Has jazz left DCI?

[scottgordon]

I just don't think most drum corps fans would like the results, unless it was done in the vocabulary of modern drum corps, which is significantly more complicated than those musical genres.

Are you saying that the "vocabulary of modern corps" is "significantly more complicated" than entire decades of musical genres, such as jazz or rock?

[idontwan2know]

. . .yes, and so is playing to only the people with music education or performance degrees. It gets boring after a while hearing the same "drum corps chords" and watching the themes pass from WGI to BOA to DCI over and over again, with the same people at the helm.

Now that we're both done using the big paintbrush, let's find a little "common" ground:

Folks like to be entertained when they pony up their dollars. Lest we forget, up until about the 1980's or so, drum corps books included a lot of "music of the day".

Streisand's "The Way We Were" is now the Dreamgirls soundtracks " . . .And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going". Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is Aguliera's "Beautiful". . .and so on. It's just that, all of a sudden, we're above that as an idiom.

Are we really saying that we're that far above the "commoners" when all we've done is borrow from every other art form for own little musical pastiche with formations for the past 50 years?

I don't dispute that drum corps can and should be entertaining. I just have a problem with the idea that dumbing things down is the way to achieve it.

There are plenty of incredibly entertaining programs being put out that are also very sophisticated musically. The programs that fail don't do so because they are overly-complex. They fail because they're poorly written.

You also have to consider that the paying audience is only one consumer of the program. The members and potential future members have certain expectations about the programs they want to perform as well. I daresay most kids auditioning for the Glassmen don't walk in the door saying, "Man, I hope we do a hip hop show this year!"

[idontwan2know]

Are you saying that the "vocabulary of modern corps" is "significantly more complicated" than entire decades of musical genres, such as jazz or rock?

Jazz, no.

Rock, yes.

[bawker]

The members and potential future members have certain expectations about the programs they want to perform as well. I daresay most kids auditioning for the Glassmen don't walk in the door saying, "Man, I hope we do a hip hop show this year!"

. . .that's my point: why couldn't they? What makes "Gitano's" source music any better than, say, the Glassmen coming out and playing Earth, Wind and Fire or Kool and The Gang or even considering playing a tribute show to HBCU's?

Additionally, moving the other point along in to trying to establish whether this turn towards the overly-complex is only a symptom and not the root cause, what would you cite as an example of a show that's "poorly written"? I'm not trying to call you out by asking, I'm genuinely interested in trying to understand if I'm looking at things wrong here.

[scottgordon]

Jazz, no.

Rock, yes.

Yowza! Even as a jazz musician, I couldn't more strongly disagree.

[ouooga]

Are you saying that the "vocabulary of modern corps" is "significantly more complicated" than entire decades of musical genres, such as jazz or rock?

Quite the opposite. Music as a whole has gotten significantly more complicated over the years, while drum corps has actually become fairly simple, and there in lies the problem.

Drum corps shows today (for the majority) involve a basic formula of "be loud and play long notes and give the melody to the pit when applicable," followed by "get the crowd on their feet by playing 16th note runs and ending with a chord."

The result is that your every day music, which probably consists of 8th notes and quarter notes and its own formula of style, are forced to be chords or 16th note runs that don't reflect the original music at all. The music then becomes almost unrecognizable, which then leads to criticism, and then you just have to sit back and wonder if it would have been easier to choose something that already fit that model.

....or you play the music straight and you have the problems Colts 08 ran into.

[idontwan2know]

. . .that's my point: why couldn't they? What makes "Gitano's" source music any better than, say, the Glassmen coming out and playing Earth, Wind and Fire or Kool and The Gang or even considering playing a tribute show to HBCU's?

Additionally, moving the other point along in to trying to establish whether this turn towards the overly-complex is only a symptom and not the root cause, what would you cite as an example of a show that's "poorly written"? I'm not trying to call you out by asking, I'm genuinely interested in trying to understand if I'm looking at things wrong here.

I'm not going to get into a debate about what music is inherently "better". That's silly and pointless.

I just have a problem with this idea that every program that the fans don't like is too complex and the solution is to make it simpler.

Regiment is putting some incredibly complex musical programs on the field and the fans eat them up. Some of BD's programs are, in fact, quite simple in comparison. Yet in this thread people are pointing to BD as a corps who is failing to connect with the fans because they're too complicated and can only be appreciated by music majors? Please. The reality just doesn't match up with the agenda.

[kickhaltsforlife]

Arrangers need to start talking the art of spicing up a piece, yet still making the main thematic material recognizable. Now Crossmen had some pretty sweet arrangements back in 2005. What kicked them out of finals was mainly their visual design.... 2006 Crossmen, if you heard the original book that Jimmy Steele didn't #### up... it was awesome, and that show would have been received a lot better. That's besides the point, 2005 Crossmen was some pretty straight arrangements with some spice added, got good crowd reaction, and that part of their design wasn't what killed them. 2007 Crossmen.. Aaron Guidry comes along... and he does the stab and run thing... a snippet of birdland, a snippet of hindemith, his P5 motif, a little metheny, but nothing more than 4 bars, except for the Russian hit. That show was awfully designed.. it was FAR too complex. Well 2008 Crossmen... A little better... their opener, created around Jupiter from the planets, about the entire first half of it you could tell it was Jupiter, and it used a theme in it's entirety. This was recieved well b the judging community, and from what I could tell the fans enjoyed it too... they could walk away humming it. Their ballad.. What a wonderful world... had the whole A section, then the whole bridge with a trumpet duet GREAT!!! Then a park and blow on the return to the A! Almost an entire chart played! Spiced up by Guidry also! Hey... think that design staff learned a bit formt he year before. And I know this was received well from everyone... from there... we got stab and run to the end except for the last Jupiter hit. Interesting show, that I thought wasn't too hard to follow, and it still had all the spiced up stuff that is the "standard" now

I find it interesting to watch Crossmen's design evolution over the years. Especially within the last couple of years... things are going in such a way that gives me hope that yet another corps is catching on to the whole theme and melody thing that I feel is missing. I wonder if they will continue this year.

[kickhaltsforlife]

I'm not going to get into a debate about what music is inherently "better". That's silly and pointless.

I just have a problem with this idea that every program that the fans don't like is too complex and the solution is to make it simpler.

Regiment is putting some incredibly complex musical programs on the field and the fans eat them up. Some of BD's programs are, in fact, quite simple in comparison. Yet in this thread people are pointing to BD as a corps who is failing to connect with the fans because they're too complicated and can only be appreciated by music majors? Please. The reality just doesn't match up with the agenda.

The 4 or 5 times I saw BD this past summer.. the crowd was eating up the spinning bass drums, and the random running people... it got less and less of a reaction the more times I saw it. They used tiny gimmicks to get crowd reaction, not their music or visual package that much. Yeah sure it's great stuff at the beginning of the season, but by the time you get to finals, it's old news. Yeah they still but on an enjoyable show... probably my favorite of the so called "stab and run" corps.

Don't forget about the opposite of stab and run... you have the sustain and run also.... aka Cavaliers... but they back it up with a 'wow' visual package each year... but even that is starting to get old.

PS-- all opinion, lol. But Cavies music design has been the same since about the beginning of the decade... it finally got old for my around 06. I did enjoy Billy Joel however... thought they should have used more tunes though.

[scottgordon]

I wonder if people assume that chopping up a tune makes it more complex, or more demanding. In actuality, it might make it less demanding. Getting a tune to build in intensity effectively is its own challenge, that is avoided by chopping it up into bits and inserting bangs and hits to wake people up. But a beautiful melody, well arranged with a sustained building rhythmic groove, can result in a deep lasting artistic power, not to mention giving the audience a chance to get engrossed in the music and want to hear it again and again. As a jazz or rock musician, establishing a great groove is one of the most difficult things to accomplish.