Cavaliers Hornline

[Slow Adam]

I believe their approach has been the same in November as it has been in August. Play with a quality sound first and never, ever play past the point (i.e. louder) where you make a less than perfect sound. Why would you not do this?

How do you get better at anything (music, sports, etc.) without pushing yourself beyond your capabilities?

Was the snare line playing clean rolls at 160+ bpm in November? Probably not. Should they have stopped doing it because they weren't producing quality sound?

Should a beginner trumpet player not practice upper and lower register because a bad sound was produced on first attempt?

[Abbevillekid26]

Gee, doesn't every fan at every show pay hard-earned cash for a ticket to THAT NIGHT'S performance? If I go to any other musical or theatrical performance in the second week of that show's planned eight-week run, I expect to see as much emotion and dynamics in that performance as in the final performance.

You want to REHEARSE with great control and not much volume or minimal dynamic contrast, great. But I'm getting tired of watching flat, unemotional performances with minimal dynamic contrast from the Cavies until a few weeks before finals. And the fact that they never get slammed by the Music GE judges early in the season for doing this is just laughable.

I completely agree if every corps is not completely clean and perfect by July 1st I want my money back.

That is what you're saying right? If their dynamics aren't always finals-level excellent then they should get penalized and it's like they're rehearsing out there?

How is playing quieter at first different from having an easier ending or slower tempos or dirt visually or musically?

[76strad]

Personally I find that the Cavaliers hornline to my seems dynamic, as in that if you look at Crown their goal is to completely dominate, As for the Cavaliers, such as 007 volume was pretty good in my view. I see their volume of sound driven on how physically demanding the show is. Samurai I didnt hear alot of wow moments, but the drill was off the wall. In my view they march such hard drill that at times volume is second nature to lookung clean, in my book of course.

[DAvery]

Was the snare line playing clean rolls at 160+ bpm in November? Probably not.

If it was my line, I would not be playing rolls at 160 until rolls at 140 were clean.

Should they have stopped doing it because they weren't producing quality sound?

Yes. Why would you keep playing rolls at 160 if it sounds like crap? You think it's going to magically clean up? Start slow and gradually speed up.

[roosevelt]

If it was my line, I would not be playing rolls at 160 until rolls at 140 were clean.

Yes. Why would you keep playing rolls at 160 if it sounds like crap? You think it's going to magically clean up? Start slow and gradually speed up.

Yeah, but there is a flip side to that argument. Rolls at 140 feel different in the hands than they do at 160. The amount of rebound and use of the back fingers may be different enough that cleaning a roll at 140 may not help you much at 160 (in some circumstances).

We see this kind of stuff all of the time in drum corps. People will write the drum book and guard work in the beginning of the season when the opener is at 160 and then at the end of the season when it has been reefed up to 180 to "increase effect" the drum parts feel different in the hands (i.e requiring a different approach to the instrument) and the guard work doesn't fit or looks silly because it was meant for a slower tempo (like watching cheerleaders do their cheers to the fight song when it is too fast).

This has a similar affect on what we are talking about with the horns.

If you do everything in a controlled manner and working on balancing, blending, tuning, and cleaning at a messo forte for most of the season until you "get it right" than turn the volume up you are probably going to be in for some problems unless you have super mature and talented players. You can't simply turn the volume up on a horn line like it is a stereo. What it takes to play (and move) at those top volumes takes practice and development. When your approach has been the texas band model of "everything is in the box, and no stuck-outs" you have these performances that are emotionally uncommunicative (see the last few years), because they are too afraid to step outside the box.

To me, what the cavaliers have done the last number of years has really not been a brass approach, but an ENSEMBLE approach to listening and blending (which they did really really well). The problem with that though is when you lack the talent and training from the individual members to be able to play controlled for most of the season and then let it loose later in the season, than you are in for a world of hurt - and I suspect that the talent level from 2002-2006 was probably a few notches above what they had from 2007-2009. So, when your approach is about eliminating stick-outs (i.e. an ensemble approach) you are kind at the mercy of the weaker players in the line when it comes to playing loud.