horn_star
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Posts posted by horn_star
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...and I bet no drum corps has ever played a piece in c-sharp minor!
If that's true, it's for good reason. Would you really want to listen to a hornline play in D#m & G#m (Bb & F instruments respectively). It's would be difficult for a small ensemble of professional brass musicians to make that key sound resonant on those instruments. Are you really saying that you want to listen to a group of 70+ non-professional brass players play in those keys, some of them on instruments that are just poor imitations of their more legitimate originals (mellophones->concert french horns & contrabasses->tubas)?
Playing such a piece in the original key would sound very, very bad.
If you give any priority at all to quality and resonance in drum corps, transposition is the only option.
IMO
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Seems to work for the Cavaliers and Crown.
...and the Vanguard these days
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i really don't see the need in a circuit for hs marching bands other than their state MEA events. i mean, funding an organization from already cash-strapped programs? capitalism + social welfare program =
not sound thinking i may say. public education especially (and every other sector of the economy) suffers from lack of funding. i wouldn't be surprised to see some who do not have strong booster clubs to close their programs soon in an attempt to tighten their budget's belt. for those that can compete, stay within your state or local region. to steal a term from another genre, bands should be "locavores." compete locally, save some $, and maybe start a rivalry or two in your area. /me stupidity done
Of the handful of BOA finalist bands I have worked with, I can't think of a single one whose school allowance for the fall marching band was greater than a few thousand dollars. All of them have extremely effective booster programs that raise the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to fund their season. These programs aren't spending huge amounts of public education money, they're funded by band parents and members of the local community who choose to support the program. So let's not act as though competitive marching band is siphoning countless public tax dollars. Even in affluent areas, these programs get pennies from the school district.
Also, I don't think local focus is appropriate for some programs. Programs that are not competitive, or those who would not be successful in a BOA formatted contest are, for the most part, locally focused already. For those programs who invest substantial time and resources in the marching band, staying local doesn't necessarily provide the best experience for the kids. Students who perform at the highest levels thrive at the opportunity to perform for and compete with others at their level, and often, local contests don't provide that experience, and there is something to be said for performing is such great venues as Lucas Oil Stadium, the Edward Jones Dome, or the Alamodome. At the highest levels, I think that the size and scope of the shows and the venues offer a unique and valuable opportunity for students.
So, while I don't always agree with the educational direction that some programs take in the context of BOA, I think on the whole, the organization provides a necessary national framework within which programs can offer a unique and positive experience to their students.
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not after 3 straight years of world championships and for those members that started in 2000 and aged out in 2003 that must've been hard
Not to stray from the subject of the discussion, but since the 2003 Cavaliers have been cited as an example many times, a clarification's in order:
When the Blue Devils won the Indy show in 2003, The Cavaliers weren't rude or disrespectful, or really even disappointed. They changed out of uniform, packed up their equipment, and waited outside the airlock at the RCA. When the Blue Devils finished their encore, The Cavaliers stood and applauded them as they made their exit.
Regardless of how other organizations choose to prioritize their season, The Cavaliers don't place a priority on winning.
I could go on listing the bullet points of that philosophy, and most of them sound cliche, but to be sure, the current generation of Cavaliers couldn't care less about the competitive aspect of the season. If there's any disappointment, it arises because some aspect of the performance wasn't the absolute best that it could have been. And any disappointment is small in scale when compared to the value of the education, friendships, and experiences they share throughout a summer.
I'm not suggesting that everyone should adopt these values. That's just what works for The Cavaliers. But before anyone infers a similarity between the reactions of one corps and another, it's worth noting that not all organizations prioritize winning in the same way.
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...And to this day it is widely believed that the Cavaliers and Regiment GE scores somehow got mixed up because the results were completely arse-backward.
When I said it's their Achilles Heel, I meant in a relative sense as in it's the one aspect of their program that doesn't dazzle quite as much as the others.
Phantom Regiment won visual GE on finals night in 2006 because Mike Anderson was judging. That's all there is to it.
Had the finals night visual GE score been in line with what other judges had given them at Quarterfinals and Semifinals, the spread in the overall score would have been substantially larger.
Mike Anderson tried to call the show.
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Whenever I see the Cavaliers at retreat they have 3 guys- 2DM and another guy. Who's the 3rd person and why does he have a different color cape than the other two? Thanks!
The drum majors and guard sergeant choose which color cape they would like to wear. It's entirely a matter of personal preference.
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Some people with perfect pitch can't listen through a symphony performance, especially as the group grows sharper over the course of the evening. It's too uncomfortable.
I'm sorry, but I think this comment is absolutely absurd everytime I hear it.
The VERY FEW individuals I have known who possess absolute pitch have never experienced this "overwhelming discomfort" that some people claim. Not to mention that, in this country, the highest concentration of people with absolute pitch is in the 30 or so full-time symphony orchestras. I find it hard to believe that someone in the audience for say, Chicago playing Mahler 3, would be overcome with agitation at the slightly changing pitch center of the ensemble when the majority of the people in the orchestra possess the same trait and are doing just fine.
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"significance" has a specific meaning in terms of judgment and decision-making. It means that the spread is at least as great as the variability in the measurement. It's a strictly empirical meaning and has nothing to do with "making statements."
Maybe I should have been more specific...
a 0.3 spread in a single caption is a significant (but not necessarily a statistically significant) statement these days.
I didn't realize we were writing a grant proposal here. Or maybe, in an activity where instructional staff and judges aren't occupied with the 'strictly empirical meaning' of the word significance, the word takes on a slightly different connotation.
You seem to be arguing that the spread is meaningless because it is a statistically insignificant difference, since the variability of measurement (you estimated 0.5) exceeds the spread. Who cares!?!?!?!
All octavia9299 and I are saying is that in this activity, three tenths is kind of a big deal. The judges see it that way and the instructional staff sees it that way. The numbers management philosophy that is in place allows these clearly understood spread definitions to serve as a means of communication between judges and staff about where the corps' stand competitively, and that is the most important thing.
Frankly, if judges are using numbers in any way other than an objective measure of the performance, then the system is beyond repair. Especially, if they are being *taught* to do this.It's actually quite objective, given the nature of what's being adjudicated:
The portion of adjudication that is clearly objective is the back of the sheet, which I quickly summarized in a previous post. The numbers management element occurs simultaneously, not in lieu of it! I don't understand why an awareness of spread and placement during judging is a negative thing. Cite some specific examples...
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To defend this statement you need to account for all sources of variability. Within judge variability - how consistent is a particular judge with him/herself. You might think that people would be perfectly consistent, but many studies show that if you ask someone to rate the same event repeatedly, they will give different ratings at different times. It is perfectly reasonable that a judge ight view the same performance twice, but see different things each time and therefore give different scores. It's a sampling issue.
Then you have between-judge variability. How consistent are different judges in rating the same performance?
You also have serial order effects that artificially reduce variability. If a judge sees the same corps twice in a short time frame, and if he/she remembers the first score, the second score has to be related to the first. If the second performance is better, then the second number has to be higher (assuming the judge is honest). Thus, the two scores are not independent.
No measurements are available for either source of variability, but my guess is that if you remove serial order effects, they probably add up to about 0.5.
I don't understand what this has to do with the fact that 0.3 has a specific meaning in the judging community. I'm loosely paraphrasing here, but the judges training material says essentially that a three tenths spread means that the lower corps is 'not competitive' with the higher corps in that caption... on that night. Three tenths is saying you're in a different league... it's a pretty significant statement in the judging community.
Now, if you're saying that a spread that small is meaningless over many multiple nights from multiple (or even the same) judges, that's fine. Except that when a judge puts a corps three tenths down, it's a statement that the rest of the judging community notices, and that spread can be difficult to overcome late in the season.
The judges are TRAINED to use the point spreads this way. So regardless of variability, on a single given night, one, two, and three tenth spreads have a clear meaning.
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The judges job is to rank and rate. The ratings are supposed to reflect the extent to which the quality of one performance can be discriminated from the quality of another performance. It is sheer stupidity to use the extreme end of the scale except in extremely rare instances. If you have a 10-point scale, then 5 should be the most common score and the vast majority should be between 2 and 8. Only about 5% of the scores should be above 8.
Why do the scores have to fit a standard normal distribution?! Given the scale on the back of the sheets, it just doesn't make any sense to do it that way.
The five boxes are distributed across the score range from 0-100 as follows:
Box 1: 1-29 (Rarely/Poor)
Box 2: 30-49 (Infrequently/Fair)
Box 3: 50-69 (Sometimes/Good)
Box 4: 70-89 (Usually/Excellent)
Box 5: 90-100 (Always/Superior)
The back of the sheet is very clear (especially after they were changed for the 2007 season). Each criteria is listed and the judges must determine whether, for instance:
The individuals demonstrate MUSICIANSHIP within ENVIRONMENTAL and PHYSICAL CHALLENGES rarely, infrequently, sometimes, usually, or always. These descriptors apply to very specific ranges in score for a given caption.
That being said, judges rarely, even in the beginning of the season, dip into box 2.
When you routinely give out 9.9's and 10's, you are not judging, you are cheerleading. You are letting your emotions overwhelm your intellect. If you can honestly say that a performance is so close to perfection, then why not really reward it by shifting the rest of the scores down and making the gaps bigger?Can you tell me where on the sheet it says anything about perfection? Even in box five there is room for different levels of "always" and "superior." It's about achievement, wherein very high scores reflect a performance that is always at an extremely superior level. The word perfect just isn't on the sheet. More about the gaps can be found below...
This was never a problem when the top score at Finals was around 90. When the scores shot up to the 98 range, things got ridiculous. Especially when you have a 0.2 difference in total score between first and second. There is just no way a difference that small can be meaningful.Actually, a gap of 0.2 has a VERY specific meaning. In fact, in a section of the judges training material, this topic is discussed specifically (I think the section is even titled 'numbers management'). Gaps of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 have specific meanings and, contrary to days of old, a 0.3 spread in a single caption is a significant judging statement these days.
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Before today, The Cavaliers hadn't placed less than 2nd since June 22, 2001.
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BD third in CG and brass, and still won. THAT is surprising, and probably encouraging if you are a BD fan
That's because Dallas Niermeyer sealed the deal for the Blue team. He had them up 6 tenths over The Cavaliers and his score doesn't get divided by two.
I'm a little surprised Albert Lo put the green team up. I'm sure that will change when he judges Phantom and The Cavaliers at the same show.
And what about visual performance... it's not completely shocking to put BD up, but by 6 tenths?!?! Oh wait... Nola Jones. Yep, I could have called that one before the show even started.
All these corps' will see Dallas Niermeyer and Albert Lo again in the last week. You can be sure of it.
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Pretty lackluster programming from the Blue Devils.
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they spent a LOT of time behind the front hash... as in, most (or all) of them behind it.
that seems odd to me.
Yeah, I also thought that was strange.
Staging intent was a little vague throughout. It was often unclear where I was supposed to be focusing. Of course, it's only the second show, and if there's critique tonight there might be some helpful discussion about where to go from here.
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You have to hire the very best people you can and then get out of the way so they can do their jobs.
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yeah i know that cavies have closed rehearsals during finals week...but you didn't ask about them, so I think you're in good shape :D
This information is incorrect. The Cavaliers' rehearsal are always open, but recording of any kind is prohibited.
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It's not DCI's job to add more corps, but it is their job to expand the market, which would in turn spur the creation of new corps.
Currently, drum corps is supported mainly by the members. Their dues provide about half the operating budget for most corps. Hence, the number of corps is limited by the demand for membership.
If audiences were bigger, there would be more box office and merchandising revenue. This would replace some of the membership dues in the operating budget. It would then be cheaper to march corps and demand for marching spots would increase.
One thing I constantly ask myself, being a NYC resident, is why there is almost zero DCI presence in this city. There is a DivIII corps in Brooklyn and that's it. In a city of 8 Million people where people will pay $1000 for a six year-old to attend soccer camp and several times that to send them to the Poconos or Catskills for a couple of weeks in the summer. It's baffling that DCI has not even tried to crack this market.
I think a contributing factor is the lack of quality high school music programs in New York. If you take a look at highly successful high school programs across the country, they are almost always located in high income communities. They receive most of their financial support from large, highly organized, band booster associations administered by parents and other volunteers. Few if any get by on what they receive from the school district.
Now take a look at high income families in New York and many other areas in the Northeast. They send their kids to private schools because the public school system is quite poor in many areas, particularly in the city. Without kids getting the right level of music education and exposure to competitive marching music in high school, you won't see support for drum corps.
How many notable private school music programs can you think of, and how many out of those have a notable marching music program. I can think of maybe three in the whole country and really only one that serves as any kind of example: Marion Catholic High School, Chicago Heights, IL.
Just a thought...
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Ummm...
Hate to break up your magic tea party, but Albert Lo apparantely wasn't judging at Quarterfinals. Some guy named A.Cook was judging brass that evening. Here's the link.
P.S. I would like to also add - great post Eric!
Magic tea party?
Anyway, that recap is incorrect. Albert Lo was definitely the brass judge for DCI quarterfinals. In fact, none of those judges are correct, Andy Cook didn't even judge the last week.
Though dci.org has taken the scores down, the page is still cached on google. You should be able to view it here
I'm still wondering who is supposed to be the "cracked up brass judge"...
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It was a cracked up brass judge that cost the the title last year.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying that the Phantom Regiment did not win the brass trophy because of a cracked up judge???
Let's review:
Quarterfinals
High Brass Score - Phantom Regiment
Brass Judge - Albert Lo
In an unexpected switch, Albert Lo, a Phantom Regiment alumni, puts the Regiment up by a tenth(?) after putting The Cavaliers in first all season.
Semifinals
High Brass Score - The Cavaliers
Brass Judge - Steve Calhoun
If anyone can be counted on to put The Cavaliers out of a brass trophy, it's Steve Calhoun. But shockingly, he saw fit to put the boys in green up by a tenth.
Finals
High Brass Score - The Cavaliers
Brass Judge - Paul McGarr
Relative to his finals week colleagues, Paul McGarr is totally non-controversial. Which is why the .2 lead he gave The Cavaliers in brass is the most reliable placement of the top two hornlines for the entire championship week.
So which one is supposed to be the cracked up judge? Surely not Paul McGarr. His judging integrity is light years beyond the other two. Maybe you meant Steve Calhoun, in which case, I can't totally disagree. His judging history is a tinderbox of bias and poor number management. But even if he had done exactly the opposite, The Cavaliers and Phantom Regiment still would have tied for brass. So that leaves Albert Lo, and I'm sure you didn't mean him since he had Regiment up to begin with. Yet, his behavior is equally questionable. He had The Cavaliers up, by no small margin, all season. Then, only days later, the Phantom Regiment alumni puts the home team up. Hmmm...
So which one did you mean?
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4) I understand that judges will evaluate what is being presented. If that is the logic, if a corps presented the most incredible three minutes ever and left the field, would they be the winners? I guess I would think that if a corps' judging sheets had them on pace to score an "80.00", while presenting only 75% of the minimum time limit, their score should be 80.00 times .75, which would equal a "60.00".
It's all about rewarding achievement. If corps A achieves more in three minutes than corps B does in ten, then yes, corps A will have the higher score.
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Question...are they using any E-flats, or Piccs? Their trumpet sound leads me to believe they might be...anyone in the know?
Nope, just Bb Yamahas. The balance on the recording is a little misleading, which may have contributed to your perception. While the trumpret sounds dominate the recording, the Horn, Baritone, and Tuba colors are much more prevalent live.
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About the "Pressure" thing..they need to say it angrier.
You can find the video on youtube I'm sure.
It's how BJ does it in his song. When this song was a hit, it jumped out of the radio and stabbed you in the chest with it's staccato. I just find the Cavies version a little rounded which takes the sting off the song.
Maybe I could be a "narration tech". Hey I just created a new job position. b**bs J/k
While the first two instances are at a whisper, the third (8:03 in the full clip) is much more aggressive. Their point of reference for the louder one is supposed to be the original recording. I'm sure that they'll continue to tap into that emotion as the season goes on.
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...the narration sounds like a class A WGI show...
I totally agree. Listening to this made me feel like I was sitting through a long morning of scholastic A prelims.
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Then what else would we call the drum corps chord?
I don't think I ever played the drum corps chord in my years of marching, though most of Spin Cycle was in F Lydian.
I can't really recall any blatant, impactful sort of #4's either.
Except of course, during last year's show. The flat-9 had become somewhat prominent throughout (see: last three notes of the opener) and when we were on the bus tweaking the new ending we thought, "We'd better not add that flat-9 before the cut-off, it's getting a little old...I KNOW, throw an augmented fourth in there...yeah, that'll work." And so, shamelessly, it was added to the show. It ended up in the mellophones (also cliche I suppose) and maybe some baritones? In any case, the mellophones had a blast as it was a C-Major chord and their sharp-4 put all twelve of them on a high C#.
Use it sparingly...
Bruckner in Drum Corps
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted · Edited by horn_star
Sorry, but even for the most matched and resonant hornlines in the activity, the concert B's and F#'s alone present enough of a challenge to render this statement a little ridiculous. Listen to ANYONE play simple, melodic intervals at the end of the season. The B and F# don't match the quality of Bb or F, and when harmonic responsibilities are added, the quality change gets worse. And of course, it's not just the horns and tubas, that key doesn't sit well on any drum corps brass instruments.
It would be interesting to hear a group play a simple C# minor scale on the last day of the season and see if it sounds anywhere close to the quality and intervalic accuracy of the scale in F or Bb. I've heard the best hornlines in the activity struggle to match much closer keys.
Maybe we just have different ideas about what "very, very well" means. Then again, maybe you know something those teachers don't.
At least we can agree that Bruckner 8 is fantastic.