D41145
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Posts posted by D41145
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Why does it matter? I mean really, each international corps is great but do they really affect semis and finals? It's nice to see them preform though.
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It was a special, special show, perhaps underappreciated but they did finish just out of the medals. I'm a fan of the Coat's 2016 show too but you're right - they didn't bloom a flower. I became an ARDENT fan of SCV this year. They took me to a place no corps has ever taken me before.
And they did it without having to go up and down slides.
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My Band Director told me this after BC's win. He said something along the lines of "DCI has changed. To win the title, you can't just be good musically and visually, you also have to introduce something completely new to the activity. Bluecoats introduced music never heard before in DCI, and their props were extremely unique. That's part of the reason they won."
Basically, IMO, it's partially because SCV isn't bringing anything new to the activity. I completely respect them for maintaining their roots by having minimal props and electronics, and making an exceptional show, musically. However, the fans are getting used to seeing something new and exciting, like a bunch of props and electronics. Believe me, I don't have much of a problem with electronics, but the fact of the matter is that most corps are dependent on these elements to have a shot at winning.
I could be wrong, but that's my opinion
I am young but I do know that I dislike electronics. SCV used next to no electronics. Mixed the baritone solo and the front ensemble. Other than that, the show was both musically and visually beautiful. I didn't see the coats blooming a flower....
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Predictions, Not attacks, Just me thinking out loud.
1. Blue Devils - This Staff does not take kindly to losing and I'm sure are working to get back to the top.
2. Bluecoats - It is so so hard once you Win the First time to come back and re-invent yourself & Innovate again after winning your first. Ask Crown.
3. Cavaliers - This Team is doing great things and seem to have hit their stride this year. Upward Momentum.
4. Santa Clara Vanguard - This corps is on the cusp of medaling but the show design and lack of Innovation is keeping them steady outside of the medallion spots.
5. The Cadets - This is a perennial top 5 Corps, and despite the organizational issues they seem to have done enough in their staff re-structuring to "Bounce-back" though their Brass line will take a hit after losing Gino.
6. Boston Crusaders - Adding Gino and Colin were amazing moves for the weaknesses that Boston has always had, Music excellence and effect, but the addition of the Crown Show Design and Colorguard Team takes this Team to another level. Crown's success into the higher echelons in the activity has been rooted directly to the strength of the Guard and the Visual program. IT will take time for them to "find their voice" but once they do watch out.
7. Carolina Crown - Losing the majority of their staff hurts, Especially the designers, Without a solid back up plan the admins were blindsided. CROWN BRASS is great and all, but without World Class design behind your World Class Brassline, what are you? I'm sure this was part of the thinking of rumored animosity between the Brass staff and all others. They will find respectable suitors to fill the roles, but Top 5 design it will not be.
8. Blue Knights - They have found their Voice, and it is unique just not ground-breaking, Talent limited.
9. Blue Stars - Maintains levels found this year and Builds to retain talent.
10. Phantom Regiment - Downward trend for this corps, Unless they find a new Design and Visual Team this corps will suffer and look back at the late 2000's as the glory years.
11. Madison Scouts - Cant keep a good Corps down for long, Better show design sees them back in the big dance on Saturday.
12. Colts - Howard Weinstein. This man is relentless in his pursuit of greatness. He has rebuilt numerous Corps into Finalist and The Colts will be no exception.
What exactly was SCV lacking in terms of innovation?
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Hopefully I get to try out for this corps this year!!!!
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I have seen the Company. There are pretty good. Not to our level of corps but to Europe, they are quite great.
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SCV will be first. Called it on 08/20/16
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What instrument?
Tuba
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lol.
i though vanguard got too big of a pass for doing Yet Another Four Seasons show. sure it was done well and the drill was wonderful. but honestly nothing special in that show unless you just want to get all googly-eyed about SCV. (which clearly many DCPr's were willing to do)
les mis, scheherezade ? haven't really liked a show concept since the Devil's Staircase. come on design team, give the MM's something fresh and new!
all of these rehashes -- it's kind of like doing West Side Story. sure you can make it work. but where's the creativity?
So Les miserables, that show from 2014, and spark of invention wasn't good? 2 4th place shows and a 5th? Even though they should've medaled in 2013.
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Hi all, what are everyone's final thoughts on 2016?
I attended all three nights of finals. My opinion:
Bluecoats were magnificent. To me the skate-board ramps weren't the only reason why they won. It was the unbridled enthusiasm and unleashed freedom of the musicians. It was part playground, part wild fiesta, part heavenly joy, part freedom of flight, etc. No wonder people have written this is the show that will change drum corps moving forward.
Carolina Crown's changed ending, where the guy showed him grace, instead of shooting him was a smart move. It was a show that tugged your heart strings. A brilliant visual show. LOVED the theme. Very well done.
Blue Devils - I'm not a BD fan, but I was this year. This show was so creative and so well done. The 20 or so trombones...oh my Lord. This is the show I would want non-drum corps people to see to introduce them to drum corps. It just blew me away. Most dramatic show. Love the tarp and wave. Very triumphant towards the end. Bravo!
Cadets - I didn't think they were as bad as a lot of people are saying. Great show. Very entertaining. Ok, from a design stand-point, a little unfinished, but still a very very good show.
SCV - sorry SCV. I didn't understand it. My eyes needed a break because of all the white...white pants...white posters, white trees. The beginning was sublime, but everything else was confusing, had no coherent theme (even though it's supposed to be force of nature), the pink color guard clashed completely...the music was boring (except for beginning) and content was vague.
Cavaliers - WOW. WOW. WOW. Visually exciting and brilliant. Tremendous music and horn line. Creative! Not ideological or divisive AT ALL...just explaining the phenomenon of propoganda. A show to be remembered.
Academy - WOW. WOW. WOW. One of my favorites. Drum Major was SUPERB.
Are you serious? You didn't understand SCV? It's literally what you experience every year. The seasons...... Literally.......... The seasons.
It's fine though.
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So can a brake drum, but they used a patch for that too.
It is quite sad though.
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After listening to the Top 5 a few more times, I'm wondering why Bloo is getting so ragged on for using "electronics" when Crown and Cavs used a TON of sound patches and soundbites.
Can you imagine either show without those?
No screaming eagle, howling wolf, naying horses, gun shot, choral ensembles, violin, and/or cracking whip just to name A FEW for Crown?
And no way The Cavaliers show would have even worked without electronics.
Whip and gun shot and can be done by a slappy percussion thingy
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So it's that time of year where the season is over, and the coulda-shoulda-wouldas start to come to mind for many.
If you feel the need to complain about anything from the season, this can be a venting ground for it.
Please keep it clean and intelligent if possible.
It's important for everyone to vent their frustrations, and I feel we should have a place for that here.
I'll go ahead and start with this.
Did the judges really feel it necessary to score The Cadets in the 92 pt range? I know many will say "well you can't compare scores from one year to another", well I say bull hooey on that.
It does stick in the minds of people.
When I toured with the Blue Stars in 2010, Houdini show, of course we (Blue Stars family and fans) were all elated at the 91.90 (92.05? on Friday) and of course we were all bummed we couldn't top SCV that year. The point is, 92pts is great, for an 8th place corps.
Did The Cadets really put out a performance on Saturday that was only marginally better than Blue Stars in 2010? Of course not. The Cadets were leaps and bounds better. Not knocking Blue Stars, or SCV, or even Phantom Regiment who scored in the 93 range (along with the Sanford award) with their Into the Light show. Great show, but their brass was really a good bit behind Cadets 2016 who I feel had a great brass section.
Now I'm no homer for The Cadets this season, or even last, although in general they are among my favorite corps in all, but as a fan, I do feel insulted that they would get 92.x for their efforts. I hope this org doesn't feel that way, but I do. I feel insulted at this score.
Scores do matter. They matter in the sense that an organization looks at their scores to try and determine where they stand within their competition. The Cadets were not a 5pt behind Bluecoats. That's like saying the Crossmen were as far behind Cadets and Cadets were behind Bluecoats.
I think that is a load of crap.
Id believe, IMO, that every corps at Finals had a BETTER show than they had last year. And even most corps NOT in Finals had a better show than last year.
They all really raised the bar.
Cadets with a 92.7625? No way.
I feel the same with the Blue Knights. Their show was 2.5 pts better than last season.
Here is how I would have scored.
1-3 I think was about right.
4th SCV got 95.3 I would have them at 95.75.
5th Cavs got 94.025 I would have had them about 94.7 and in 6th
6th Cadets 92.763 I would have had them about 95.25 and in 5th
7th Blue Knights 90.737 I would have them at 93.4
9th Blue Stars 89.05 I would have them at 91.25 and in 8th
8th Phantom 89.963 I would have them at 90.575 and in 9th
10th Crossmen 86.975 I'd give them an 88.5
11th Academtn 86.1 I'd put them 88.2
12th Boston 84.8 Id have them 86.1
But then again this is just me.
Scores do matter to me in a certain way, it DOES tell me "did this corps improve?" Yes they all did improve and I'd REALLY like to see that improvement manifested in a score that is SOMETHING MORE THAN ARBITRARY.
The more each season goes by the more I wonder if scores really ARE mostly arbitrary, when they SHOULDN'T be.
Scores have to mean SOMETHING.
And even more than that, what really ticks me off is how EVERY score went down from Semis to Finals except for the top 3.
Was this kind of a statement being made intentionally? What did DCI have to do with it? "Hey, judges, thanks for coming out tonight to judge Finals. We all hope that y'all will bring us a new champion tonight!" wink wink.
Now I'm not saying there is a conspiracy, and I do think Bluecoats deserved to win by a SMALL margin, which they did, not to take anything away from my favorite show Blue Devils have done in a long time, but seems to me that DCI has been pretty clear that they wish the activity to change as far as show design. What can the corps like Cadets do, when their show didn't work quite enough to medal last season, and come out with something completely different, BASED ON COMMENTS FROM JUDGES about how their show design wasn't working, and they come out with a program so completely different, and they get roasted for it.
I don't believe their 92.x was because of execution. They didn't perform on a low box 4 level across the board, but that's how it was scored. Same with Blue Knights.
I really feel sorry the most for these two corps, Cadets and Blue Knights for doing something both so completely different, and get insulted by judges/DCI for their efforts.
For corps who are 1) either trying to get back into medal contention, or 2) trying to get TO medal contention for the first time, these bipolar messages from one year to the next are NOT helping these staffs in trying to figure out what is going to work for the judges.
And I hope that DCI and their judges don't automatically equate "what works for the judges and DCI" = what works for the fans.
I WOULD like to see better show designs in the future, but what I say this year, as disappointed as I was with last season's show designs, was a GOOD step in the right direction, but seemed to have NOT been rewarded for it.
I'm sorry this has happened and just wanted to voice my concern about this issue that may start to be a disconnect between what DCI as the governing body wants, and what the fans want to see as a whole.
That being said, I enjoyed every show in at least some way, and thought they ALL did a fantastic job no matter what scores they ended up getting. Congrats to them ALL, especially Academy, Bluecoats, and BLUE KNIGHTS who had IMO the best entertaining product on the field for me.
Thank you to all, and my post was not a knock against any corps, it was a knock to the disconnect between where the fans would like to see shows scored and how they were actually scored.
I just wanted to get that off my chest.
Please feel free to get off your chest anything about this season that may have bothered you and keep it constructive if you can.
Okay, well first your are correct. You cannot compare scores year to year. After our "breakout" year in 2014, scores have needed to be toned down. Understand that the Cavaliers scores were reflected from those of the Cadets and SCV. Obviously, the gap shows how far ahead or behind you are. In this case, the Cavaliers were about 3 points behind SCV and barely ahead of the Cadets. Why? Because the Cavaliers didn't put out a better product than SCV did in the judges eyes.
The blue knights did not get insulted by the judges. They were given an opinion about their show. I wouldn't consider any top 12 corps to have been "insulted". With the Cadets, their show was probably the most difficult. When you cannot execute your difficult music and drill and guard work, then you can't even begin to be scoring high. Lucky for the Cadets, they actually pulled it off.
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Honestly, you can learn so much more about how a corps is doing in each caption by listening to a tape better than staring at numbers.
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You can imitate just about any instrument on a synth with an easy setting. I don't know why there are still horns being used.
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I guess I'm the only person in the world this year that hardly noticed Bluecoats electronics this year. I saw them live and was only 7 rows up next to the 50 and the electronics were something that I never even noticed. Maybe my attention was drawn elsewhere or they were so well integrated I couldn't tell they were there, but the only time I actually could really hear something was the rewind section.
You could hardly tell? Um............
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In the 'old days' the 13th place corps did an exhibition on finals night, I personally enjoyed that because for many or the years the battle for that last spot is fierce and the corps just missing out is worth presenting on finals night. Sometimes the performance was quite moving...Crossman 1979 for example. Troopers caught magic in a bottle to get into finals (they were awesome) but Crossman were great that year as well.
We could have both the 13th place corps as well as the Open Class Champion in exhibition...there seems to be plenty of time in the pre-program to fit in another corps.
Very many years, this seems to be the case. Madison this year, troopers last year, etc.
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I only have one response. Obviously, something pretty bad is going on but with the Cadets being the Cadets, they figure it out. This year, the Cadets will be back with a better show and placement.
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Twelve corps is the right number. Twelve makes you work for it. I can recall one year that I believe there should've been multiple corps make it.
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I'd just like to point this out. Appalachian Spring has been played a number of times by the corps, and I cannot recall when they did bad with it. SCV also did the same show twice, two times. 1988-1989 and 2004? And 2014. Both shows were great and of course 1989 won them a championship. Don't ask me to spell the show from 2014 because you're asking too much of me but I think the Cadets need to visit a 2002 or 2000 FEEL to their show next year. Or maybe even a 2011?
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F≠nd^3?
Play everything from 2013 backwards.
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Exactly as stated above by DCI-86...and do we know if the judge may have waited for the last corps to perform BEFORE writing in the 100 for BD?
I don't know how this process works but does the judge judge that corps, puts it in a packet and that is that?
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One stake. Burned but in good condition. Call 1-800-pio-neer
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What was the last show that started loud?
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
Cadets 1990