The "Dirty Drill" debate

[JimF-LowBari]

Seems like one of the new debates for 2008 is the "is drill dirtier than it was back in the day/back under the tic system". This is not just a DCI issue as noticed some slop at a DCA show that surprised me this far into the season. This is not a slap at current members but have some ideas why precision marching may be not as fine tuned as in the past. And by precision I mean how each member executes their individual drill.

1) Well ####, how many more "sets" are there in todays shows as compared to before? Ya blink and ya miss something in the drill. More stuff to learn so that takes more time... like duh...

2) Shorter seasons, less time a corps is together the less run thrus there can be to perfect everything. Perfect it and run it a few thousand times more.

3) Members are now nationwide, instead of more local. Result is very little drill work over the winter/spring months. This also leads in to the "Why the #### don't corps have complete shows?" threads you see at the beginning of each season.

4) No tic system so more time/effort spent on how the overall drill comes across instead of those stinking tenths that would peck your placing to death.

Like said, not a slap at current members. IMO, they are just hitting the limit of what's humanly possible with the time limit they have.

Any ideas from more current people or those who have been working this for a while?

PS - Not trying to get into "which is/was better" flame war. It's August and hot enough....

Edited August 5, 2008 by JimF-3rdBari

[Nizerifin]

I think competition drives the product to improve, year by year. I don't think (imo) that a classic show would fare too well in the visual categories compared to more current shows. So a lot of your points are valid. Things have changed. By the way, when did the tic system get dropped for the current?

[notelvis]

I think competition drives the product to improve, year by year. I don't think (imo) that a classic show would fare too well in the visual categories compared to more current shows. So a lot of your points are valid. Things have changed. By the way, when did the tic system get dropped for the current?

The Tic system kind of faded away in the early 1980's. There was a period where some 'build-up' captions co-existed with the tic system but, if I recall correctly, the tics were gone by 1984 give or take a year.

[zentropa]

Ticks were gone in 84.

[mad_scotty]

I think competition drives the product to improve, year by year. I don't think (imo) that a classic show would fare too well in the visual categories compared to more current shows. So a lot of your points are valid. Things have changed. By the way, when did the tic system get dropped for the current?

this is absolutely true, but so is the converse. todays corps are different, not necessarily superior. todays top corps probably couldn't make finals back in the 70's because of all the inconsistent horn angles, sloppy body carriage, etc. they would literally get ticked to death. my favorite example is the guy who has the piuc of the cadets in a block playing each others valves. no 2 horn angles or bodies alike, in the 70's or 80's his corps brothers would have beat him up for showing anyone outside the corps such a shameful episode of bad posture and random horn angles, today it's thought of as advertising a fantastic ge moment. priorities haven't just shifted, now their virtually opposite of what they once were. basically, old school staffs taught their marching members to focus on what they would look like in a close up, or still shot photo from the show, todays staffs teach their members to focus on what the entire corps would look like in a high cam vid.

modern difficulty is way way up. modern execution is way way down. it's a trade-off in visual. the opposite is true in music, btw, dci's other major trade-off. dci used to be a hornline dominated activity, now its managed by pas and winterguard types, and it looks and feels like it.

[BRASSO]

I think there is validity to your essential premise, and you've cited some of the reasons that we see some of the marching " dirt " in many of today's Corps, and surprisingly even with the very top Corps.

The shows today are clearly much more complex to execute, have much greater demand, and Corps have less time to clean these shows. Thus it is not uncommon at all to see, for instance, the marching fundamentals of cover, distance, spacing, feet, equipment positioning, body carriage, etc not executed at the level of earlier decade's top Corps. We see lots of " drifting " of marching members in their marching technique which used to be a huge nono. Some of this drifting can be attributed to the increased velocity that is demanded of the marching members over earlier decade Corps, Nonetheless, it's quite noticeable, especially to those of us taught the correct fundamentals in marching technigue,...... Aso, every Corps of today ( yes, I said EVERY Corps) has at least one or two members actually out of step during a portion of the performance. This is, of course, surprising for many veterans of the activity. It would have been very rare to see marching performers literally marching out of step like this with any of top 12 Corps from earlier decades. Certainly not at the numbers we see today anyway. And especially not by the time we got to Finals week in August. But again, these performers in today's Corps are being asked to do much more in the visual area than ever before, while still trying to perform a brass and percussion book that is also very demanding and complex. So I tend to be a little more forgiving when I see such " dirt " in the marching of Corps today.

I must say that I've grown to marvel at the visual patterns and the various creative movements made by the brass and percussion performers in today's Corps, while learning to overlook the natural inclination to cringe at the lack of crisp execution of much the marching fundamentals we see increasingly with today's Corps.

Edited August 6, 2008 by BRASSO

[JimF-LowBari]

I think competition drives the product to improve, year by year. I don't think (imo) that a classic show would fare too well in the visual categories compared to more current shows. So a lot of your points are valid. Things have changed. By the way, when did the tic system get dropped for the current?

Not sure if my OP was unclear and it wouldn't be the first time (#### Baritones ). My post wasn't a call to go back to less complex drills like the ones in my day. I was just brainstorming why people raised on the tic system might see dirt in todays shows.

Looks like BRASSO and I are on the same wavelength if that helps.

PS - Great thought from scotty on the hi-camera angle. Only time I had someone worry about that was in 1977.... and it was when I was in college band. LMAO, only way Westshoremen staff could get a "high view" at our practice facility was to climb on the roof of the drum truck .We practiced on a parking lot owned by the city and the parking was on an island in the river (no high places).

Edit (mainly for the younger set): Back in the tic days it was usually easier to improve your score by cleaning up drill (IOW - decreasing tics) than by concentrating on the GE score. Changing a big section of drill around was a big heartburn due to the increased tics until everyone had the new drill down.

Edited August 6, 2008 by JimF-3rdBari

[Nizerifin]

I was just brainstorming why people raised on the tic system might see dirt in todays shows.

Makes complete sense - people growing up on different standards look to their standards when evaluating. For example, the Cadets 2000 segment where they play each other's horns: honestly, I'd never think that there was anything visually wrong with it. I just thought that is was a great effect. So now it's switched from tic to GE. My point was that under the current GE system, that level of cleanliness doesn't matter as much as generating effect, so show designers have adapted to today's standards to max out the points, thus sacrificing cleanliness in other areas.

[7567BC]

Makes complete sense - people growing up on different standards look to their standards when evaluating. For example, the Cadets 2000 segment where they play each other's horns: honestly, I'd never think that there was anything visually wrong with it. I just thought that is was a great effect. So now it's switched from tic to GE. My point was that under the current GE system, that level of cleanliness doesn't matter as much as generating effect, so show designers have adapted to today's standards to max out the points, thus sacrificing cleanliness in other areas.

[7567BC]

Todays drills are taught very differently than past years with the focus on point to point positioning rather than quality of the transitions from set to set and the quality of the set once it hit. Many comments in this thread hit on elements of the "why". Shorter season, long distance membership, no winter weekly rehearsals and on and on.

I was recently at a show where before the show I got to watch an afternoons rehearsal. I saw errors repeated during rehearsal that carried on to the performance that night. Even with going over a particular section of the show about 10 times, I didn't see what I thought was a ridiculously obvious error get corrected or mentioned by the staff. Then it occurred to me that another factor in the dirty drills is that staffs today don't know how to clean. They've never been cleaned and now, consequently, they don't know how to clean.

The tics system was good in its time because tics exposed individual problems to the individuals and were a direct measurement of INDIVIDUAL technique and responsibility within a form. There was a clear understanding of the marching member of an error he or she made, exactly where they made it and what the effect of their error was on the transitional form and the resultant form. We all knew exactly whaere a problem was and knoew how to get rid of it. Now, I would be willing to bet that the kid I saw way out of an arc form or the kids way out of a cover down had no idea they were out of the form. They have never been shown what "right" is. But they feel pretty good about being pretty good.

So in a nutshell the corps are taught differently, perform with a different focus, they travel differently. For the older crowd wondering why shows aren't clean...did you do 30 or more shows in 6 weeks, traveling 10,000 miles across around and up and down the country. I am amazed at the writing. Did you older folks even think drill that is done today with the form movement, velocities, complexity of music (and the quality with which it is performed). I do lilke what I see today. Cavies always astound me with their overall movement and flow of their show. IMO it is usually the most thought out drill year after year. I love good drill programming. I love even more good drill performed well or dare I say it.....executed well. Execution is not a bad thing. It is part of our roots isn't it?