vferrera

cavaliers guard uniform is all black, but they stand out more due to their staging. what I'd like to see: a guard feature during the "slaughter dance" more flags during the company front and finale of slaughter. lose the cymbals, they're not being used effectively. guard featured better during the end of rhapsody, with more colorful flags.

most guards could improve their uniforms just by changing the tops to white t-shirts. kinda sad.

The rule is ANY key, so, yes, G "bugles" are allowed. as are A, B, C, D, E, and F, flat or sharp, conical or cylindrical.

Believe it or not, corps played on one-valve bugles until the early 60s. Then came valve-rotor horns. The rotor was the equivalent of the second valve. Mechanically, it was the same as used by french horns and rotary trumpet. ALL corps carried valve-rotor bugles until 1976. In 1977, the sops changes to 2-valve. 2-valve mellos and french horns came a year or two later. By 1980 or so the the entire brass choir was 2-valve. A little history here: http://www.middlehornleader.com/Evolution%...Section%204.htm

Right now, visual GE and ensemble are their weakest captions. Over the past few years, color guard has had an increasing impact on visual GE. This is good news for Scouts since they have a relatively strong guard this year. Also, it's easier to make changes to guard drill/movement/equipment work. They don't need to change the entire drill, just add movement and equipment work and maybe change the staging in some areas. It will be interesting to see how Madison's visual numbers fare when guard is judged separately. If their guard scores well, then it could lift their entire visual program. It's also worth looking at their music numbers. Drums are a bit behind glassmen, but madison's music ensemble scores are well ahead. This suggests that madison's brass scores will be much better than glassmen's and that could lift the scouts when brass is judged separately. In terms of tempo, there are some opportunities to pump it up in Slaughter. Also, I am expecting a new ending to Rhapsody with some kaleidoscopic drill.

based on current scores 7. SCV 8. BAC 9. BK 10. BS but given that Troopers went up 2.0 and BK went up 2.4 in one night, I think tonight's score may be inflated. From what I've seen/heard, BK will have a hard time beating bluestars head to head. They may have a hard time staying ahead of glassmen and madison.

Scouts might close the gap when Brass is judged separately from ensemble music. But they need to do something about visual GE and ensemble to move ahead of Glassmen.

when did they break 83?

5 corps are above 83: 84.9 Cadets 83.5 Crown 83.3 BD 83.2 Bluecoats 83.0 Cavaliers Seems likely that those will be the top 5.

that's good because last year they were just flinging the diapers.

Cavies still on field according to twitter posts.

they were underscored on friday and overscored tonight. pretty obvious, no? But I was simply addressing Geno's observation about BAC sneaking up on the top group, which doesn't seem to be happening. I mean, BAC's initial score of 75 might have taken people a bit by surprise, but by now they are on everyone's radar and some other corps seem to be improving as fast or a bit faster.

um, yeah, except BAC was tied with PR last night. Tonight, Boston went up 0.7 while PR when up 2.7.

fyi, those lyrics are by Turner and Parsons. Chaplin wrote the melody.

Hmmm.....maybe this accounts for low visual GE? BTW, it was 84 whitewater when Cadets had the "train wreck" and still had a perfect visual ensemble score.

I was thinking of a different incident. It happened at a Whitewater camp.

One time he knocked a guy on his ### just for looking the wrong way. push-ups, how cute!

0.5 fluctuation in a sub-caption is not atypical. it all averages out. if you took all the best subcaption scores from their last 3-4 shows, their score would be a couple points higher. but that's true for any corps.

These comments make me question why I bother to support the corps at all.

Hey, Jerry, I didn't see your name on the list of alumni donors (http://www.madisonscouts.org/Madison_Scouts/Madison_Corps.html). Double shame. Ease that guilty conscience by relieving yourself of some cash.

I didn't mean to make a big deal out of this. It's really a minor issue, and, as Dan S. says, it's June and they are no doubt adding layers. Hopefully one of the layers will be some screaming sop, er trumpets. The 82 version is my fav. 75 was a bit top-heavy, no doubt due to Jerry taking the 3rd soprano part up 3 octaves

hopefully there's more to the build-up score than technical demand. You can only add so much ornamentation before it starts to sound gratuitous.

That was NOT what I was trying to say. But I do thing the Bb/F horns present problems for arrangers. You have to compromise between not writing the trumpets too high and the mello's too low. One idea would be to put the lead mello's on Bb horns. They might have an easier time matching pitch with the trumpets.

I have no reason to doubt them. However, one minor area of concern - and this is based on FN videos so take it with a pile of salt - is Slaughter. It's just not popping like it should. Part of this is tempo - which will surely be increased as the season goes on. But part of it is the key. It's just too low, imo. Baumgardt wrote slaughter so that the main them is in B minor (I'm pretty sure), which is a great key for G horns. You get to play a lot of nasty F#'s as well as sweet B naturals. Translating this to Bb/F instruments is problematic. To have the same key relative to the fundamental of the horn, you want to go up to to D minor. But that means the lead trumpets have to play a lot of high D's and that could kill their chops for the rest of the show. It sounds to me like they actually went the other way and took it down a few steps. And it sounds like they are playing in a flat key. I'm not sure, but I just don't feel it has the same vibrancy. A lot of the harmonies seem to have lost their brilliance. Then again, I could be full of it and maybe I just need to hear it live. Or maybe it's just the mellos playing out of tune (when in doubt, blame the midvoices).

1. Fluctuations. 2. Madison's show doesn't have as much technical demand as Blue Stars. Hopefully, the staff knows how to fix this.