HoltonH178

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nzxYUsnZV6M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> This is one of the weirdest videos ever, but I really hear a lot of potential in the score.

There's a lot to list. Kevin Ford created and perfected many visual design moments that are utilized to this day. Howard Weinstein was at one point considered to inherit the empire of George Hopkins and also brought the Boston Crusaders and Blue Stars into World Class quality. DCI Hall of Fame member Robert W. Smith began his teaching career at Pinellas Park High, revolutionized what drum corps were creatively capable of, and has written many a favorite horn book in the activity. DCI Hall of Fame member Frank Williams taught his hornline to convey passion unlike anything seen before in DCI and taught a 15-year-old hornline to contend for the title. Frank Sullivan has written some of the most revolutionary charts that pushed the envelope of development in more than one circuit and also proven his instructive chops. There are many more...I'm just getting started. DCI though is moving out of the realm of possibility for middle-income families in Florida and is missing out on membership, fans, alumni, family, amidst what has been fertile soil in many areas if not all. I believe the activity is lessened. And I wish to say that I speak of DCI more as the culture of competitive drum corps and marching bands than the organization specifically. I am much more interested in what obstacles are known in Florida and can be overcome in order to provide for and profit from this market as much as possible.

I'm sorry, this wasn't meant as an insult against Mr. Boo. His writings are fantastic and I've been reading them since he wrote about my band at BOA Grand National Finals 11 years ago. I truly enjoy reading what Michael Boo has to say about drum corps. But I would be lying if I said I didn't have a bias ingrained into me as a trained human being of the activity's establishment that I didn't have a particular perspective on things. Mr. Boo's writings are so oft cited because they are clear, concise, and eloquent without being overtly elegiac. I would hate for anyone to interpret my statement as something negative about his publishings; I think it is just short-sighted to assume that anyone is capable of producing thoughtless, robotic analysis which we are interested in reading. Mr. Boo is capable of far more than translating recaps into newspeak.

"Pilfer" is an interesting choice of words, but I believe that talent recruited with the right priorities in the right places is key to the development and survival of the activity. I wonder if anyone used the term when corps started holding satellite operations in Texas. DCI's main access point remains through membership. Sure, maybe we need a 50-state plan, but doesn't it make sense to work in a major population market with a history of providing for the activity? Doesn't Florida have a beneficial role to play in DCI other that withering away?

I am not, nor have ever been, affiliated with the organization at Teal Sound. I have a lot of respect for many of the people involved in the organization, and I wish Teal the absolute best, but I am not in a position to accept (or espouse) advice in regard to the corps. As long as more kids close to my house are having a good summer, it's a good thing, and if Teal can re-establish its professional reputation, all the better.

Drum corps spectators would do well to observe Hunter S. Thompson's theories on objectivity, namely that the presence of one individual--any individual--inherently removes the possibility of true objectivity regarding any subject. Drum corps will always be a subjective activity. If you can't let go of that, I'd suggest you take up something more straightforward, like baseball or bowling.

One can certainly hope! Maybe a few of the hardcorps members from Boston will be kind enough to pass on some of their valuable knowledge on this topic to those who can help positively affect the situation.

A hopeful note: https://www.facebook.com/TealDrumCorps

Given the demise of Florida's last remaining World Class corps, and the unavoidable negativity it will create in an already struggling DCI Market, I was wondering what DCP thinks can and/or should be done in order to preserve a DCI World Class presence in the state of Florida. As corps fold, few scholastic programs have the resources to step up the way we see in places like Indiana and Texas, and what was once a drum corps cultural touchstone seems to steadily wane in its influence, relevance, and quality. How can we help DCI in Florida? What corps should consider satellite auditions, and perhaps even camps, in Florida (as others have done with great success in the past) that will provide Floridian talent with the unparalleled lifetime experience that is World Class drum and bugle corps? I would greatly appreciate any PMs on the topic as I plan on being quite active in the Tampa Bay community to promote DCI's influence. Big picture food for thought in finals week. Hope you've all got the intellectual room amidst the excitement :)

Passion Pit is insanely good. Seeing as they're Berklee alums, I wonder if any of them studied under Jay Kennedy. Their music needs to make its way to the field, period.

I just wanted to state my strong support behind the OP's idea. I have been dying to see Florence + the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Regina Spektor, Ben Folds, Passion Pit, The XX, and stacks upon stacks of modern music that would reach the "kids" better and attract more professional, contemporary musicians to the activity. Believe it or not, my experience has been that professional industry musicians have tremendous respect for the educational accomplishments of DCI and love the incorporation of the visual and musical aspects of the activity into a single performance art. DCI should work harder to develop strong relationships with contemporary musicians who are successful in the market. Imagine how it could shape and change the activity if it was an honor to be selected among a corps' repertoire highly recognized within the professional music community. Beyond that, the widening of accessibility to greater demographics of potential student alone justifies this change in creative direction. Speaking especially as a mellophone player, no kid wants to spend their summer playing more Sousa. Our corps that steep their creative engines deep within the symphonic and operatic worlds have their place in the activity and I love what they do. However, I think that corps still struggling to identify themselves have a huge opportunity when it comes to being known for doing creative arrangements of modern music and music composed especially for drum corps but integrating more modern sounds. We've fought long and hard for the ability to go in this direction; are directors now afraid to go down the alley that was so strongly fought over opening?

As I stated, I don't think that the comparison of B-flat and G bugles is particularly well-founded. I do think this corps has an improved horn line over the 2002 corps, the only other B-flat corps you bring up in your lineup. In terms of tonal production and clarity, I believe this is the best horn line the corps has presented, period. Their relative placement to other corps and other instrumentations aren't particularly relevant in the equation, as the musical demands of DCI performers have only continued to increase over the years. But of course, this is just my opinion. There is no right or wrong answer, except that the Glassmen are hot, hot, hot! :D

Speaking as a fan of Bb brass sound, yes. The tonal presentation of this year's Glassmen corps is the best that has yet been achieved by the organization.

Glassmen and Crossmen both, I think, have a reasonable possibility of making finals. Knowing the DCI judging community's behavior as I do, though, I think they have Crossmen slotted to fall into 13th or 14th for this year. They should be extremely proud of the strides they have made within, what I think, is becoming the most competitive region of the activity, places 10-17 in the World Class. Glassmen tied Blue Stars early on in the season (anyone still remember that?) and had made finals for 6 consecutive seasons before last year, not to mention they have the best hornline the corps has EVER presented. I do think that if anyone is going to actually nip the Blue Stars it will be Glassmen, as Crossmen have been consistently nipping at heels for weeks. There's never a lot of chatter on DCP regarding the Glassmen because they keep a "low profile" in terms of publicity, but I actually thought they got hosed in several captions at ATL, yet still managed to sparkle because GE is finally coming out of the basement and percussion numbers stayed where they've needed to be all summer. The hornline has been pretty consistently in 12th at regionals, suddenly in ATL 14th, GCG from 14 to 17 (say whaaat), and one of the strangest anomalies I have seen in judging consistently occurs where the corps will be placed 12th in percussion and brass but 16th or so in analysis. I don't understand how this happens, but I definitely see it's been killing their music score all summer. However, what changed in ATL is that suddenly Glassmen's GE marks, which have hung around 16th this entire summer, pulled up to give the kids' performance scores a chance to shine through, putting in a music GE score that is just .05 off of Blue Stars'. If Glassmen want to make finals, they need to put some more gas into GE Visual, Guard, and Analysis. Given that these are very strange captions for the corps to be lacking in, I suspect they will pull out all the stops and show us some of the August fire the corps is legendary for. The door is wide open.

Si, es verdad, but not everyone got a nice bump. I think Stars have the honor of being the "most improved" corps of the night relative to their most previous scoring. Personally, I'm hoping they aren't that much improved so my team can beat them and hang out with Spirit and Cavies too nonetheless, credit given where due.

Nice bump for Blue Stars. Wish they had been at BGSU tonight instead, but thats just me

It's in their "SHOP" section, under "Support the corps".

10 Confirmed at Glassmen, 11 to Colts, 1 to Cavies, 1 to Crown AFAIK. The corps are doing their best to pick up kids, it's a great thing to see still loving the picture of the new Teal kids in front of G-West.

I really enjoyed Glassmen's visual strength last year. The musical end of things, not as much. And personally, I have to disagree about Don Hill; having played his books for years in HS and two through drum corps, I'm not entirely sure Key is the right fit for this corps. It might just be my personal affinity for Don, whom if you've had the pleasure of meeting, is worth every second of your attention :). While the brass are performing better than the previous season, hanging out with the finalists instead of the semifinalists, this improvement has been negated by significant competitive drops in GE and Vis...this year things seem to be a little inverted for the corps' strengths and weaknesses, I think, but in the long run I think that's a good thing. If my personal affinity plays out for Don, it's probably only worse for the guy writing the drill, who was at my HS freshman band camp--but I will simply say he's gotten this corps back into finals before. I'm less inclined to blame material than performance strength. When I saw them in June the visual (from horns) was seriously lacking. Most of my rehearsal notes were visual comments related to straight-leg (did the corps change techniques this year? I know I'm not the only one to ask this question...), form spacing, and upper body positioning. I actually even made a couple notes regarding high toes, which is kind of a shocker. A far cry from the pages (and pages...I scribble so I don't run my mouth!) on tone quality I produced last year. I'm sure there will be an appropriate amount of difficulty in the visual book, and in all honesty, Gmen are far better off competitively speaking with a corps that can improve its visual caption IMHO. Summer progresses, kids get in better shape, visual technique and talent are not quite as hard to develop as musical, improvement in visual leads to improvement in music, etc. etc. Still, it is odd and wonderful for me to see the Glassmen with a hornline that is more than holding up its end of the bargain!

There are so many issues with this, first and foremost being the kids who have already paid for a full tour and now appear to be eligible for few options beyond "take the bus home." If I were a staff member, I'd be making phone calls (not e-mails) to every World and Open Class corps interested in taking on former students at a reduced cost. Knowing a few of them as I do, I know that some of them are. Additionally, one has to question the administrative decision by the organization that has appeared to have released this news at 11:30 P.M. EST on a Monday night. There will be lots of parents up all night worried sick about their children in Florida tonight. As I mentioned earlier, staff and membership should be given an opportunity to move beyond this organization's decision to end tour. News this big seems more like 8:00 A.M. kind of news to me, and unless the membership was informed in advance (unlikely) I really hate to picture that there are members whose options are "bus to Florida" and "chance it with an iPhone at your local Greyhound station." I'm quite sad to see the lights go out, again, for Florida's only native World Class corps. It obviously does not bode well for the future of the Orlando show or the activity in the state. My heart goes out to the members for whom, if the numbers held up, could have arguably been in a dogfight for semifinals or even finals (that's the kool aid I'd be drinking if I were marching, anyways). I certainly hope that this administration has the opportunity to re-establish credibility for their organization. I'm under 30 and I know about BAC 1982, and that organization has done quite well for itself lately. Condolences and best of luck, Teal.

I'd love to hear you expand on the specifics of this, meaning, what you have done with what corps in what years based on which performances. I don't mean to demean your contribution to our activity; far from it, we need more like you. Still, I have to be honest in that I consider it far more likely for an individual to march a corps because of their program leading to contributions further down the line, than someone take the initiative to assist a corps in a given year based on their programming decisions for that year, despite your personal anecdotal evidence to the contrary. Not to mention the quality of those contributions, in the sense that a person who returns to a corps year after year after year is likely more valuable to drum corps staffs than someone who happens to personally like this year's program. But I'm sure we can agree to disagree.

This post is just so very well put. I have loved the Glassmen's productions since 2004, and as much as every member of the G-Family have a reverence for and love of the 97-02 "Golden Years", I don't believe that a reprisal of this style is desirable or, tbh, even possible. The Glassmen did a wonderful job of "classical with a twist" in 04-07, and have done a similarly wonderful job with their more thematic productions 08-present. As someone who was raised on BOA before DCI, I believe the corps has done a very good job shifting the productions to be more appealing to the sort of individuals whom would consider performing with the organization, namely, the under 18 demographic. Not to say that the corps is "kiddie" today, but I have yet to have someone give me a really good explanation of the thematic ideas behind IMAGO, and I've been looking since 2005. Now for many of us, this doesn't take away from the enjoyment of the program, myself included; however, I must admit to finding it somewhat baffling at the age of 17 and transitioning from BOA, where themes are everywhere, to DCI. I believe the programs of the last few years are infinitely more accessible to those who marched state competitions in high school than they were when I decided to become a member. More importantly, I totally agree with the sentiment that winning people over with certain programming selections does not automatically equate into developing a strong corps family, especially in the cases of people over the age-out limit. How many of these individuals are really going to commit to volunteering, donating, etc. because they liked their 2011 program? Not many. These individuals simply will not have the opportunity to build critical, life-long friendships as a member of the G-Family. But if even a few kids end up joining the corps and marching for 5 years because the 2011 program was their favorite, it has an entirely different impact. Viewed from this angle, I think it would be simply untrue to say that the Glassmen haven't been programming very successfully for the last 8 seasons since 2003, and I'm certainly not a member of the club when it comes to believing that 2011 was a weak production from the corps. While everyone wants to see their team get as many points as possible, I think it's much more important that the corps is able to adapt and excel in today's market, and for a corps that so often seems to have an average age that is younger than the rest of DCI, the Glassmen have done a phenomenal job of staying competitive. I would much prefer the corps retain its status as a perennial finalist and develop its evolutionary identity than reprise what worked a decade ago. One of the things I always really loved about the corps was the different shields for each year. I really do believe that every year, the corps reinvents itself and develops its own identity in a way that many other corps do not. Comparing the 2001, 2006, and 2011 Glassmen I see much more unique individual corps than I do watching, say, the Blue Devils or Boston Crusaders programs in the same years. Some may view it as inconsistency in identity, but I much prefer the concept of an "evolutionary identity" to a static one. Every year the corps really owns and redefines itself, and that is way cool.

Indeed, and if you weren't so busy taking my quotes out of context, you'd notice me saying that I think championship organizations are far better suited to this sort of move, not thirteeenth-place ones...if you can't be bothered to read my posts I won't bother responding to yours in the future. Seriously, dude, it's literally in the same post you quoted. Talk about frustrating.

Then in all honesty, watch Open Class. World Class organizations, especially 13th place ones, are hardly in a position to run "something new from someone new" against judges so long as box 5 criterion still includes "evidence of the highest level of instruction" (which has always struck me more as, "I [the judge] studied under the caption head"). Maybe the wording has changed since 06 when the staff read the brass sheets to the hornline, but politics comes to mean more and more as the DCI establishment becomes more entrenched, so I would probably expect more poisonous language if anything. A weak pick would have meant reinforcing the "Glassmen getting passed" meme that surrounds the organization competitively right now. Practical concerns for a singular organization have to outweigh the overall direction of the activity in the minds of those organizations' leadership; I would sooner ask organizations with championships to make these sort of moves re: new blood. ETA: just to be clear, 'weak pick' means someone without Key's stature in our community; not a comment on anyone's abilities.

Seriously...I threw in my plus because I totally second the sentiment. I've loved seeing Sal's influence back with the team. Don't understand how that could be a negative, but I don't understand a lot...