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Blue Devils and Mics


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They dont (or choose to not acknowledge" that many of these percussion instruments get different sounds at the lower level with a soft mallet than you do at the upper level with a hard mallet.

Oh, I'm sorry....didn't realize that you needed acknowledgement for that. Of course you get different sound with a soft mallet vs. a hard mallet. I acknowledge that.

I also acknowledge that electronically amplified sound is different from the acoustic sound it attempts to replicate. Try to keep that in mind as the discussion continues.

Of course we could all just hand kids the rock hard acrylic mallets and say "here you go guys.. .play above your eyeballs the whole show". But thats a completely different sound than you get at the lower level with a soft mallet. Listening to older shows where the ensemble is playing some beautiful passage and you hear this tight, hi pitch, "pingy" keyboard sound over top of it drives me insane.

Does the sound of PA speakers driven into distortion drive you insane, too?

Do I love generally seeing brass with a mic? No. Not really. But I am also not so arrogant as to think "oh... look! The blue devils soloist SUCKS because he/she is playing near a mic! I am soooo much better than he/she is because I didnt NEED a mic to be heard"! lol. That attitude is just laughable.

And it's your attitude. I look back through this thread, and the criticism of this idea is couched in the belief that the Blue Devils have "the best soloists in the activity". The only person I see saying that soloists suck, or that unamplified soloists must be better players, is you.

Oh well. I am positive about 1 thing and that is that some people will never be convinced that they are not superior. Closed minds cant take in new information and some people do not WANT to know anything but what they already know.

Talk about closed minds....

Did you ever stop to think that when someone makes the remark that today's soloists "need to be amplified to be heard", that it is not an insult to the soloist, but rather, an acknowledgement of the recent changes in drum corps sounds? We've gone from 128 members to 150. We have 80 horns where there used to be 64. Pits are electronically amplified, and additional electronic instruments add to the density of music scoring. The result of all these changes is that brass soloists might have more other sounds to compete with in order to be heard.

Next time, could you try reading what people post instead of jumping to the conclusion that they're bashing the Blue Devils?

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Do your favorite sports teams run it by you if you approve of a trade or who to sign with the first pick?

Does the NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS or any other governing body set someone up to monitor forums to see how they should determine their rules?

No. And it probably will not happen.

Sorry, this is logical fallacy. Of course the professional sports leagues don't monitor message boards. However, the FANS can and do speak out vehemently, with their wallets. Storied franchises that make unpopular or bad decisions have to deal with losing millions when the fans stay home. Case in point: The Los Angeles Dodgers. Certainly one of the premier clubs in all of sports, and due to craziness in ownership and mediocre (at best) on field performance, they are filing for Chapter 11. Oh by the way, attendance is down almost 20%.

Through June 1, home attendance at Dodger Stadium is down a total of 221,984 from last season, an average 7,161 fewer fans per game. This represents a 16.7 percent overall drop, which is by far the worst in baseball this season.

Do you think that DCI could survive a 20% decline in attendance in ONE YEAR? I think not.

(disclaimer: I am not suggesting that any recent changes could lead to that precipitous of a decline, just wanted to illustrate the point that fans can and do react to decisions made by pro franchises)

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Since people keep repeating this, I will keep repeating my response.

They dont HAVE to be miced. They are CHOOSING to be miced. The players now are just as good if not better than in the past. The choice to amplify the sound is just that. A choice.

Not saying anyone has to like it, just pointing out the difference between "Have to" and "choose to".

my rant was about DCI allowing it to happen. but even though corps are allowed to, they shouldnt.

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Oh, I'm sorry....didn't realize that you needed acknowledgement for that. Of course you get different sound with a soft mallet vs. a hard mallet. I acknowledge that.

I also acknowledge that electronically amplified sound is different from the acoustic sound it attempts to replicate. Try to keep that in mind as the discussion continues.

Does the sound of PA speakers driven into distortion drive you insane, too?

And it's your attitude. I look back through this thread, and the criticism of this idea is couched in the belief that the Blue Devils have "the best soloists in the activity". The only person I see saying that soloists suck, or that unamplified soloists must be better players, is you.

Talk about closed minds....

Did you ever stop to think that when someone makes the remark that today's soloists "need to be amplified to be heard", that it is not an insult to the soloist, but rather, an acknowledgement of the recent changes in drum corps sounds? We've gone from 128 members to 150. We have 80 horns where there used to be 64. Pits are electronically amplified, and additional electronic instruments add to the density of music scoring. The result of all these changes is that brass soloists might have more other sounds to compete with in order to be heard.

Next time, could you try reading what people post instead of jumping to the conclusion that they're bashing the Blue Devils?

Well apparently, you're on the "other side" of this argument. This is good and necessary for civil debate, hopefully it remains that way.

This isn't about the Blue Devils, just about the effort of making the audiences DC experience better. I mentioned BD only to recognize their clear strategy in that direction....not to gain an advantage, but to increase the audience enjoyment. Your response generally, was: "that's absurd, if they have it, it's an advantage".

My original post stated in general terms that the "sound experience" was undergoing somewhat of a metamorphosis. Technology has come available to enhance the sound produced by drum corps in a historically open field environment. I also stated that this technology should not be exclusive to those corps that could afford it but should be managed and provided to audiences like diamond screens, multi-cameras and other venue nuances successfully applied to the activity. It is solely for the enjoyment of the audience. We don't need to get sideways on this, we just need to manage it so it doesn't become one corps advantage. You and some of the other posters on this thread might get bilious when you see anything electronic on the field, but newer fans don't have that burden and more and bigger visual and sound experiences are becoming necessary in a "sensory overloaded" society. In other words....go BIG or go home! :rolleyes:

Edited by Plan9
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This thread got me thinking about a lot of different things...in no particular order.

If you mic somebody to get a different sound and that's an improvement, why shouldn't you add some woodwinds to get a different sound and call that an improvement too?

I guess we'll never really know if opera singers back in the day were a lot better than the current crop at projection because they were more skilled, and I certainly don't know if the use of "acoustic enhancement" in the past 15-20 years in some opera houses means that singers have more subtlety and are "improved" because projection isn't as important. But the electronics in opera houses is surely controversial.

How far do "improvements" have to go before you're talking about something else entirely? Broadway shows are turning to smaller pits and sometimes no on-site musicians at all, just a musical director who coordinates recording music with live performances by a few musicians in off-site soundproofed rooms with headsets and mikes. At the shows I've seen in the past couple of years (not many), there seemed to be a lack of intimacy and an aural sense of music coming from the mouth of the singer. Live Broadway shows these days are perhaps not much more special than watching a musical motion picture in a theater with good surround sound.

I saw a well-known jazz saxophonist in New Orleans a couple of years ago in a small venue -- maybe a hundred seats or so. He spent the first few minutes on stage kvetching to the audio engineer to turn up his mike volume so that, in his words, he wouldn't have to work so hard. Hmmm....

The opera and Broadway examples are, IMO, driven by money. The cognoscenti won't sit in a dead zone in the opera house; Broadway musicians are expensive and ticket prices are already breathtakingly high unless you stand in line for three hours in the afternoon of the day of the show, in which case they're only painful.

The jazz musician was, IMO, just lazy. A few people have mentioned "saving their chops"; I guess his audience that night wasn't worth using his chops.

I'm a traditionalist, but I don't have anything personal invested in drum corps. I was blown away at my first DCI show a couple of years ago, sitting on the bleacher seats at a small college stadium, by the sheer volume of unamplified brass from the field. Having mics and amps everywhere takes away a lot of the wonder and awe of the performance for me, and reduces the show to something determined by (OK, a little hyperbole here...) how far clockwise the guy on the sound board twists his dials.

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Just liked the old idea of knowing that any sound was coming from the performers only... without help. And if a corps was unbalanced, the performers had to make up the difference. I know todays members are very talented, too bad they don't get a chance to show it better. To rip off the old Memorex commercial: "Was it the performer, or was it the guy on the mixing board". :sad:

Well said! This is exactly how I feel about it.

I was blown away at my first DCI show ... by the sheer volume of unamplified brass from the field. Having mics and amps everywhere takes away a lot of the wonder and awe of the performance for me

Also this! And everything you said about live sound versus amped sound indoors. There's a major qualitative difference there. An extremely well miked and carefully mastered live recording can sometimes capture just a little bit of the magic of live sound if it's played back on good equipment in the right room and you're seated in just the right place. But amping a live performance is never going to sound as good as the raw performance itself, because none of those prerequisites is even close to getting met.

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You and some of the other posters on this thread might get bilious when you see anything electronic on the field, but newer fans don't have that burden and more and bigger visual and sound experiences are becoming necessary in a "sensory overloaded" society.

I don't think I could disagree more strongly. If drum corps is going to get attention from those unfamiliar with it, it's going to be because of what's *different* about it than all the electronically enhanced audio and video society is constantly exposed to. Someone's first drum corps show *is* a sensory overload of the kind you can't find anywhere else. That's been true for decades.

The addition of canned synth voices and atmospheric effects that you hear in every other medium begs the question of why we go to see a drum corps show anyway. I come to enjoy hearing the live brass and percussion sounds combined with the amazing visuals. Hearing the pit through the PAs can be fun, but is not worth paying for a ticket. Hearing synth sounds I can make at home are definitely not worth paying for a ticket.

The brass hits are still there in between the synth segues, but a lot of the pro-electronics posters seem to be okay with the idea that someday they might not, and we could just let the corps play at a level that would maximize tone and preserve chops, and then just have the loudspeakers push the volume (this is the argument for amping the pit, right?). If that ever happens, it really will be the end of my days of buying drum corps tickets.

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Seeing as this thread went there…

Electronics are a barrier between the audience an the corps – drum corps really is about the live show, I don’t feel I can fairly judge a show until I see it live and to me electronics just gets in the way…sounds goes in a mic, is mixed and goes back to the audience, mixed and processed through speakers

I worry about corps becoming over-miced, reducing the live experience by forcing too much of the sound/ show through a mixing board. We are not there yet but if it goes too far, may as well just watch the DVD at home

Yeah, I know, this happens with rock bands all the time but there are a few electronic acts that I only saw once because too much of the sound was canned, felt like they hit the start button and just sang over it – so I never bothered with them live again because it wasn’t really live, better to just buy their records. Some of the pre-shows strike me that way, 110 musicians on the field and you’re playing me a tape ?

It’s why so many people hate lip synching stars which, is really only done so that you can get the best possible sound, 'performance' at a show, right?

And that’s why that entire line of argument falls flat to me

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Well said! This is exactly how I feel about it.

Thanks, also started out in the smaller Sr circuit and saw a bunch of corps that were unbalanced in the number of instruments they had (too many sops, small drum line, etc). The better corps found ways to get a better sound/show in spite of the limitations of what they had. They weren't near the top of the standings but it was interesting how they did it. LOL - kinda boring seeing a full corps as that takes away a lot of the challange....

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I saw a well-known jazz saxophonist in New Orleans a couple of years ago in a small venue -- maybe a hundred seats or so. He spent the first few minutes on stage kvetching to the audio engineer to turn up his mike volume so that, in his words, he wouldn't have to work so hard. Hmmm....

The jazz musician was, IMO, just lazy. A few people have mentioned "saving their chops"; I guess his audience that night wasn't worth using his chops.

Ok, as a working jazz musician, I can tell you that your impression is wrong. Assuming that there was a rhythm section on stage with him consisting of bass drums and piano, there is no way a single saxophone can compete with them and make music. Different types of instruments have different abilities to project.

Anyone who plays an instrument well knows that there is a general comfort zone dynamically on that instrument where it is easiest to play. There is room to move dynamically within that comfort zone, but if you get to the loudest or softest range of the instrument, it becomes extremely difficult to to play well. Obviously a great player can play outside of the comfort zone, and likely will in a given performance, but in order to give the best performance possible, the majority of his playing will be within that zone.

Now, having explained that concept, consider the different instruments on stage. With no amplification at all, who do you think will be the loudest within that comfort zone? You guessed it. The guy with the giant sheets of metal that he's striking with a stick will be louder acoustically within his comfort zone than anyone else on stage. Next would be the saxophonist, followed by the piano, and then the bass.

Being a good band leader, the saxophonist probably wants equalize those dynamic differences so that everyone can feel comfortable and be able to think about the music, and communicating, rather than worry about playing loud enough to be heard, or soft enough to not cover anyone up. Sure, you could tell the drummer to play really quietly, but then you limit his ability to respond to you by forcing him to play below a certain volume level at all times. You could tell the bass player to play out, but then you're forcing him to play at fortissimo all the time. If you give the quieter instruments a little boost, then you put everyone on equal footing. If they want to play extremely softly, then can, and everyone will be able to match it. If they want to play very loud, they can, and everyone will be heard. Now the group can make music, instead of playing way out of their dynamic comfort zone just to balance the ensemble.

As for the Saxophonist's "not having to work so hard", that's a very common phrase among working musicians. Don't take it so literally. And if you don't feel like you get your moneys worth if a musician hasn't blown out his chops by the end of the night, then please, do us all a favor, and stop going to our gigs.

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