Bleu Raeder

Actually this is not the first connection for Crossmen in San Antonio. In the early 1980's (pre-YEA days) the Crossmen tried to help birth a sister corps (the Alamo Marksmen). Good for Texas, good for SA and good for the Crossmen.

Old Ohio is not one to make things up, and as a photographer he owns all of the rights to pctures he took.

Congrats to MSARP, I was there to see you and all I can say is WOW! I am sure that your success and influence will serve the Madison Scouts well now and into the future. There are some other alumni projects that do not get as much mention and they are having the effect of keeping drum corps alive in areas where drum corps no longer exist, like the Greater New Orleans Drum Corps Association (http://www.gnodca.org). They are working their way through post Katrina issues but have a strong nuclei. Siggo, you have yet to mention how much you have contributed to anything from the soup kitchen down the street to the drum corps of your choice. If this were Mythbusters we'd declare you busted.

http://www.vistalites.com/ is a good reference, though there is no reference to the marching drums. They also reference some other manufacturers of acrylic drums.

For the person who said i should do some research, I have been around the activity for over 30 years and have watched all of the scoring changes take place. I performed under the tick system and did not have the privilege of performing under any of the other scoring systems. I know the reasoning for changing the rules each time. I get the clipboard thing, I know how hard it is to wrangle and I know that a lot of stuff gets missed. I have done a fair amount of adjudicating over the years. I have watch numerous shows live and on tape. I watched Crown's show on Saturday night and said to those around me that their drum line was the weakest part of the show, but have no idea how the judge came up with the 16.75 (or whatever it exactly was), how are they calculating the score in their head as they speak into their tape recorders running around the field with a corps going past them at warp speed? Those fractions have to come from somewhere. I have not been trained in current methods, so I just don't know. The point being this....there are several ways to improve the current scoring system. Ticks are one idea, averaging GE scores another. There are no doubt others. As I stated before, it would be impossible to remove the subjectivity from judging at all, it is a human artform requiring human judgement and allowing for human bias. You cannot automate the judging of any artform, to do so is to remove the art.

Troopers...everyone should march one season with America's Corps

I will certainly agree that ticks were subjective to a point, but we are also talking a 'perfect world' scenario. I think that the way it is judged now leaves a lot more room for errancy (but it is way better than judging systems that use the I, II, III method) and that the biased judge has a lot more wiggle room than he or she would if ticks were still in the system. Even inspection (dating myself now) would certainly be subjective, your idea of polished brass would certainly be different than mine. We still talk about the cleanliness of shows, how are we judging that in our casual conversation? Do you think that an unclean section will "count against" a corps? Or do you think that an unclean section will "not allow a corps to reach its full potential in that category"? The tick system also had governors as many are apt to forget. For instance an m&m judge could only give one tick for a particular action/issue/problem every N counts. Exposure to error also acted as governor, the greater the exposure, the lesser the chance of tickage. For instance a company front moving at 160 BPM is a lot more exposed to error than the front moving at 100 BPM. None of this (any system) removes judge bias. There is no system available that could truly judge the artform that would not be subjective. But if you want balance you have to introduce "less subjective" methodologies of scoring.

Not so. The tic system allowed for a certain number of 'subjective' GE points, the rest of the points were performance based. You need to read about the scoring system to know the details. For instance, there was an allowance called exposure to error which allowed a judge to determine (subjectively) the difficulty of what was being done, but there were specifics....miss an attack, tic.....interval error, tic.....etc. This was hardly subjective at all and ticking accounted for more than 50% of the score. I will try to locate a description of the systems for you.

Bring back balance....bring back the tic system.

What worries me would be the guard uni.....most are downright....dare I say it.....unattractive. Whoever design guards uni's really don't give them much thought.

Lots of folks have been calling them Phantom since the 70's, when I recall first seeing them. Everyone knows who you're talking about when you say that. OAN, Mr. Crocker said a couple of times this past week, "The Cadets, you may take the field....". So I suppose we can refer to them as "The".

If an all girl corps were given the same level of particiapation by talented individuals as the all male corps are, sure. How many girls are marching D1 right now?If you pulled them all into an ensemble how do you think that they would hold up? My bet is that they would be just fine. Female musicians can hold their own just fine.

Blue Devils - side one guard block in the opener. Cavies - staying in character Phantom - tells the story

Then why didn't you get a brat while they were on the field?

The MSAP was the highlight of Friday night! Congrats guys! I can hardly wait to order a DVD

+1 Drum corps needs a drum corps from Louisiana!

Occasionally we are unable to resolve DNS for drumcorpsplanet.com but we are able to access (limited) via the IP. Are you having DNS issues?

I am afraid that you would not be in a 'norm' here. I have heard time and time again (including my own daughter) potential performers say, "I am going to audition for X." and I would follow up with, "if you don't make X are you going to try out anywhere else?". the answer is almost always 'no'. Now, I am like you.....but if I didn't make Cadets (if that was where I was auditioning) I would probably go to one of the other top 12 corps to audition there. Not likely that I would audition with Crossmen at this point as my goal is to try and make sure that I can make finals.

The mindset of someone auditioning for one corps is that they like their product, not the other product.

Exactly....the Lucas Oil, Olds, Pearl Blue Devils sure ran well today!

Another phenomenon is the 'home-town' corps phenomenon, the further from first place that you are the more likely your group is made up more of 'local' folks. Talent level, being dictated by the pool available, is likely to be vastly different than what the championship corps has available to them. I would dare say that folks failing audition on the Cadets side of the hallway do not even venture into the Crossmen side, because they had a goal of making Cadets and when that didn't pan out their desire/pride/ego etc. would not 'allow' them to. "I have just auditioned for, and not made, a consistent world champion. Why would I want to march with a corps that may not make finals (as evidenced within the past few years)?".

Some of it is, "do I want to audition for a corps where the odds of winning are higher?". Consistent winners attract more and better talent regardless of the activity. Given the choice and no particular attraction to a corps where would you audition?

Exactly...thank you.....brief senior moment

Happy Buckets of Birthday to Uncle Z....may your glass always be full. Dangit! I will not be in Madison until Friday morning, but would have loved to meet everyone and raise a glass

Did Pearsony marry that girl from PR? Enquiring minds want to know....