[The Cavaliers' Recent Fall in the Standings]

While I agree with the over-arching premise of this statement, we need to be careful about saying that because BD wins is why they collect more revenue. Winning DCI shows doesn't give you a bunch more revenue than does coming in 2nd, 3rd, or frankly top 8. This was, in large part, the wishes of the G7 and TOC ideas. The goal was that all those corps did get paid more, but that they were splitting equally the profits.

The bigger point is that revenue generated from gate fees etc. do not account for much of the bottom-line budget for these corps. The Blue Devils make a ton of cash running a Bingo game 7 days a week (because California allows them to). In Ohio the Bluecoats can only run theirs 2 days per week. Tour dues account for a good bit, as does alumni giving, other fundraisers, sponsorship, and more. The Blue Devils grew their organization not by winning shows (although that helps with reputation, no doubt) but by establishing great fundraisers, partnerships, sponsorship, dues, local youth activities, etc.

Honestly, who the hell is playing Bingo these days???? Does anyone under the age of 35 even know what that game is?

[First corps to do this wins DCI]

undue importance? are we not a visual medium?

Makes me laugh sometimes when a few who think that the undue importance of the visual , even when the numbers didnt support it. were ACTUALLY unimportant bitd or that it was so different. Now that would have been a huge debate as far back as the late 70s with many of the greats in our activity. Thankfully ( for me anyway ) I had that privilege. They knew the importance and used it in many ways. They also knew and had insight to where the activity was heading.

Of course opinion is just that, an opinion and everyone is entitled to their own.

Yes, but if you couldn't play, the visual had a muted effect. I've never seen anyone do an encore performance of just the visuals without playing, but I've seen dozens of stand still performances with music.

[Official 2016 Staff Changes]

Agreed and guard is NOT the caption to have a weakness. (I.e.: Crown with a 5th place percussion still won GE),,

This sounds so weird to me, still. I can remember not too long ago that guard didn't even factor in on the sheets, except to contribute to overall visual and GE. Now, a good guard can make up for weaknesses in areas that used to cost you placements. I'm still not sure I like it either, but that's the way the activity seems to like it.

[Brief moments...not shows...that stick out in your mind.]

Not a complete list, but...

1. Suncoast Sound, 1984, the balloons released at the wall. The single balloon from the field and then all the balloons from the stands... that still gives me chills.

2. The turn backfield, the fade out of the sops, then the drumline crescendo to THAT low brass downbeat in Maleguena, Madison 1988. At that point, you knew, "$h!t just got REAL!!!!"

3. Spirit of Atlanta, 1980, the hornline turns to the stands after the gun goes off... I cannot watch or listen to that without crying.

[Shows you didn't care for at the time]

It took me a long, long time to totally wrap my ears around the musical program of Blue Devils '85. But once I realized the effect and long-term influence that some of the effects, and scoring, would have on the activity in general, it became clearer and clearer to me. On my particular CD (which I think runs from '83 to '87 or '88) it was the least-listened to show by me for a long time. Over time, however, it became one of the cuts which I listened to the most.

That brass book was such a departure from what BD had been doing since '75, it took a long time for me to really enjoy it. However, I listened to just the Emerson's 1st a LOT... that last chord nearly broke my stereo!!! That has got to be one of the loudest and most powerful notes in DCI history.

[Star 1993 Has Been REPLACED]

But the acoustic physics stuff is difficult to convey short of the most amazing surround-sound stereo mix on a Blu-ray + amazing surround-sound home theater setup.

How did their show play in a movie theater? Is that presentation mixed for awesome surround sound or is it just standard stereo?

The theater where I watched is usually the primary non-IMAX 3D screen room, so the sound was maxed out. Having heard the show at the Ga Dome a few weeks earlier, I knew it would be impossible to capture in the theater, but it was enough that most of the folks watching were really impressed.

[1 audition, 2 audition, 3 audition, more?]

And another winning corps has been known traditionally to dragoon their members to live locally by Feb./March. Newbies better be sure they fit in and like the internal organization and show, etc. Just saying...

So, if I'm not local, and I'm a college student, I not only have to pony up $3k or more, I have to tell my parents that I'm blowing off a semester of school to march? JMHO, but that's insane.

[How Bout Some Different Music for 2016?]

I've never understood why the Cadets haven't used the potential of Jay Bocook. The man writes original music all the time and has been with the corps for decades. He knows the style, the other designers. Why not write original music? Jeez, man... take velocity, pathos and room for drum stuff, throw it all into a pot and give us an exciting, completely new production to go where none has! (Just get somebody in there who knows how to actually clean silks).

Plus the added bonus of not having to pay huge rights' fees to play it.

[Star 1993 Has Been REPLACED]

it's like the Cadets old shirt...first we zigged, then everybody zigged....

but it was at least 5 years til everybody zigged,,,,,and then Star 93 hit

I wore that shirt at least once a week to HS band practice and NOBODY understood. Still my favorite corps t-shirt of all time.

Identifying innovation is like identifying a recession... you can't determine it exists until you see the trend develop and go back and find the initial creation point.

[Judging Amplification and Electronics]

17 rows up on the 45 puts you in the firing line...amps are usually aimed right at you

I know that now! It used to put you right in the wheelhouse of the hornline, but I don't know that I ever felt like I got "hit in the face" like that this year. I think Crown got me two or three times, and Blue Devils maybe once, but no one made me reach for the earplugs the way Madison or Spirit used to.

[Official 2016 Staff Changes]

This looks good, but has complications with SCV announcing Dr. Chip Crotts as head of their brass. Like Chris, he works at Georgia Tech as well.

Should be a fun duel for those Yellow Jackets! Good luck to both. (With fond memories of Georgia Tech back in '84!!!)

smh... I never thought I'd see the day when GT would be supplying instructors to World class drum corps. I remember when the peak of the GT band performance was playing the Budweiser theme at the end of the 3rd quarter!

[Judging Amplification and Electronics]

I'd be interested in the views of those who have attended shows so far this summer as to whether balance and blend between enhanced and acoustic sounds has changed now that the adjudicators are using a reference book.

Watching/listening online or in a theatre environment will be more difficult to evaluate since the audio is grossly compressed for both, meaning that the difference between loud and soft is made minimal to provide a more even signal.

Do things sound different "live" this season, compared to the past few years?

I think all groups have too much volume coming from the pit. It was worse in person than listening via stream, but maybe that was because of where I was sitting (17 rows up on the 45). I've always felt that pit instrumentation is meant to enhance the music, not take over from the horns as the primary voice. It may be that parts of classical music meant to be played on piano are being played by 5 pit instruments at once.

As a side note, the top volume level of horn lines is a lot less than it used to be, and it's not just the switch from G to Bb horns. We amped up the pit, probably too much, and the horns lost their top end, which makes for a problem. I listened to the final 20 seconds of 2014 BD over and over and I kept waiting for that extra gear from the horns, but it never came.

[Official 2016 Staff Changes]

I will never get excited by these instructor changes like some do. Most of them were the greatest hiring at each of their previous corps and some DCP posters get all pumped up. But, in the short run, some worked out, some didn't and they move on to another corps or back to a corps they taught several years back.

The same fans who cheer the hiring of the new coach are the ones yelling and screaming for him to be fired after a few bad seasons. Staff change announcement are a lot like coverage of the NFL Draft. It all sounds great at the time, then when it doesn't work out people say, "What were they thinking?" It's all optimistic right now, which it should be. We WANT all the changes to work out for the best, but we secretly know they all won't.

[Readable drill]

Were they offended by the poor execution of the drill? Or the fact that it was the Kansas mascot being attacked?

[Brass Voice Variety]

I see on their website the Kanstul makes both Bb and F marching french horns. The Yamaha site says that they did from 1991-2001. Not sure if they make them anymore...probably be a special order if one of their DCI lines wanted them. Looks like King makes a Bb version. I don't see a marching flugel, but I guess a concert flugel would do.

This was high school, but we split our french horn players evenly between flugels and mellos to have both voices.

As to the marching with a french horn question... are we talking about the ones Cadets used this year, or the marching french horns that half of corps used back in the 70's and 80's? My HS band director marched '78,'79,'81 with SOA and '82 with BD and played french horn all 4 years.

[SOA '15]

The previous board chairperson dug the corps a deep financial hole, but she is no longer involved, and her replacement, Jeff Nelson of Lone Star Percussion, has put together a good team of board members that I'm confident will put the corps back on sound financial footing.

But that new team of board members has been together for less than a month, and is working hard to choose a new corps director and staff. I for one am very glad that they are going about it methodically and not just rushing a decision on a new director and staff.

I'm willing to give them a little more time to make sound decisions, and if you knew how close Spirit of Atlanta came to joining the ranks of the 27th Lancers, Bridgemen and Suncoast Sounds of the drum corps world, you would too.

I think the Bridgemen is a great parallel. If I recall, they lost a bus while on tour and that was it.

[UGA Redcoat Band plays Spirit tribute show]

In their Facebook post, they talked about Spirit. I'm sure the members of the band knew why they were doing it. A football game audience, though, probably wouldn't care, unfortunately.

Of the 95,000+ people in the stands, maybe 100 would know who SOA is. Most are just (and these are MY PEOPLE... GO DAWGS!!!!) drunk rednecks watching a football game.

[Paid attendance figures for DCI World Championships]

And its likely a quarter of the Finals Nite announced attendance were not in their seats when the Crossmen performed . And perhaps close to half the Cinema Prelims announced paid attendance probably never saw the Crossmen perform there either. But in your case cited, and the two of mine as well, to be honest, DCI counts them all as if they all did watch the Crossmen and all the other Corps that were available for viewing at Finals/ Cinema/ Computers but were not viewed at all, let alone " for 15 minutes ". But... count'em. Thats the only way to be consistent in doing this, imo.

I had premium seats in Atlanta this year and the four seats next to me stayed empty until the final 6 corps took the field. I don't know how long they'd been there in the dome, but they didn't bother to sit down until BK took the field. They get counted as "paid attendance" but they're only partially there.

[Return the power to the performers (?)]

Oops, good catch and my bad, It's median, not mean. I'll try to change it.

(Couldn't have screwed that up more if I tried. Reading comprehension gave way to dinner hunger pangs)

If the median was 38, and the average was 186, you have some extreme outliers. For those who haven't had several semesters of statistics, the figure in the middle of the list is the median. That means half the results were less than that and half were more. To have a median of 38 and an average of 186, roughly 5% of attendees drove more than 1000 miles to see a show.

[Return the power to the performers (?)]

If the public tires of the same old ones winning all the time because the judges like them and the crowd picks someone else, then tickets eventually wither especially when costs of travel increase..

If people go home wondering why Crown doesn't win guard (or gold) when when winning it all season, tickets eventually wither especially when costs of travel increase..

If people don't understand what on earth is GE and why who wins GE usually wins DCI, tickets eventually wither

I am agreeing with your last position ("To what...) but am differing in the conclusion that is based merely on business factors.

DCI is a competition. When the public thinks it is rigged or skewed or leaves common sense out, that hurts business as being other than fair competition.

I suspect you and I speak with very different folks involved in drum corps; your perspectives and mine are not in opposition, but different sides of a triangle which has DCI is fair competition as its base. I am saying that the elephant in the room is that these questions must be addressed for that perception to continue no matter who wins or medals or misses finals.

I was always fascinated that the audience for professional golf was never bigger or more passionate than when Tiger Woods was winning virtually everything. You either loved that he was dominating or cheered for him to fall in the ocean. I know there is a similar feeling about BD, but I think it's more of a productive feeling. Lots of people want to see BD knocked off their perch, but they want to see it done by someone outdoing them at their best, not BD falling down. Can it be there is an element to GE now that includes the David vs. Goliath mentality?

[Return the power to the performers (?)]

-MMs need to learn to create shows, not just march as meat puppets in someone else's concept.

-MMs need to select music themselves, struggle with the rights acquisition process.

-MMs need to write their own music and feel the pain of the collaborative process.

-MMs need to develop thematic arguments and develop show themes themselves, not blindly succumb to someone's half baked Shostakovich 10th approach.

--MMs need to experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat with no one to blame but themselves.

The transition to MM-originated content should be gradual. First experiencing design meetings, then adding input, then taking the reigns when they're ready.

MM generated content is the next wave of development in this youth-oriented and youth-owned art form.

Maybe I'm too old, but there's no way I'm putting teens and 20-somethings in charge of a $3 million operation. There's a reason why you don't see many 21 year old CEO's of Fortune 500 companies. Now I can see this happening with a smaller corps, or even incorporating the age outs for that season in the process, but I can't imagine Wayne Downey handing over the reigns of BD's hornline to kids who weren't even born until after he'd won his 7th championship.

[Shows you didn't care for at the time]

I'm sure this will be a popular answer... Star 1993

[Return the power to the performers (?)]

But you have staffs sitting in GE having to explain shows to evaluators so that scores can go up, and argue that what they are doing (or have planned) is going to trump someone else. Or that this is supposed to be a cluster#### on the field, and you just don't get it.

I have always had a problem with this. If the professional judge can't figure out what it is that you are doing or are supposed to be doing, that's a design issue, not a judging issue. Poor communication of the theme SHOULD knock your GE score down a bunch, and you shouldn't get points back because you wrote an essay to explain yourself to the judges.

[Return the power to the performers (?)]

As it relates to subjectivity and the casual fan... my hometown newspaper sports guy wrote a post season "awards" column for football. Knowing nothing about judging a marching show, but having seen over a dozen halftime performances during the year, he said the best band was the one that played "Tequila" as part of their show. Forget that it's a song hardly worth playing in the stands for 10 seconds... he "liked" the song (GE!!!!) and therefore ignored the fact that the other three local HS bands were far superior in execution. I think this reinforces the fact that the "casual fan" judges a show more on how much they know and like the music and how much they "get" what's going on with the guard and story.

[Return the power to the performers (?)]

mfrontz, on 29 Aug 2015 - 5:01 PM, said:

The correct answer imo is YES

If one was involved at a high level even BITD they would actually know how much of that was true.

Wasn't the problem with SCV in '80 that the staff thought they could design a show better than Gail? So he let them run with it and it failed miserably, hence the mid-season re-write.