Demographics of Marching Members Today

[cfirwin3]

Members should be required to march with a corps within their defined drum corps region. If you live in the Midwest, you march with a corps in the Midwest. Drum Corps need more local membership. The current anything goes model is waaaay too costly for all involved.

?

Kids want to march where they want to march.

Are you suggesting that a prohibitive limitation should be placed on young people who have an interest in a high quality youth activity (and motivation to pay) that is already somewhat starved of interested parties?

This isn't some sort of business or major league sports model that is bound to congregational oversight and fairness/monopoly doctrines.

These are performing/competitive educational programs... and like any educational program, if you can pass the test and pay the fee, then you can go wherever you want. Fairness and competition must be created in the outcome of the competition itself... not in regulation.

[Tim K]

Fast FORWARD to the 2015 survey by DCI...these numbers tell a different story

Thanks for this info. I've always wondered how many music majors are music education majors. Perhaps I find this interesting because I spent six years in a classroom (social studies/reading, not music) and am still involved in education to a significant degree. Since music programs can be a catch all activity that at its best includes a wide variety of people and abilities, drum corps experience would be a perfect secondary credential (primary being grades in college, recommendations, student teaching experience).

I do recall hearing on one of Dan Potter's podcasts if I am not mistaken,that more and more marching members are majoring in the sciences and engineering. I've also noticed from profiles provided by the corps of individual members a fair share of marching members attend excellent colleges. To me this shows what I think many of us already know: kids who March drum corps are highly motivated young people.

[Tim K]

Allentown is 30 minutes from NJ

No, Allentown is three hours away from New Jersey on Friday afternoons on the first weekend in August, when there is an accident and one of the EZ pass lanes is not working and everybody leaves work at the same time. At all other times, Allentown is about thirty minutes from New Jersey!

[fireshane1]

I drove 1000 miles, one way, for camps at Phantom Regiment when I marched back in 97-98. From the bottom (any further south and you're in the Gulf of Mexico) of Mississippi to the top of Illinois. 2000 miles in three days is strictly for the young. My old ### couldn't do that now if I tried. Lol

It was a blast at the time, though.

Btw, wasn't a music major.

[MikeD]

Members should be required to march with a corps within their defined drum corps region. If you live in the Midwest, you march with a corps in the Midwest. Drum Corps need more local membership. The current anything goes model is waaaay too costly for all involved.

Potential members may audition for corps close by if they so choose. Nothing to stop them. And no, drum corps does not "need more local membership" given that once a world class corps has their move-in camp, it makes no difference where they members lives. One example is the winking trumpet in Bluecoats...marched Cadets in 2015, Coats in 2016, but comes from Ireland.

[TroopAlum12]

Members should be required to march with a corps within their defined drum corps region. If you live in the Midwest, you march with a corps in the Midwest. Drum Corps need more local membership. The current anything goes model is waaaay too costly for all involved.

Having "more local membership" would destroy some corps that already struggle to recruit talent. To be completely and utterly blunt here, some areas just don't have enough world-class talent to put together a corps that would have any hope of being competitive. That's the cold, hard truth.

This same argument comes up every year from some old Troopers. They all complain that Troopers needs to focus more on getting mostly kids from Wyoming. To which my response always is and always shall be, "if you can find me 150 kids from Wyoming who have the ability to compete at the world class level, then by all means send them to an audition camp."

Troopers moved most of their camps from Wyoming for this reason. Even in 2010 and 11 when we still had the majority of our camps in Wyoming or northern Colorado, there were only three kids from Wyoming in the corps. They did recruit from Wyoming schools. But kids just weren't interested or didn't make the cut. The vast majority of our membership was coming from three areas: Texas, the Pacific Northwest, and Utah. This created a logistical nightmare for the corps, as the only major airport near Wyoming is Denver, two hours away from Cheyenne and four from Casper. So they finally made the decision to move the camps to Texas, which was A) closer to the greatest chunk of our membership and B) allowed for rehearsal at schools right next to a major airport, meaning less money spent by the corps bussing people to rehearsal.

Tell me again how forcing them to only use local kids would help them get back to finals.

Edited September 11, 2016 by TroopAlum12

[Eleran]

Doing our part for "keeping it local" since 2014 - all corps' camps within the home state.

Edited September 11, 2016 by Eleran

[31rabbit]

According to the graphic:

3092 performers invited, 62% responded, so our pool of data is 1904 surveys.
of 1904, 58.6% are First Year Performers, so 1116. which makes 788 multi year members.

of the 1904, the average experience is 1.97 years in any corps.

so to calculate average non-rookie experience Y

(1116x1)+(788xY)=1904x1.97
1116+788Y=3750.8
788Y=2634.8
Y=3.3

so even though the majority of WC performers are in their first year, those who come back after one year are likely to return for 3 or more years.
it may not be interesting, but it is true (if my math was done correctly)

[Eleran]

I would imagine that the percentage of vets from the pool of marchers who did not reply (and that's ~2/5 of all marchers) was much higher than the 41.4% representation within the pool that did reply, which would skew any conclusions about the overall ratio of vets to rookies.

That is my hypothesis based upon (a) human nature that rookies are more likely to obey the call for surveys than vets, because they are more conscientious of complying with perceived rules so as not to jeopardize their standing with the corps, and (b) I saw reminder notes during the Spring to the corps about participation in the survey that showed some of the corps which are most vet-laden at the very bottom of the list for having responded.

For example, the final reminder just a few days before the response period closed indicated that one particular vet-laden corps sat at the bottom of the list with only only a 34% response rate, as opposed to the top three responding corps which had 83-85% response rate. That corps at the bottom was a medalist, while the top three corps had an average finish place of 18.33.

Edited September 11, 2016 by Eleran

[xandandl]

Potential members may audition for corps close by if they so choose. Nothing to stop them. And no, drum corps does not "need more local membership" given that once a world class corps has their move-in camp, it makes no difference where they members lives. One example is the winking trumpet in Bluecoats...marched Cadets in 2015, Coats in 2016, but comes from Ireland.

Didn't Shane march 2 years in Cadets? Not being picky but it shows even more his desire to do DCI. And wasn't his corps in Ireland before Cadets, the Ravens?