sabre's outside?

[strokethekitty]

If I may sway from the original topic for a second......

THANK YOU for this realization! Some drum corp staff and members (not all) tend to look down on the guard because they do not attend camps 2-3 times a month during the off season. I personally am not a drummer or horn player, yet I do respect the dedication and attributes they bring to the program. Without them the package is incomplete, however I would love to see a drummer or horn player lay down their equipment and change to a completely different piece that requires different skills & muscles to master. (flag, rifle sabre, etc) Also let us not forget having to play "catch up" and learn as much of the show that the other sections just took months working on. Now add dancing and dealing with uniform parts and sometimes wet equipment.

Changing equipment for the brassline and drumline? Like when the trumpets put their instruments down and pick up baritones, or a mello player picks up a french horn? Or when the cymbals/snares/bassline join the pit? Nope...you're right, the brassline and drumline just do the same thing, all day long, never have any challenges put in front of them. (jk - ;-) ) In terms of difficulty and work...Marching=dancing, uniform=uniform, wet equipment=wet equipment. Brass and percussionists have those same issues and difficulties in those aspects.

I'll give you the catching up argument :) . But really, most corps don't actually start detailing the show until the guard is there anyway - learning, but not detailing. I'll also give you the wind argument, even though you didn't say it....y'all are crazy to be throwing stuff in the kinds of wind there is out there.

The brass/percussion/director problem with the guard not going to rehearsals during the early season is this...the assumption is that those guard members are busy with winterguard. And if that's the case, no big deal - they're still training, just in a different arena. But not all of the color guard members are in a winterguard, and therefore they have 4 months or so with no training. The argument has nothing to do with "we work harder than you"...it's more a matter of guard members showing up without having touched equipment in 4 months, thus making "catching up" even harder for them.

As a brass player who defends the dedication and hard work of the guard members, it's frustrating to be told that what brass players do isn't as difficult. They are both difficult, but in different ways.

I actually think it's an advantage to be using different muscles and skills...imagine, for a second, using the same muscle groups for 10 min straight, without a break. I wouldn't say that it's more difficult than dancing and all the equipment changes, but I wouldn't say that it's any less difficult either. They're both challenging, just in different ways.

Sorry, don't mean to pick on you or start a fight or anything. Just frustrated with all of the "well, I'm working harder than you are, my stuff is more difficult", blah blah blah. They're both difficult, and I think it's high time that the different parts of the corps stopped picking on each other.

Again, I know you said that you respect what the brassline and drumline bring to the corps - I appreciate what the guard does (which is why I joined winterguard, too :) ).

Just wanted to give a perspective from a brass/winterguard person....

[beatspace89]

Saber's help interpret dance better than rifle and sometimes flag. Saber is an elegant piece of equipment. Imagine trying to do a soft slow ballad with a big bulky rifle. Yeah, I don't think that'll gain you much points.

As said before, it's staging. All three pieces of equipment can mean something if used properly. Flag can always show any kind of emotion depending on the silk, but you can pretty much only change color to rifle and saber, which usually doesn't happen anyway (and sometimes when it does it looks somewhat amateur-ish).

So that's why saber is on the field. It's an elegant piece of equipment and it's more fitting to display that with saber rather than a rifle. And it adds to the coolness factor too ;). I know many people whouldn't want to even touch saber just by how dangerous it looks.

[colorguardboy86]

Changing equipment for the brassline and drumline? Like when the trumpets put their instruments down and pick up baritones, or a mello player picks up a french horn? Or when the cymbals/snares/bassline join the pit? Nope...you're right, the brassline and drumline just do the same thing, all day long, never have any challenges put in front of them. (jk - ;-) ) In terms of difficulty and work...Marching=dancing, uniform=uniform, wet equipment=wet equipment. Brass and percussionists have those same issues and difficulties in those aspects.

I agree that what the corp does is difficult, and I definitely agree that brass and percussion have equal amounts of responsibility as the guard (if not more), but "Marching = Dancing"!? Hardly! Dancing well with good TECHNIQUE requires a lot more time and training than marching well with good technique. No question. And I certainly think wet equipment affects the guard more than the corp.