pudding

That's a stretch.

Oh God, please no more Wicked.

TOC Scores, amirite

I think I realized what really bothers me about the "I know you!" thing. Why does she sound so angry when she seemingly finally finds something that helps her out of this directionless crisis? I would expect her to be overjoyed to find some kind of familiarity after being adrift for so long. The tone just seems so unrelated to the supposed intent of the moment.

I'm just trying to be honest. SCV is great, we're great too, but in a different way. I don't think it's too out of line to say that while they're overall more consistently better, we can outplay them on our best night. This is reflected on the recaps over the last several years, too.

I've always said this. On our best night, we can beat anyone, but we rarely have "our best night". SCV's way more consistent, and their consistent level is higher than our average. That is, if SCV's average is a 97, our highest is a 98, but our average is a 95.

Cleaner, yes, but not clean. In particular, the opening dance statement is a mess visually, as is the new choreography in the drum break. There are still some glaring feet issues as well, and drill spacing. They're going to have to put in a LOT of time to get to a requisite level of cleanliness to challenge the likes of BD, but it also can't be at the expense of the rest of the show... frankly I'm not sure if they can get there with the time they have left.

Some new stuff on the way. I like some of it, I don't like some of it. The changes aren't huge enough to radically alter the effect; frankly, if the judges weren't buying the effect before, I don't think they'll buy it now, but hopefully I'll get proven wrong. Still dirty visually, that's definitely their weakest area right now, and needs to be their focus going forward.

I hope so. Although, my concerns have already been said on the other website's group.

As much as I enjoy electronic effects, I think that using them solely as a way to make acoustic sounds louder is a very poor usage (with the exception of the front ensemble, in observance of care of the instrument). That said, I think that electronic effects can be used extremely effectively; Blue Knights' snare solo this year is an excellent example, as is the soundscape effect of 2015 Bluecoats. It's just really disappointing to see mics used exclusively to make brass sound louder (e.g. SCV's small ensemble, Phantom's mic line, etc.).

The onus should never be on the audience to stretch or reach to "get" a show. If a corps wants to draw the audience in with an interesting show such that they will get more out of the show having been inspired to "read up" on the topic, then fine, but if the audience cannot follow what is happening on the field, then that is the designers' faults, not the audience's.

It's a LOT inconsistent from person to person, and this is why I was saying that they need to emphasize control. Their visual moment have the potential to be stunning, but they need to have BD levels of visual unity in order to pull them off properly. Right now, they still have members who are not interpreting the beat the same as everyone else, or who are overhyping a lean, or raising their hat to a different angle... lots of little things that add up to ruin the effect. Little Rock is where they've historically made the most changes and progress. I'm very excited to see what comes of the next three days.

In the interests of science, I took on the burden of listening to the top four shows several times each and timing how long the brass played, as well as how much they played while also marching. I tried to be as consistent as possible, and I did not include solos or small ensemble features in the timings. In addition, if there were a "building section" (e.g. during Bluecoats' opener where they begin with the tubas, then baris, etc.) then I did not begin timing until the second instrument section entered. For the "playing and marching" timing, I only counted the times when there was true marching occurring; stationary body work or even things such as hops were not counted. I did NOT account for the type of marching being done (e.g. half time, double time, step size, etc.), which is also an important factor. Results (in order of San Antonio placement): Blue Devils Total ensemble brass playing time: 5:49 Time spent playing and marching: 2:01 Time spent playing while not marching: 3:48 (65.3%) Santa Clara Vanguard Total ensemble brass playing time: 4:49 Time spent playing and marching: 1:49 Time spent playing while not marching: 3:00 (62.3%) Carolina Crown Total ensemble brass playing time: 8:15 Time spent playing and marching: 3:59 Time spent playing while not marching: 4:16 (51.7%) Bluecoats Total ensemble brass playing time: 5:25 Time spent playing and marching: 2:18 Time spent playing while not marching: 3:07 (57.5%) As expected, Crown's brass both plays the most and plays the most while marching. Surprisingly, SCV's brass plays extraordinarily little, although in hindsight this should be obvious based on the sheer amount of percussion that is stuffed into their show. An interesting split between Blue Devils and Bluecoats; Blue Devils play more overall, but Bluecoats play more while marching (therefore, Blue Devils play more while not marching). Important thing to remember: Both Blue Devils and Bluecoats have extended solos in their shows, while SCV's small brass ensemble contributes a good amount of brass time as well. In terms of "brass effect", you can't just subtract these times from the overall time to figure out how much the percussion is playing soli (i.e. where there is no brass sound at all). The percentage of time spent playing while not marching is interesting to me, primarily for Blue Devils and SCV. Blue Devils spend the highest percentage of ensemble brass time playing while not marching, which is to be expected based on the criticism they've received as well as general observation of their design over the last few years. What more interesting to me is SCV's percentage statistic, which is the second highest, even though their playing time is the lowest in every category. To me, this is hugely reflective of their arranging style of putting many short brass moments in between many longer percussion features. This is also why I'm disappointed that they're receiving the brass scores that they are; they're simply not playing enough with enough simultaneous demand to warrant it. Based on these numbers, as well as having now listened specifically to each show's brass book several times while focusing on performance elements, I believe that the repertoire ordinals should be Crown > BD/Bluecoats (debatable) > SCV. The reason that BD/Bluecoats is debatable is because their areas of difficulty are very different; BD's difficulty lies in their fast sections (Flight of the Bumblebee) as well as the jazz chord tuning in their ballad, while Bluecoats' difficulty primarily lies in their timing and environmental demands (cross-field hocket rhythms) and their rhythmic demands (fivelets in Zappa). I don't think that it's debatable whether or not Crown should be receiving top marks in brass repertoire. Based on these numbers as well as a qualitative evaluation of SCVs ensemble brass book, I believe that of these four corps their brass score should be the lowest. Note that I am not considering execution at all in this analysis. It's entirely possible, for example, for SCV to execute higher than Crown on a given night. I'm simply speaking about the demands that are being asked of the performers from as objective an analytical standpoint as possible.

I'm rather interested in your opinions regarding the various discussions that I have participated in on this thread. Feel free to mention them here, or in a PM, or even not at all, but yours is generally one of the perspectives that I respect around here.

Surprise homer surprises nobody. Be happy with your unbelievably generous GE scores.

Also, as far as I can tell neither BD, SCV, nor Crown are asking their entire trumpet section to play hyperexposed, pseudo-randomly composed fivelet rhythms.

BD, SCV, and Crown have superior books in terms of chord tuning and in some cases fingering demands (e.g. Flight of the Bumblebee), but Bluecoats have more demand in terms of ensemble timing and environmental demand, two things that never seem to get the credit they deserve.

Very insightful, passionate review that gives every corps its fair time in the spotlight. Thank you.

No Alamodome, no Bill Miller's. That's gonna be a hard pass.

Bloo usually does their preliminary "big changes" in Little Rock, AK following San Antonio. I expect either a new ending or significant other changes after those rehearsal days, with minor tweaks until the end.

Having a lot of good ideas is not enough to constitute good design. The difference between an amalgamation of good ideas and a single brilliant show is the cohesive thread that ties the ideas together. If I'm watching your show and I can't find a rationale for a design decision consistent with the rest of the production, then you should lose GE points or at least not be credited for the unjustified decision. Caveat: If you need to make a leap or stretch to justify a design decision such that a reasonable person could not make that same leap, then it doesn't count.

I don't particularly mind a shift in content, but that content needs to be readable and clear. If it's impossible to tell if something was done well or not, then it should at best be given a neutral assessment, and possibly scored negatively.

It's a general statement. Off of the top of my head, BD tends to throw in random quad breaks, Crown with the double tonguing as you said, and SCV with the percussion breaks.

Off of the top of my head: Examples of double-tonguing that make sense in the context of the source material: 1993 Cavaliers (Gavorkna Fanfare), 2014 SCV (Scheherazade), 2015 Bluecoats (Shaker Loops). Example of double-tonguing that was seemingly just thrown in to have double-tonguing the in the show: 2003 Cavaliers (trumpet feature in the closet; arguable since its original music but it doesn't seem to serve the overall theme at all). And I really like 2003 Cavaliers, it's one of my favorites. I bristle at the implication that I'm hating on corps blindly, or somehow showing favoritism just because I performed with certain corps. I try to evaluate every corps fairly and critically, giving credit where it's earned and criticism where it's deserved. Believe it or not, not every instance of criticism comes from a place of uninformed hatred. Designers aren't gods, and neither are judges. Calm criticism can come from educated eyes, even if they aren't members of the upper echelon of the activity.

I wasn't comparing a judge to a chimp, I was using it as a hyperbole to illustrate the concept of appeal to authority. Holy hell, you people need to cool it with the persecution complex.