Is there a rule against B flat picollo trumpets in DCI?

[Soprano Martin]

Before writing anything for a picc, find out if you have someone that can sound decent on one.

This exactly

[azmello96]

Well, is there a rule against picollo trumpets in DCI? The most widely manufactured piccolo trumpet is already in B flat. Its tubing is exactly 1/2 the length of the trumpet drum corps already use (its pitched 1 octave higher). It seems to me we lost a minor third on the high end of the sop range in changing to B flat horns. I was looking into trying some choir arrangements for B flat horn choir and I found that we can't hit the top of the soprano range that choirs sing. But if we added the piccolo trumpet we could play the high notes. Any thoughts?

No, The Academy has one on the solo at the beginning.

[randomnoise]

In DCA, you can only play on a Picc with 3 valves or less. We wanted to use a 4 valve and were told we would get DQ'ed, so Larrie Dastrup had to learn his parts on a 2 valve G picc.

Edited July 15, 2011 by randomnoise

[luvah]

I suspect there may be a few players in DCI up to the challenge of the piccolo trumpet. All you need is 3. The high pitched sound will cut and balance. The difficulty of playing it at the amateur level is probably the reason its so uncommon, but when the alternative is clarinets, I think a few trumpet performance majors might be found that would be capable of playing it. We've got the woofers, now we need some tweeters!

[Piper]

I suspect there may be a few players in DCI up to the challenge of the piccolo trumpet. All you need is 3. The high pitched sound will cut and balance. The difficulty of playing it at the amateur level is probably the reason its so uncommon, but when the alternative is clarinets, I think a few trumpet performance majors might be found that would be capable of playing it. We've got the woofers, now we need some tweeters!

I think that's true. I can remember one of our brass instructors telling his line "Look, you can take a million baritones playing a G with fangs out, but if a sop cuts in at the high end of the register you're going to hear it".