"...Judging in DCI is more art than science."

[Galen]

the only science in drum corps judging is...

did the corps arrive at the gate on time?

did the corps start and end on time?

that's about it.

And even then, you can get around the "science" by whining and complaining that you can't see the hash marks

[Lance]

Same thing with "grading" anything that has creative elements involved. I'm a teacher, and we're pushed to use rubrics (like DCI judges have), but then instead of opining about a paper holistically and giving it a score, you're opining about 10 different aspects of the paper and giving each of those a score and then adding them up.

[Liam]

Same thing with "grading" anything that has creative elements involved. I'm a teacher, and we're pushed to use rubrics (like DCI judges have), but then instead of opining about a paper holistically and giving it a score, you're opining about 10 different aspects of the paper and giving each of those a score and then adding them up.

I remember when we were kids on the 4th of July once watching fireworks and "judging" them. My friend and I got annoyed that someone yelled "That's a 10!!!" to practically every firework. If they're all 10's, then it has no meaning, we argued. So we developed a four part criteria -- height, size, multiple colors, and sustain. Any firework that mazimized each of these would be deemed a 10, we declared. Sure enough, along came a firework that was shot up high, exploded wide, contained four colors and hung in the sky .... "10!!!!" we shouted. Strangley, this was the one firework that we were the only ones shouting "10" for ... for while it met our made-up criteria, it had no "wow" factor. The parts were there, but the whole wasn't that great.

Lesson learned ... at the age of 10. You cannot put objective criteria to a subjective judgement no matter how far you break it down.

[HardCorp]

Mr Brace,

Your answer, altought deigned to be witty, misses the mark. There are plenty of scientific applications to judging - are corps in tune, clarity of articulation, moving in concert, etc.

Judging any performance activity must contain elements of subjectivity, but there also exist certain compulsories.

the only science in drum corps judging is...

did the corps arrive at the gate on time?

did the corps start and end on time?

that's about it.

[EndzoneEric]

I remember when we were kids on the 4th of July once watching fireworks and "judging" them. My friend and I got annoyed that someone yelled "That's a 10!!!" to practically every firework. If they're all 10's, then it has no meaning, we argued. So we developed a four part criteria -- height, size, multiple colors, and sustain. Any firework that mazimized each of these would be deemed a 10, we declared. Sure enough, along came a firework that was shot up high, exploded wide, contained four colors and hung in the sky .... "10!!!!" we shouted. Strangley, this was the one firework that we were the only ones shouting "10" for ... for while it met our made-up criteria, it had no "wow" factor. The parts were there, but the whole wasn't that great.

Lesson learned ... at the age of 10. You cannot put objective criteria to a subjective judgement no matter how far you break it down.

One of the best metaphors I've ever read in this forum.

[mad_scotty]

Mr Brace,

Your answer, altought deigned to be witty, misses the mark. There are plenty of scientific applications to judging - are corps in tune, clarity of articulation, moving in concert, etc.

Judging any performance activity must contain elements of subjectivity, but there also exist certain compulsories.

the problem is, none of these can be judged consistently well on the fly. if you go back to the vids or audio recordings and review them dispassionately after the fact you frequently find huge glaring errors in judging. to me the two most obvious were the 88 blue devils hornline and the 95 cavaliers visual package.

a lot of people thought the blue devils were robbed in 88 for a number of reasons, not the least of which was their hornline, an amazing group, one of dci's truly great all time hornlines. at the time i thought it might have been the best run a hornline had ever had at finals, they were just undeniably great. i even thought that after listening to them on cd, until one day i listened with my head and ears instead of heart, and finally started hearing all the fracked notes. that corps doesn't go 30 seconds anywhere in that show without someone just falling out of the ensemble and making an obvious error. and when i say obvious i mean some of them are practically 89 solo obvious. but even though they basically had a corps wide mental breakdown that night, i still think of this as one of the all time great hornlines. they were gorgeous, incredibly musical, the phrasing was sophisticated and it was in all ways an impeccable performance by a truly great group of musicians, only by some twisted act of fate about a dozen people fracked notes badly enough to be heard over the ensemble on the same night. i don't think even the judges heard them live though, because the corps was just so great they literally cast a spell over everyone in the stadium, everyone was in the presence of greatness, and knew it, and you just can't really tick away greatness. you can later, when you can distance yourself from it and listen analytically, but right there in the moment the moment itself is going to take over sometimes and drag you with it. that's the difference between live and recorded.

another glaring example is the 95 cavaliers. they waltzed into finals week with new closer drill, took the place by storm and won the whole deal. everyone knew it was the amazing new drill and their exceptional performance of it too, that was clearly what put them over the top. but it never actually happened. in buffalo in the stadium on finals night in 95 everyone bought it, even (especially) the judges, but if you go back and look at that finals run today on video it is without a doubt one of the worst meltdowns in drum corps history. it's as hard for me to watch as the infamous 89 devs and 91 phantom sop soloists, the corps as a whole just loses it in the closer. they didn't hit a single set in the last 90 seconds of their show, not one. but they won finals on the basis of that same closer drill blowing away the judging panel. they were so caught in the moment that there are places where guys are 2 steps out of a straight line form with their feet wrong, and somehow in the moment of performance it all looked and felt right, not just right but perfect, enough to launch that corps over 4 much, much cleaner shows. hard to blame the judges though, i was basically a drooling vegetable in the stands that night after watching madison, cadets, devs and phantom step off in succession. who can judge something analytically after experiencing that?

sometimes you lose yourself in the moment, really, in any good drum corps performance you do. and there is no way to quantify it, some shows and some nights just have the ability to take you out of yourself, and measurables get thrown out the window. there is no way to precisely define and judge everything that is happening in a drum corps show on the spot, no way at all. so while i agree with you that judging deals with a series of specific criteria that can actually be measured scientifically and compared with other groups to develop a performance ratio, i don't think humans have the innate ability to complete distance themselves from the emotion of the moment and accurately quantify all the data they are presented. there is no such thing as mathematically accurate judging, short of finding a dozen sociopaths with degrees in music, art, design, and dance and training them as judges there never will.

[Bruckner8]

I'm disappointed with the "pass" everyone's giving this judge, agreeing with his premise, and basically telling me "to get over it."

For a system to be fair, credible, and trustworthy, it has to be definable and repeatable (practically the definition of the Scientific Method)

The entire process of redoing the sheets, going from ticks to other crieria, and having multiple judges MEANS that DCI knows this, and DCI wants the process to be as objective as possible. They've spent lots of $$ promoting and refining the judging aspect, striving to make it fair. Kudos to the history of DCI.

Now we have the Judge Administrator saying that judging is MORE art than science. Think about that. Seriously. That means he's basically saying "therefore, you can't judge US, since we're artists. We're allowed to take risks; to take liberties, just like any other artist. By golly, we can't be held accountable! WE'RE ARTISTS!"

If that's the case, then we should have the exact same judging panel every night finals week. After all, the art on the field (the shows) are the exact same night-to-night, and the corps are just trying to improve and "get it right" every time out. Shouldn't the artistic talents of the judges be allowed this latitude? Shouldn't they be allowed to improve, and to adjust their art? They're just artists, after all, no differnt than the corps shows themselves.

There is art in judging. I get that. The phrase "General Effect" is loaded with subjectivity, let alone the definition of its measure. But we should STRIVE, hear me? STRIVE to make it less so, if we want people to trust it, to believe it, and to easily train others to judge it.

We should be minimizing the artistic part of judging, not lauding it! If the art portion is greater than 50% (as the term MORE implies), we're going down the wrong road. It's a cop-out.

(But it actually explains a lot...and adds major credence to Competetive Inertia)

[Lance]

We should be minimizing the artistic part of judging, not lauding it! If the art portion is greater than 50% (as the term MORE implies), we're going down the wrong road. It's a cop-out.

I'm not telling you to "get over it," I promise.

I don't agree with much of what you said, but I just wanted to comment on the quoted part. It sound exactly like the discussion that's been going on in the figure skating realm. They made it so that technical elements outweighed artistic elements, and I kid you not, the term that people use for most programs now is "cookie cutter." If you make technique more important than the artistic articulation of the show/program, you end up with pervasively boring, cookie cutter garbage, imo. And of course, there's still a lot of disparagement about judging even technical elements for figure skating, like, was that really a tick?

The truth is, no matter which one you weight more strongly, there will always be disagreement over scores...and that's true for anything in which artistic elements are involved.

[Schickmeister]

I'm disappointed with the "pass" everyone's giving this judge, agreeing with his premise, and basically telling me "to get over it."

For a system to be fair, credible, and trustworthy, it has to be definable and repeatable (practically the definition of the Scientific Method)

The entire process of redoing the sheets, going from ticks to other crieria, and having multiple judges MEANS that DCI knows this, and DCI wants the process to be as objective as possible. They've spent lots of $$ promoting and refining the judging aspect, striving to make it fair. Kudos to the history of DCI.

Now we have the Judge Administrator saying that judging is MORE art than science. Think about that. Seriously. That means he's basically saying "therefore, you can't judge US, since we're artists. We're allowed to take risks; to take liberties, just like any other artist. By golly, we can't be held accountable! WE'RE ARTISTS!"

If that's the case, then we should have the exact same judging panel every night finals week. After all, the art on the field (the shows) are the exact same night-to-night, and the corps are just trying to improve and "get it right" every time out. Shouldn't the artistic talents of the judges be allowed this latitude? Shouldn't they be allowed to improve, and to adjust their art? They're just artists, after all, no differnt than the corps shows themselves.

There is art in judging. I get that. The phrase "General Effect" is loaded with subjectivity, let alone the definition of its measure. But we should STRIVE, hear me? STRIVE to make it less so, if we want people to trust it, to believe it, and to easily train others to judge it.

We should be minimizing the artistic part of judging, not lauding it! If the art portion is greater than 50% (as the term MORE implies), we're going down the wrong road. It's a cop-out.

(But it actually explains a lot...and adds major credence to Competetive Inertia)

Bruckner8 for President.

Oh man, you all have no idea who you are arguing with...

[traveller30]

Bruckner8 for President.

Oh man, you all have no idea who you are arguing with...

Care to enlighten us?