CrunchyTenor Posted August 15, 2009 Share Posted August 15, 2009 The fight song is the school song. Are there no drum corps that play a specific song that represents their identity? Not that this has anything to do with what makes a band into a drum corps. I would relate corps songs more to the school's Alma Mater. Thnink about it...Send in The Clowns (SCV), Elsa's Procession to The Cathedral (Regiment), You'll Never Walk Alone (Scouts), I Will Go On (BK), etc., etc. These are all songs that reach for the heart, not the hormones. Garry in Vegas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horizon Posted August 15, 2009 Share Posted August 15, 2009 The fight song is the school song. Are there no drum corps that play a specific song that represents their identity? Not that this has anything to do with what makes a band into a drum corps. That's exactly it. A fight song/alma mater represents a whole school. A corps song represents just the corps itself. A drum corps exists wholly for itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Other Mike Posted August 15, 2009 Share Posted August 15, 2009 That's exactly it. A fight song/alma mater represents a whole school. A corps song represents just the corps itself. A drum corps exists wholly for itself. But, what about organizations that have several groups ? Send in the Clowns means nothing to Vanguard Cadets ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jhallman Posted August 16, 2009 Share Posted August 16, 2009 A marching band is a musical organization representing a school A drum corp is a musical organization representing a region. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRASSO Posted August 16, 2009 Share Posted August 16, 2009 I think it's pretty obvious that band and drum corps have been on a collision course for quite a while. Even as recently as 35 years ago, there were no bell-front baritones, euphoniums, French horns or tubas in marching band. In my HS band, we made our own tri-toms out of one snare shell and two tenor shells (15/17/17). We marched from one picture formation to another to a drum cadence and played a song relative to the picture standing still. My band didn't do any marching while playing until the last halftime show of my senior year, because a group of us (mostly drum corps people) asked the band director if we could design, arrange, chart and teach the show. (Fortunately, we had three weeks to teach it. Those of us who did the arrangements, and the two of us that did the drill charting, had been working on the book all semester before we presented it to the director.) We had bell-up baritones and pretzel French horns. We had sousaphones. It was the drum corps guys and girls in the bands that set this collision in motion. We brought our techniques to the band world, starting with percussion and color guard. (My band had a drill team.) We volunteered, then started getting degrees and jobs as directors ourselves. The instrument manufacturers started creating bell-front brass in Bb/F in response to our demands. Drill teams and pom lines were converted to color guards, and we brought our guard friends in to teach them. Competitive bands started doing major fundraising first to pay additional staff, then support growing programs that started competing regionally, then nationally. Now, I can honestly say I was in the first wave of converting traditional HS bands (and later JHS bands) into corps-style bands. I learned drum corps level drumming in HS, and started my first paid gig as a HS percussion instructor in 1975. But you know what? I still saw them as corps-style, and not as drum corps. For a long time, drum corps was still taught by drum corps veterans, whether they had a degree or not. Somewhere along the way, that line started to blur as instructors with no drum corps experience infiltrated the ranks. I've experienced being a band member and a corps member, a band instructor and assistant director, and a corps instructor and director. There was a difference in expectations, a difference in attitude, a difference in self-image. Those differences are slowly being whittled away, mostly by those that haven't committed to a season or more of marching in a corps. Having said that, I like drum corps, and I like band. Why would I want to give up the unique sound of one for the other? They both have something to bring to the table, something that really can't be completely duplicated by the other unless we allow drum corps to continue to be assimilated by marching band. Please, let's stop the hemorrhaging of the unique sound and experience of drum corps. Let's stop trying to be something else. There's nothing wrong with what we were doing. Nothing was broken. Don't try to "fix" it by introducing band-style instrumentation, and other facets of the band world, that can't replicate the power of brass and percussion as an ensemble, and as an entity. For the last 35+ years, band kids have flocked to drum corps. It was cool to play something different from the standard band instrument. It was a challenge to master the demands of the instruments and the visual program. Changing the instumentation has done nothing to create new corps, or to re-populate the ones that already existed, or to raise the level of performance. That was begun a long time ago by the drum corps kids returning to their band programs and pushing that envelope. What we are seeing now, regarding talent being attracted to drum corps, has two origins: 1) drum corps people infiltrating the band world over the last 35+ years, and 2) less drum corps to audition for. So, if I were to make the definitive statement, there are bands and there are drum corps. They are different. Let's keep it that way, for the good of both marching activities. Garry in Vegas Bravo..... well said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnaheimAlumni Posted August 16, 2009 Share Posted August 16, 2009 But, what about organizations that have several groups ? Send in the Clowns means nothing to Vanguard Cadets ? What a nit-picker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DWEST Posted August 16, 2009 Share Posted August 16, 2009 Please, let's stop the hemorrhaging of the unique sound and experience of drum corps. Let's stop trying to be something else. There's nothing wrong with what we were doing. Nothing was broken. Don't try to "fix" it by introducing band-style instrumentation, and other facets of the band world, that can't replicate the power of brass and percussion as an ensemble, and as an entity.Garry in Vegas Excellent post. I think the music staff are getting lazy. Why spend hours or days perfecting an acoustic effect with the corps, when they can press one key on their bright shiny new red keyboard, thinking their shrill, shrieking sine wave is so awesome sounding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horizon Posted August 16, 2009 Share Posted August 16, 2009 Excellent post. I think the music staff are getting lazy. Why spend hours or days perfecting an acoustic effect with the corps, when they can press one key on their bright shiny new red keyboard, thinking their shrill, shrieking sine wave is so awesome sounding. Granted, it is far from every corps using electronics in this way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Other Mike Posted August 16, 2009 Share Posted August 16, 2009 A marching band is a musical organization representing a schoolA drum corp is a musical organization representing a region. So, kids in corps should only come from that region ? Besides, the Salvation Army band represents what school ? What about The Presidents Own ? And of course the Air Force drum and bugle corps ( is it still around ? ) represents area 51 ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnaheimAlumni Posted August 16, 2009 Share Posted August 16, 2009 To the OP, if it has to be explained to you, then you wouldn't understand. To Estancia, you are right, they are bands because junior drum and bugle corps no longer exist. To Lance, DCI is not a corps, and it does not have(own) any corps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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