that there is a certain courtesy that should be paid to the other members of the audience; of course, one should enjoy the music and the experience as one wishes, but only to the extent that it does not diminish the experience and enjoyment of the person next to you. In Mozart and Beethoven's time, it was expected that audiences would respond with their cheers or jeers immediately; this is no longer the case. Particularly when artists and composers are crafting subtle, nuanced experiences into their works, it is rude and disrespectful to disrupt not only the performance, but the experience of your fellow audience member. Of course, if live reactions are expected at a particular venue, then naturally one should not hold back their reactions. I still think, however, that some consideration should be given to whether the reactions are disruptive to the person next. If I cannot hear a percussion lick because the person next to me is screaming about a fantastic brass hit, then I will be put out.

Personally, when I attend I show I want to catch every single detail that I might miss when watching videos. Because of this, I don't applaud or cheer unless I know for absolute certain that there is nothing going on, including programmed silence. I find this to be similar to watching an orchestral concert; the current etiquette at such a venue is to remain silent and enjoy the experience being provided, and to also not potentially disrupt the experience of the concert-goer next to you. Contrast with, say, a jazz club, where one is almost obligated to clap and applaud during the performance, notably after solos. I'm not saying that one way is correct, or is better than the other, I'm simply sharing my approach. I will add, however, that as a performer it is much, much easier to get hyped or pump out the energy when the crowd is active rather than passive. I remember distinctly a crowd in 2013 that was dead, and while I understood that it was because the crowd was respectfully listening to the show, it was extremely difficult to push energy into the performance. Contrast in 2014, when nearly every single show was hyped up because the crowd was always into it.

I'll extend my previous comment; I think that most corps this year fit the description of "Stellar musical packages, with questionable visual packages and/or show designs". For example, Crown's music book is very nice, but their holistic show design is lacking. Bluecoats have an incredible jazz package, but I find myself wanting in terms of visual impact. SCV's music is outstanding, but the design is vague and the visuals are confused. This is a year for buying the album, but not the BluRay, in my opinion.

While I am not completely sold on the design, SCV's music book is absolutely stellar this year.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Machine. I'd say it goes back and forth between Machine and Frameworks for my favorite Cavies show, depending on my mood. Maybe Four Corners gets thrown in there once in a while. And Spin Cycle.

True, but their 2002 brass line was so much better than the 2006 line, in my opinion. The Machine ballad was amazing, but all of Frameworks was astonishingly stunning.

I think that a lot of people reacted the same way. But, those words were lifted straight out of the original opera, and I thought that the arrangement was incredibly appropriate and supported them perfectly.

I thought that Crown 2013 used vocals quite well, although I'm also a huge fan of Einstein on the Beach, so the bits that might have sounded like out-of-place narration to an unfamiliar listener made perfect sense to me.

I think you're missing the point of their usage of the vocalist. She's not intended to be "singing a song", as it were; rather, she's contributing the timbre of her voice to the soundscape. The exact lines that you pinpoint as unclear are in fact being presented stylistically correctly: in the original Joni Mitchell, those exact lines are also somewhat muddy and unclear, as an artifact of the vocal style. In most cases where vocals have been used in DCI, it's because they wanted the lyrical aspect that a vocalist can provide, which a mellohpone or flugelhorn cannot. This, of course, has led to the many, many discussions and arguments about balance, appropriateness, and whether vocalists "belong" in the activity. An overarching reaction that I have observed to the Bluecoats this year is that, unlike most if not all previous efforts at incorporating a vocalist, most fans seems to enjoy their usage, even those who had previously decried the decision with other corps. Moreover, it is not just Bluecoats fans that are saying this. I think that this is because, unlike nearly every previous attempt at using a vocalist, they are not focusing on the lyrics; they are focusing on the timbre and stylistic contribution. No matter how good a brass soloist is, they will never be able to convincingly emulate Joni Mitchell's scat singing. So they bring in this enormously talented young woman, who can emulate that style, but they don't overbalance it, or make it the centerpiece of the show (for longer than necessary to let the audience know that she's there). There are many times where she's singing, but her words are obscured by the brass choir; her voice, however, still contributes to the sound, and nothing is lost because the focus is not on her words, but the holistic sound of the entire corps, including her. The words are incredibly unimportant; even in the original song, the "dry cleaner from Des Moines" could be replaced with "electrician from Baton Rouge" or "milkman from Birmingham". The point is that the narrator is gambling somewhere, and not doing well, but this other character seemingly can't lose; basically, the idea is to stylistically present the idea of a gambling den, in an old jazz style a la Sinatra with his Luck be a Lady. Even more to the point of the drum corps adaptation, the specific style being presented doesn't matter at all, but rather the fact that the song is focusing on presenting a style at all, rather than telling a story through its words. Because of this, it's possible to incorporate a vocalist without having the entire corps play second fiddle to her lyrics, which I feel was the biggest complaint about vocalists in general.

The spreads appear to be more or less consistent with time. I would note that as corps become more refined, and scores get closer to 100, the natural tendency will be for the spreads to shrink. The fact that the spreads are remaining steady signifies that the trailing corps are actually further behind than appears at first glance; they must not only overcome the gap, but also the momentum.

I believe that the center marimba rifle toss in the ballad of the 2011 Bluecoats show came about because the center marimba was tossing a rifle one day and the staff decided to put it in the show. Also, all of the shenanigans at the beginning of the preshow of 2013 Spirit was done by the staff saying "Hey, figure out some bar-scene choreography. If we like it, thumbs up; if not, think of something else until we do."

It's far too late for that. By rewarding the Blue Devils time and again for this kind of approach to visual design, it was inevitable that corps that want to succeed competitively would follow. Bluecoats have done their time doing more traditional visual packages, and while they were effective for the audience, they did not get the kind of competitive results that they wanted. So now they switch over to the visual style that has demonstrably been rewarded. As they say: Don't hate the player, hate the game.

I could see those two taking visual and/or music captions, but I don't think that either of those shows will beat Bloo in GE. I honestly think that every single corps struck out in GE this year, but I think that Bloo has enough energy and "relatableness" to win the caption. The question is whether the technical captions will outweigh the design captions.

Excellent analysis Jake, and I more or less agree with all of your points. However, where I find myself unsold is the visual package. While Iove and appreciate the music, I don't understand any of the visual decisions (besides the suits; they lend a very jazz vibe). Why the chairs? Why the color scheme? Why the guard outfit? Visual is out of my wheelhouse, but I can usually at least understand what's going on. Here, nothing.

Frankly, I don't think any single corps is going to have a monopoly on captions this year. Unlike most years, where I can at least pinpoint a specific corps or corps that seem to be head and shoulder above the rest in certain areas of design and/or execution, this year I feel that none of the designs are particularly outstanding, and, while the performers are all excellent, no single group's performers are significantly outpacing the field. I believe that come head to heads, caption ordinals will be absolutely everywhere, and the totals will end up being a game of having the fewest low scores rather than the most high scores.

SCV is a huge offender of the outer octaves gimmick. In general, I find that Paul's writing is very musical and appropriate but in my opinion Sandy's writing gets too showy at the expense of taste. To he fair, however, when much of your show design philosophy is "Write percussion, then fill in the gaps with brass", it can be difficult to strike the best balance in terms of compositional restraint. This is of course not to say that SCV's performers aren't excellent; they of course are, and it's always a pleasure to listen to them from a technical perspective. I take issue, however, with the blatantly enormous benefit of the doubt that the Rennicks have with respect to their content scores. Just because every 20 seconds is another percussion feature does not mean that the content scores should increase every time.

Also, Bloo always gets the shaft in percussion content recognition, where other corps are given the benefit of the doubt. Tom doesn't do gimmicky things like doubling inner mallet runs in the outer octaves, or unnecessary splits to add what I like to call "fake difficulty" . It's just pure musicality, which unfortunately too many percussion judges miss in their fervor to look at the "drum corps percussion" perspective. Only the man himself, Jeff Prosperie, has ever given Bloo the recognition they deserve for Tom's sheer appropriateness of composition.

The pit book is insanely challenging this year. The battery book is not quite as demanding, relatively speaking, but still no joke. I'm confident that they will clean up. And if they don't, the staff knows how and what to water.

They're playing great, I love the arrangements. I don't quite get the visual package, but I'm not a vis guy so that's out of caption for me, so to speak. I get a very BD-esque vibe from the show. More pertinent, in my opinion, is that the show doesn't appeal to my personal tastes in terms of continuity of design. I appreciate the tunes, but I can't really see a cohesive thread throughout that ties it all together. I'm sure the show will grow on me, as it did last year, but I get the feeling that this will not be one of my favorites.

This year in particular there seems he have been a severe trend in design toward "tricking" the viewer into thinking that there is more going on than there actually is. That is, when taken as a whole there is music and motion happening at the same time, but frequently not from the same sources. Among others, the SCV mic'd brass ensemble playing while the rest of the hornline executes visual maneuvers is a prime example of this; unless you are looking for it, you hear brass and see movement and think "oh, they are moving and playing", when in reality the players are not moving and the movers are not playing. On a related but slightly different level, BD featuring the guard while the brass stands still and plays their butts off is another example; the eyes are dazzled, the ears are astounded, and it seems like there is both visual and musical demand. However, the demand exists discretely, where the visual and musical demands do not overlap, and so the individual demands are significantly lower than if there were simultaneous demands. Lets use two examples from Jagged Line. Toward the end, there is a very fast, visually impressive double snake drill; the marchers are not playing, but soloists are, so it seems as though music and visual are occurring at the same time, when the responsibilities are split. Now compare to earlier in the show, when the hornlike is doing a similar follow-the-leader, but this time they are playing a difficult hocketed rhythm (at the end of their opener). This is what true simultaneous demand looks like, compared to later where it is cleverly designed "fake" simultaneous demand.

Very salient. I agree with basically everything in this post.

I haven't been to Indy since 2015, but when I was there I ate and drank at Granite City brewery. I enjoyed it quite a bit, the bartender was super chill and their burger was delicious.

Aww, you mean my Jagged Line manifesto won't be enough to win the judges' hearts?

I would argue that uniform dance work, such as the opening choreography, also must be "clean", without individuals popping out. I would also say that even in the individualistic moments, they need to be individualistic in ways that serve the gestalt, and don't simply stroke the ego of the individual. Otherwise it is unstructured chaos, which should not be rewarded (although it is for certain other corps...).