RyanAdamsons

First of a congratulations to John and Meghan for getting me to actually post on DCP. I do intend to actually bring the Teddy Ruxpin on tour assuming I can rig him a hammock on the bus. Somehow it's just heasier to hear your foibles coming from a stuffed animal; who could get mad at a Teddy Ruxpin? And now back to the people posting relevent discussion! -Ryan

Since I'm John's double major roommate I feel obliged to mention that yes, I do own a Bach C, and a Bb 37 and I do use those when properly threatened by orchestra conductors or people with money. BUT, since I got to fix (most of) the crap that was wrong with the prototype that Kanstul sent us it was fairly inevitable that I was going to like how it turned out, and if you had to play lead for a salsa band and you had a Bach star bell 37 and a .470 bore heavy wall kanstul with a powerbore leadpipe to chose from? Ryan

In my personal experiance, dutting is used when part of the design of the show dictates it. For instance one of the times i dutted last year was when we had a diamond facing backfield for the end of the ballad, the hornline held a fermatta, and then the backfield conductor counted off the ripple that started the next tune. We spent ensemble time finding the place to put the backfield conductor on a ladder where the most people could see them, but in a form like that with plumes and horns in front of you there will be times that people can't see. I was in a position in the form where i could see the conductor, could dut at such a volume that the people who couldn't see could hear me, but the people in the stands couldn't as long as I wasn't stupid (note you can't hear any dutting at the end of red cape tango part 1, bluecoats 2001). For drummers (and I'm relaying information that I don't use regularly since I'm not a drummer so feel free to correct me) dutting occurrs more regularly because of field position, their pulse responsibilities, and the aural paradox of their ensemble resposibilities. The drumline TENDS to be the pulse pocket (ie the corps members that aren't watching the DM for time listen to the drums for time so the drums have to be exactly with the major) and TENDS to be behind most of the corps during ensemble moments (with respect to field placement). The aural paradox is that they need to listen like crazy to play together, but they need to shut off their ears to ignore the hornline. Since your ears automatically lock on to tempo, the solution is to have someone (or everyone) dut with the drum major's conducting pattern so that there is an aural cue of tempo to lock onto other than the hornline (which generally sounds very behind from the pulse pocket). With all of that said, dutting seems to end up on the CD in cases where either there isn't enough ambient noise to cover the dutting (for instance after the drum break in candelabra rhumba, bluecoats 2001) or the corps isn't clean enough to get to the point where you ask people to dut softer so they dont make the CD (fabich dutting in autumn leaves in 98). Since neither of those covers your allusion to cavies 95... I'm not sure, maybe there was a machismo thing there. If it's any consolation, they did have the guard make fun of dutting 99...

I had to dut 3 times in last years show, and also if you listen to the 98 show you can hear fabich (soprano player) dutting in the middle of autumn leaves. And i can also vouch that will was completely out of time before he started dutting.

Coats switched from both hands in front to a two-handed carriage in 2001. The rationale was that the entire hornline was now holding their horns the same way. To me it depends on what you're looking for: -uniformity: it's obviously easier to clean if you just say "have your hands in front," but it's a lot harder for the low brass than the high brass. If you're willing to put in the time to clean hand position on a two handed carriage it looks more uniform in the end, but actually cleaning it is a pain. -crisper movement vs control: you can do it faster with the two hands out front because it's kind of a throw and catch motion to either horns up or carry. Because you're catching the horn with your left hand it's easier to stop the momentum faster, which makes it look crisper (and if you get good at it you can make a pretty sweet "ping" sound when you do it). By the same token you have a lot more control when you go with a two handed carriage because you don't have to change hand position at all from horns up to horns down, and if you have more contact with the horn for longer you have more control (duh). The real issue comes down to how much you want to work. SCV uses two hands and they have the best horn moves on earth lately, but part of that is also cause no one will ever hear a judge talk about horn moves on a tape and like it or not they dictate what rehearsal time gets spent on. Now that I've strayed completely away from the original question, your best friend is repitition. The "move faster, wait longer, hit harder" thing is great too, i heard that from Chris Li (xmen 96-98, coats staff 99) and he told me it was actually an old zingali-ism. Other than that try to catch the third slide ring with your left index finger on horns up, that trick always helped me.

Yeah, Kanstul's have held up way better than DEG's in my experience. I've marched the stock kanstuls for 2 years, a brand new custom class powerbore for 2 years, and now i actually got to help tweak the design on the new axes. So i'm pretty fond of those, i actually bought one for my regular gigs. Can anyone in devs land confirm or deny the stuff I'm reading where they switched the trumpet bore to a .462 now? And is that helping or hurting? My common sense tells me that's gonna suck, but my common sense also leads me to decisions like dating flute players...

Magic has the names, but Blue Devils have the results until further notice. Thanks for the bluecoat love though, who thought a bunch of canadians could teach white kids from ohio to play jazz... And i reiterate Will's words... they let Antman near children?????

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go with devs taking brass in 2000 and cadets in 2001. In cadets 2k's defense they had to stay on the starting line for like 15 minutes while the PBS people asked for more donations so they hadn't played a note in a solid 45 minutes before the opening impact, but there's some ugly things happening in the trumpet line at the end of the show (pretty sure that wasn't a staff decision to add an appoggiatura on the high c during the company front) and devs just sounded better on the CD. But if you want a real fun reason of why judging is apparently a moot point nowadays, not only did cadets lose to devs last year in brass but they lost to vanguard... i like vanguard and everything and if i were them i'd take the compliment and run, but cadets showed more control, had more difficulty (technique and range), and showed mastery of really different styles throughout their show. To me that put them ahead of devs, and when vanguard is still dealing with intonation issues like they had and as many trumpet fraks as there were in the beginning of short ride... i dunno man, in the end it probably should be about who sounded the best. And since this whole conversation is about best hornline ever, I'm kinda surprised i didn't catch any talk of devs 99 while I was skimming. Granted you like to let the dust settle before you attach tags like "best ever," but they were loud, they were in tune, they were clean as a baby's ###, and they were the last hurrah for the G hornline. And anytime you write a crescendo when you're moving the hornline to the back corner, you're either an idiot or you have balls the size of grapefruits. Just some thoughts. -- Ryan "Mofo De La Meurte" Adamsons Bluecoats 98-02 --

Devs 99 was the only hornline I know of that I could feel the air from the stands, plus defied the laws of physics in the ballad. And on a personal note, it was pretty fun drowning out the entire battery at the end of the overture in 2000... Ryan "Mofo" Adamsons Bluecoats 98-02