Rifuarian

What exactly are we supposed to be looking at during a drum corps show? I didn't know there were rules for this. I'm a pit person so I often find myself watching the pit for most of the show. Y'know, that large distracting mass of huge, weird, and expensive instruments that sits right between the audience and the corps. My sister watches the guard the entire show, a section that I barely notice at most time. Many others focus on the snares, others on feet, etc. Yes, there will be featured sections/visual elements/etc. . . . but there's always so much going on the field in a modern drum corps show that I don't think there's anywhere your eyes are supposed to be. If people aren't paying attention to your feature because of some kids playing plates in the back field then your feature is poorly staged and/or designed. And if you can't hear the musical contribution cymbals make on the field then you're not listening. Like a lot of percussive effects in both battery and sideline it can be subtle, something that's often felt and not heard (the same thing can be said for low and middle brass TBH) but it's there.

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I think people are imposing their stereotype of the snobby European looking down his nose at the gauche American on thisWell you certainly gave that straw man a good thrashing. Well done. Fortunately I said nothing of the sort. Yes, music is very important in Europe. Yes, many Europeans have marched in DCI. Have for decades. None of this means that DCI like drum corps is possible in Europe, and anyone thinking otherwise is indulging in a fantasy. Even the senior style DCE corps are having trouble getting along. "Serious" music students in Europe are no more likely to start "discovering" drum corps en masse than serious music students here in the US are. Even though the kids marching corps in the US today are mostly studying music in some capacity in college, they represent a tiny subset of a subset of "serious" music students. We have to face facts. Junior drum corps is a niche activity and has been since it made the transition from hundreds of community based weekend corps to dozens of full blown, semi pro touring corps. It is also idiomatically American. This makes it very, very difficult for it to expand. But if you really want to find somewhere that DCI-style corps might pop up you don't need to be looking at Europe. Try Asia instead.

School music being a requirement does not mean that European kids are going to be willing to pay enormous amounts of money to participate in a weird American marching band type thing that is culturally foreign to 99.99% of them. Nor does it mean that that European adults are going to pay money to sit in an audience and watch a weird American marching band type thing that is culturally foreign to them. Because of this the outrageously expensive DCI model of drum corps is not possible in Europe. I'm not sure how I can make this more clear to you as you seem to be arguing out of complete or nearly complete ignorance of the situation. As for your other questions, the answers vary widely as Europe is composed of many nations with separate education systems . . . and since many of these countries are federations like the United States the situation on the ground regarding music education is complicated. But again I'll say that very, very, very few serious European music students are going to pay thousands of euros to put on a silly looking sparkly uniform and march around on a field playing the same music over and over again on instruments they've probably never heard of. Of course this applies to serious music students in the United States as well.

School music is not the phenomenon in Europe that it is in the United States, and scholastic marching music even less so. The equivalent of what you call "music majors" are not going to drop their course of study (which does not end when summer rolls around) to pay thousands of euros to put on a silly looking sparkly uniform and march around on a field playing the same music over and over again on instruments they've probably never heard of. DCI has thousands of kids willing to pay big money to march in its corps. It has tens of thousands of people willing to pay big money to attend shows and buy souvenirs. It has a large support network that took decades to build. None of that exists in Europe.

No. The requirements for the roof to be open are to demanding. There can't be a hint of rain in sight, since the $700 million boondoggle was build without drainage in the field. So the roof must be closed at any sign of bad weather, which means that different groups could end up performing in different acoustic environments. Corps directors as a whole are not fans of that possibility. Furthermore, while the sound isn't any worse with the roof open the improvement isn't all that great. I know we were hit in the head with "THE ROOF OPENS! THE ROOF OPENS!" when the move to LOS was being pitched, but that was pure marketing. There was never any intention to have an open roof during championships.

I think those bands are going to massacre most other groups regardless of what sheets are being used.

That makes sense. Can anyone confirm that this is also true for drum corps? I still can't help but cringe at the pretense though. These are hardly matters of life and death. Where does right and wrong, good and bad fit into popular entertainment (so long as no one is being harmed and no one's rights are being infringed)? I'm always amused when people in our activity, which is so often dismissed as crass and simplistic, take some Adorno-like stance towards marching band, pop music, etc. And while I'm no fan of Nicki Minaj if corps can make good use of Anaconda in their show then I say bully for them.

Then by that standard everything is educational. In order to be the most effective short order cook you have to learn how to flip burgers. Does that mean that McDonald's is educational (Hamburger University aside)? Training is not the same as education.

You learn a lot in drum corps. I learned a lot. I also learned a lot in the Navy . . . is the Navy an educational institution? Not exactly, the learning is just a side effect of the primary goal of the Navy. Likewise with drum corps. The purpose of drum corps is to work your ### off to put on an awesome show that will beat your competitors and wow the audience. The members get a lot out of this, but that's a secondary effect. I know that many people will strongly disagree with this, but I feel as a community it would be healthy for us to recognize drum corps for what it is rather than desperately pretending that it's something else.

1. For a music education major marching band is certainly worthwhile. The repertoire and content of the shows they perform is irrelevant to this. If you're going to direct at a school with a marching band then you best learn to take football and basketball band seriously, because like it or not that is the public face of your program. One of my band director acquaintances, who runs an extremely successful corps-style program, insists that football games are among his band's most important functions and that the two most important songs his kids play are the Star Spangled Banner and his school's fight song. Other directors I mention this to agree. There is plenty of educational value in football band. 2. Most teachers at Juilliard would be horrified if one of their students did something like drum corps rather than doing a real summer music camp or something comparable. There are plenty of quality teachers who hate drum corps, and they have some valid arguments especially where brass is concerned (though I do disagree with them). If you're looking for pure music education then drum corps is a waste of your time and money except possibly for front ensemble members. 3. The number I gave you was how much the Longhorns are worth, not how much they bring in terms of revenue. And the Longhorns are merely an extreme example. Suggesting that sports money is in any way comparable is laughable. There is a financial aspect to it, but not a direct one. People love football, and maintaining it helps maintain connections with alumni, with the local community, with media, and so on. It may get the lion's share of attention, but it does not really distract from the principal workings of a university. Rather it enhances them. And what you see as anemic rendition of a great tune thousands of others might see as an integral part of a tradition that means as much to them as drum corps means to you or me. 4. Again, this is a matter of opinion and your opinion places you into a tiny, irrelevant minority.

It's a purely voluntary extracurricular, unless you're a music educational major (and this is not always the case). And the academic value of marching band to a music education major is pretty obvious. Music performance majors, and music faculty as well, tend to look down on marching band and drum corp too for that matter. Which is what makes your argument so hilarious. You're trying to separate drum corps from marching band based on "academic value", yet actual academics - winds professors in particular - tend to lump marching band and drum corps into what they might generously term "crap". And what makes you think that college bands are meant to bring in money? They're more about tradition and fun than anything else. Heck, in the grand scheme of things football teams don't really bring in that much money. The most valuable team in football is Texas Longhorns, which is worth around $120 million. Sounds like a lot, right? But UTA's endowment is six billion dollars. Sports makes chump change for most universities, and almost all of that money gets dumped right back into athletics. While we're at it, why does drum corps have to be educational? I still can't help but laugh when a corps calls its staff "faculty" and its members "students". If you're joining drum corps purely for education you're getting very poor value for your money. If you're joining drum corps because it's fun, because you think it's cool, and because it's . . . well because it's drum corps then you're getting great value for your money.

Successful programs make people care about the band. Unsuccessful programs sit and do nothing, sniveling about how mean the football coach is, how awful and stupid the players are, how unfair life is, why can't some money and attention just suddenly drop out of the sky, etc. I've worked with a lot of bands and this is invariably true. Being a victim, in this instance, is a choice . . . and it's the wrong choice.

One of the most irritating things about the marching band world is the victim complex so many in it have - kids and adults - vis a vis football. That's definitely at play in this thread.

Can you be more specific about the "politics" part? What politics in particular caused your corps to be held back?

No, the designers are just playing around with shiny new toys. They whined and cried for them so much it would be a shame not to use them, even when they're not really sure how to play with most of them. The meat and potatoes of the activity is still playing, spinning, marching (guess we can add dancing, etc. to that too). That may change some day but I don't think it has next. I do agree with you that the rise of the cheesecake thematic shows is obnoxious. I agree that drum corps takes itself way, way too seriously and badly needs to step back and laugh at itself a bit. But you're trying to draw connections and create meanings where, IMO, there are none.

The only Endorers I know of are the Ewoks. Sorry, I'll show myself out.

I gave it a couple of tries and decided it wasn't for me. So even though finals is an hour away I don't go, except to check out the warmups. Which is something I never do at any other contest. The cons, for me, are the limited number of seats that are in the "sweet spot" for visual and sound, most of which are taken up by Friends of DCI. There are good and bad seats in any stadium, but there are far more bad than good in the Thunderbarn. Another problem is that the crowd seems so muted and tame, especially when you're higher up. The audience is heavily segmented, and in some spots it was like I was watching finals in a half empty theater rather than actually being there. I don't really care about the air conditioning, nice seats etc. I'd rather have the outdoor experience rather than enjoy a few hours of minor comforts that I already have at home. On the positive DCI saves big bucks not having to scramble for a venue every year, so unless attendance drops precipitously having finals in the Thunderbarn is a good thing. A good thing that I, personally, don't enjoy but a good thing nonetheless.

Pretty much agree with this. I feel like all the milling around takes just as long as saluting the champion ever did. And instituting an abbreviated version could make things pretty fast (no more than a minute of playing from each saluting corps). No antics, no drama, no fuss, no muss. You can hug outside instead of slowing things down inside.

Hopkins can, at times, be a complete a##hat. But on things like this he's 100% correct. It's what really makes me admire the guy. Sticking to his guns even when it's unpopular. Essentially giving the finger to the moronic boo birds in Pasadena. Stuff like that. There are two sides to every coin. Those classy corps that broke ranks and congratulated each other? They've also engaged in pretty nasty behavior at retreats, and not just in the good old days either, but within the past decade. I've been subjected to, or witnessed, things like: Throwing candy into the faces of kids who can't move or make any response, and throwing it hard enough to ding horns (yes really). Making repulsive, sexual comments . . . again to people who they know can't do anything to fight back. Groping and grabbing. Smacking drums. Showing up drunk on the field, puking during the scores, sabotaging mass brass. Disgracing themselves, their corps, and their uniform. Guess which corps don't do any of that stuff at retreat? Cadets, and corps like them.

Don't take my post too seriously. I don't think he made a major infraction or anything like that (he at least wasn't throwing jolly ranchers and giggling like a schoolgirl), though I think it speaks volumes that some people still get hyper-defensive about that retreat even six years on. I don't care what shenanigans a corps gets up to in retreat as long as they keep it inside their ten yards. And yes, BC was at fault that night. I don't mind saying it. At least that hasn't been repeated since. I can name at least one person who gives a ####. Hint: He's in the picture too!

Here's one member who didn't know, but learned very quickly. Anyways, during retreat your season is not over. You are on the field, in uniform, in front of a huge audience. You're still performing, and still representing your corps. That doesn't mean you have to be harda##es like Cadets, but keep in mind how your behavior reflects on your corps. And it seems like most members do understand this. I'd say the disastrous retreat in 2008 had something to do with it.

If that's what matters then they could save a bundle and dispense with the auditioning, the weekend camps, the national tour, the top dollar design and instructional staff, the pricey equipment, the comical screaming at practices, etc. Just start a summer camp and charge 1/6 the price. The shows and the competition are what draw us in, they're what gets us to march, they're what keeps us coming back as fans. They are what matters.

They would have missed finals but their legend would have lived on for decades, embellished more and more as the years went by. That's not so bad.

Yeah, I'm deeply grateful there was no Facebook or smartphones to capture my own shenanigans. I mean I guess we could have gone to an internet cafe to post on Myspace or something. Of course even that (relatively) short amount of time ago it didn't occur to us that we needed to capture, record, and publicize our every waking moment. Up until last year I was volunteering for a top corps (competitive with BD) that my sibling was marching in. "FU Blue Devils" would be among the nicer things I heard said about them. Of course the Devs can give as good as they get. People whine and moan about DCP, but things are a million times nastier out on tour.