Metamora, IL 7/12

[skywhopper]

I don't think I've written a review this detailed before. Hope it's interesting. Tried not to be too negative about my pet peeves, but I'm sure some snuck through.

I was on the 50 about 21 rows up (out of 24). Not high enough to get a great view of the visuals, but high enough not to get blasted back by the amps. My wife and nine-year-old daughter, who like drum corps and go to a show or two each summer with me, but who aren't obsessed over it like I am, were with me.

One thing I noticed was how many of these corps had cymbal lines on the field. Legends, Crossmen, Spirit, and Vanguard all had four cymbal players on the drum line, and all used them to great visual effect. Not sure if these were just the corps that are using cymbals or if there's a trend this year. Hope to see more of it, honestly.

Racine Scouts: Impressive sound and visuals considering the tiny tiny size. Two guard, maybe 10 horns. Three pit. One snare, one tenor, three bass drums, IIRC. The show was only about five or six minutes long. Loved the drum major's robot-style salute.

Legends:

- Spent a lot of time (too much, IMO) facing backfield to the detriment of their music effect

- Only three guard was surprising.

+ But those three did really great stuff with flags, rifles, and sabres.

+ Great musical selections! The Debussy was really well done. Reich and Whitacre, too. Much to love.

+ Impressive brass and percussion lines. Grrrreat sound out of the pit.

Overall I was really impressed with these guys. With a bigger guard and some better field placement, they will be a real threat. My daughter loved this show and declared it her favorite both at intermission and at the end of the night. So that ain't nothing.

Crossmen:

- I wasn't very high up, but even so the visuals were muddled. Maybe part of the problem is the all black uniform, not sure, but it felt like everyone was cramped for most of the show and there wasn't a lot of apparent variety in the visuals from this vantage point.

- The color of the guard uniforms I did not care for.

. I could see the synth player playing, but I never heard the synth. Not sure if it was a power issue or just the mix.

+ Loved the texture of the brass. Early on it sounded muddled, but I think it was just really thickly scored, especially with the flugel part in there.

+ Music and arrangements were outstanding. I love the music in this show. This will definitely be on the permanent playlist after I get the finals CD this year.

+ Sweet percussion line. Maybe my favorite to watch of the night. Sounded great to me, but I'm not a drummer, so I don't really trust my judgment.

+ Great guard. All of them on rifle for quite a while with some big unison tosses. Really impressive.

I have zero complaints about the music here. Could be my favorite music of the evening. And it sounded really good. I heard very few problems in the brass. Major major improvement in sound from last year's show, to my memory. The visuals are less impressive, at least from the 20th row. But I really really like this show. Well done, Xmen!

Spirit of Atlanta

- Weird guard uniforms, although I do like the outfits of the two featured guard at the beginning of the show.

- Way too much synth and sound effects throughout the show. Very distracting. Lots of theremin-like sounds playing unison with the trumpets didn't really fit. Lots of synth-y sounds didn't evoke noir for me.

+ Best flag designs of the night.

. I can't trust my ears any more, so I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative. Great percussion feature with the snares playing on the legs of the stools the guard was holding up for them. BUT, I have no intuition for how that would actually sound, and so I'm not sure what I was actually hearing. It sounded amped, as if either the stools were miked, or the snares were just miming playing the stool legs and the sound was a sample. Neither one of those seems likely, so it was probably just really loud, louder than I would expect. But you just can't know with the current rules. If it's 100% just acoustic stool-leg-drumming then it was awesome! If the stools are somehow miked, then it's fun but kind of cheesy. If it was supplemented by synths or a sample or if they were miming and the sound was 100% a sample, then I'm really disappointed.

+ Super loud and clean brass. My wife specifically mentioned the quality of their hornline.

- Brass book felt thin to me. Big impact points were often power chords, and at least once just a unison.

+ Good clean visuals even from our mid-level vantage point. Nice spread across the field.

+ Great music selections. Familiar tunes with a common vibe.

+ The theme really ties together across the music, the guard, the flags, everything. Very well done on the overall design.

Overall I was really impressed by their brass, but the impacts, loud as they were, felt thin to me. I much preferred the sound of the Crossmen. My wife, though, was pretty certain that Spirit's hornline was a big improvement over Crossmen, so probably it's just a matter of taste. I don't doubt Spirit's brass line was cleaner and more technical, but I enjoyed Crossmen's a lot more. Neither me nor my wife cared for the electronics in this show. I felt they rarely blended well, and often were a distraction.

Troopers

+ Excellent music choices. Loved China Gates. I recognized some other music as well, but I didn't know I was familiar with the rest of the music, so I'm not sure what it was that I heard.

+ My favorite guard uniforms of the night by far.

- No road tonight, I guess because the grass was wet. I think the show benefits from having it there.

+ Infinity chord FTW. The crowd went WILD.

- Twice in the show--at the opening and then again near the end--there's a tape playing of some bells. Meanwhile, the pit players are all standing still, doing nothing, and there are some chimes sitting right there that could *easily* have made basically the same sound as the tape. What is that about??

+ Didn't notice the synth too much besides the outrageous bells sample.

+ Lots of great brass impacts. Good ending. Overall I loved the show design.

+ AWWWWESOME bari solo.

This is a Blue Stars event and lots of Blue Stars come from around the area, I believe. But I honestly felt Troopers had the best crowd connection of the night. I had been underwhelmed with this show from the Fan Network (save for the Infinity Chord) but it was really great in person.

Santa Clara Vanguard

. Awesome drill only comes through so-so at the level we were sitting at.

- Heard a surprising amount of thunderous goo and other synth action. The goo in particular, though, stood out above other corps, but that might have been because...

- The brass line was freakin' QUIET. I felt like none of the impact moments were anywhere near as loud as any of the other World Class corps at the show tonight. Not even close. It wasn't just control, it was just too soft. Out of balance with the pit and the drumline soft. They looked like they were blasting, but it sounded like someone had turned down the brassline in the mix.

- I also finally understood some of the complaints about the hornline's performance--I noticed lots of sloppy playing in the brass that I just hadn't picked up from the cinecast and the Fan Network.

+ Great drumline, obviously.

+ The ending sequence is absolute killer, visually and musically.

I know that's a lot of negatives, but you pick the most at the shows you love the most, at least I do. This is my favorite show this year design-wise by a mile. And the music book is phenomenal. I hope the brass can clean it and get loud. It's almost as if only a third of the corps is even playing. That makes no sense, but that's what it sounds like in terms of volume. Lots of people have complained about the music being a barrier with the casual audience, but I will say that my wife, who generally *hates* music of the "type" SCV chose this year rated this show as her favorite of the night. And I thought Vanguard was really connecting with the audience by the end of the show. Certainly the guard's interaction with the brass players was well received. And the set in the closer where the cymbals do the V got several verbal compliments, "Niiice" "Awesome" etc.

Blue Stars

. Scaffolding is interesting and used well at the beginning of the show, during the percussion feature, and on a couple of guard moves (eg rifle spin off the top of the scaffold down to another guard member on the ground), but I think it makes a lot of clutter for how little it's used in the end, and it does feel like it cramps the corps into a tiny part of the field.

+ Blue Stars drumline is probably my favorite in terms of visual style. Totally disciplined and uniform while smooth and unrobotic. Engaging to watch, and apparently they play pretty well, too.

+ Bassoon synth solo about 1/3 through the show has been replaced with an awesome bari soloists. :worthy: THANK YOU!!

- String synth solo about 2/3 through the show is still there. Bad string patch, and not a challenging part for the synth player. I think it could work as a mello/flugel duet maybe.

- At the beginning of the show, the amps were very noisy (like, hissy fuzzy noisy), and there was apparently a problem with one of the speakers. Not sure if they fixed that or just unplugged that one, but anyway, even so the sound coming through the PAs was just bad. It was muddy and also way too loud.

+ Brass was loud loud LOUD! And sounded great.

- But the brass and synth didn't blend well at all. Maybe the noisy PAs were part of the problem, but I don't think that clean amps would have totally addressed this.

+ Drill is amazing. Very similar in a lot of ways to last year's show, but that's totally a good thing.

- Lots of new drill this week means that a lot of it was sloppy sloppy sloppy. eg Company front at the end had about 10 yards worth of brass on the right side WAY out of line.

The scaffolding makes the field feel a little cramped, but not too bad. The drill works really well, in general. The visuals were just as good from the 20th row as they seem to be from the high cam recordings on Fan Network, which is not something that could be said about the other corps.

My non-musician wife was actually more vehement in disliking the electronics in this show than I was. I had even made a point of not talking about that kind of thing with her prior to the show so as not to color her opinions. But she said it really detracted from the show for her. She would have rated Blue Stars as the best show of the night had the synths and samples not ruined it for her.

We didn't stay for the encore or the scores. I haven't examined the caption scores yet. I wanted to write this all up before I took a look.

[shaners]

Stellar review!

Thank you

[jwillis35]

Thanks for the thorough review!

[TerriTroop]

I love the format of the review, thank you for all of the thought you put into it!