Cron Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 Yes, you nailed it, in reality you are only competing with the groups that are within 2 possibly 3 spots of you in most cases. When you're a marching member, you're only concern is making the show as close to perfect as it can get. Sure if you are one of the few near the top, the championship is on your mind, but the path there is the same, clean, clean, clean what you got! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluublood Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 (edited) I hadn't even heard of drum corps until last fall, when my kid started watching videos and eventually asked me if he could try out. His high school band director and assistant are drum corps alumni, and they encouraged him. The boy had a wonderful time; he learned a lot about overcoming adversity and sticking to a project when all he really wanted to do was come back home. I caught shows at four venues, including the quarters and semis in Indianapolis. The quality of those shows overall just blew me away. But as a competition, it's as exciting as watching paint dry. For the most part, corps leave where they came in, and moving up or down one place is a Big Deal. I don't know all that much about the judging standards, but I'm really scratching my head about the uniformity in scores. For example, it's very rare that a corps is ranked differently in a single competition across the captions. For the most part, the scores are either the same across the board or differ by one place. Does it really make sense that a corps (for example) is 7th in visual effects, 7th in music, 7th in drum line, 7th in percussion, 7th in color guard? That sounds very screwy to me. It appears to be impossible for a corps to catch fire one night and get a score well above their average, and it also seems difficult for a score to be dragged down dramatically if a corps just had a bad night. Watching from the nosebleed seats at Lucas Oil Stadium (great seats for DCI shows!) at the semis, I saw a fair number of quite ragged lines in some of the sets of the highest-ranked corps -- more than in some of the performances by the lower-ranked corps -- but you'd never know it by looking at the scores. I haven't been able to find enough data in one place to finish this project, but I've been looking at the standard deviation of scores in DCI and other judged sports like figure skating, gymnastics and the like. The little bit of data I've been able to crunch shows that the standard deviation of scores in those sports is a lot greater than the standard deviation of the DCI judging. I'm not going to assert that such is the case, because I haven't found enough data on the Internet. But I have a suspicion in the back of my mind that by mid-summer there's a consensus among the judges as to who's going to be ranked where by the time the cook trucks start rolling for Indy, and it's really not possible for a corps to "bust the curve." All that's not to say that I'm sour on drum corps, because the shows are really spectacular. Some of the themes are a lot more accessible than others, but I enjoy them all. While there is indeed an obvious difference between the performances of the top few corps and the ones in the middle or bottom, they're all good. I'm just not as interested in following the progress of the corps over the summer as I am in looking at the baseball standings. Ball clubs do move up and down. I'll buy a ticket when there's a competition nearby, enjoy the live shows and leave it at that. We didn't stay for the finals; our son's corps didn't make the cut, we had already seen the shows twice and the kid wanted to sleep in his own bed. Watching 22 corps perform in one sitting on Thursday was probably too much of a good thing even for some die-hard fans, but we had a good time. What are you comparing it to? Drum corps are much more consistent that what you are used to so you won't see AS much placement change during the season than say a marching band season. You'd think differently if your were a bit more rooted in the activity. A single place change is a BIG deal finals night. As far as caption scores... Performance in one caption most definitely affects scores in other captions. For instance, brass will have an affect on the music ensemble caption and GE. Colorguard will have an affect on vis ensemble and GE. That's why they usually end up being around the same score. Edited August 10, 2009 by bluublood Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluublood Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 Yes, you nailed it, in reality you are only competing with the groups that are within 2 possibly 3 spots of you in most cases. When you're a marching member, you're only concern is making the show as close to perfect as it can get. Sure if you are one of the few near the top, the championship is on your mind, but the path there is the same, clean, clean, clean what you got! Exactly. We were always told to compete with ourselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpaul Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 Yeah I always wondered why certain captions work out the way they do? At least the Top 5 this year the caption rankings were all over the map. But looking on down the list it is highly incredible that a corps can be ranked in the same spot in every caption across the board. Seems highly improbable. You're right. There should have been much more variation in the Blue Devils rankings. *runs and hides* I'm kidding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhallman Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 I too find it hard since there are so many other activities where perfection is hard to achieve Like gymnanstic or diving where the routine may not even be possible to acquire a 10 if peformed perfectly - swimming where a awesome dive by two people who get the same rating could result in huge differneces in overall score - because of difficulty. It is true in a sense that the corp after a few shows under their belt is in a certain box but I think that's mostly because they don't start at 100 points or 40 GE points / 30 Visual point / 30 Musical points (10 for brass/ 10 for drums / 10 for how it all sounds together) and judges deduct for things I found this audio helpful DCI judging no holds barred - http://www.dci.org/news/view.cfm?news_id=f...b7-ff339eea679a I mean I guess someone could put a DB together matching judges to scores for each corp. Perhaps that could shed a little light on some conspiracies but the real missing part is the the judges tapes. I'd love to see them included on the Fan Network as different audio streams..hint hint Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cron Posted August 10, 2009 Share Posted August 10, 2009 yeah, judges tapes would be a nice addition to FN. I'd love to hear one in particular from when I marched. If anyone here remembers the Carolina Crown "Chess and the art of Strategy" show. I did a 180 degree turn early in the season, before the time when judges were familiar enough with the shows to know where not to be. Don't know who the judge was but, I turned, the judge was on my blind (left) side and I pinned his head between my contra bell and a 10' tall chess piece. This is probably the performance moment that sticks out most in my mind, other than a couple of personal best runs at various points. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tito John Posted August 10, 2009 Author Share Posted August 10, 2009 --- Remove the outliers and the remaining results pretty much prove that the show design is all that matters by the time you get to August. All the corps are talented enough to sell their respective products by then. The kids are just tools and the focus is taken off of them. That seems wrong to me. I don't know enough to agree or disagree with you, but the thought had crossed my mind as well. And in another thread, there were some comments about whether corps' shows should focus on audience appeal. That is one of the things I wonder about also. Some of the shows were self-explanatory -- Core of Temptation, 1930s, Great Divide, Fathoms, Grass is Always Greener, and Shiver for example. The Factory as well, although I didn't care for that one as much as some of the others. Some others still baffle me, perhaps because I didn't recognize some of the musical themes or I haven't cracked the code as to what some colors or formations are supposed to represent. --- I think you will find that most (if not all) corps work to perfect their show, and let the numbers fall where they may. If the kids marching let numbers define their season, most would come home unhappy. That's the best way to look at it, and the friends my kid made and the experiences he had were priceless. BUT...my kid's corps had their highest score of the year at semis, the second highest the night before, and those scores were up almost 20 points compared to the first few competitions of the season. So there is value in feedback and seeing yourselves improve. I was amused, listening in on the final meeting of the corps, that the director took about 20 minutes to lecture the kids about not being jerks when they got back to their high school or college marching bands. There was even a T-shirt with the "top 10 ways to irritate your band director." My favorite was, "Roll your eyes when you're corrected and then ask, 'Who did you march with?'" :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soccerguy315 Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 All the corps are talented enough to sell their respective products by then. The kids are just tools and the focus is taken off of them. That seems wrong to me. I agree a lot with this... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Brace Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 I agree a lot with this... well, this wasn't apparently the case with a certain snare drummer from HNC. He WAS the focus on finals night. So, the kids and their performances do matter. More than tools. People make drum corps happen and people make mistakes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JGuy1288 Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 I haven't been able to find enough data in one place to finish this project, but I've been looking at the standard deviation of scores in DCI and other judged sports like figure skating, gymnastics and the like. The little bit of data I've been able to crunch shows that the standard deviation of scores in those sports is a lot greater than the standard deviation of the DCI judging. I'm not going to assert that such is the case, because I haven't found enough data on the Internet. But I have a suspicion in the back of my mind that by mid-summer there's a consensus among the judges as to who's going to be ranked where by the time the cook trucks start rolling for Indy, and it's really not possible for a corps to "bust the curve." I think http://fromthepressbox.com/ might have what you're looking for. It has records of scores from most years of DCI, if not every year, along with full recaps for many other years. Also, I think I may have met you this summer, as I marched with your son. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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