Stu Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 I understand the desire for a corps to honor an anniversary season by playing something from their past. However, on a normal basis, with millions of musical choices available, there has always been a tendency for corps to latch on to a few musical pieces and repeat those selections (especially multiple times amongst multiple corps). Is it because the corps staff thinks that the audience wants stuff they know and are comfortable with? Is it out of fear of trying something new? Is it out of Laziness? Please throw out some reasonable explanations for this to occur when there has to be thousands and thousands of non-played charts out there the audience would love to hear! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Boo Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjeffeory Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 I understand the desire for a corps to honor an anniversary season by playing something from their past. However, on a normal basis, with millions of musical choices available, there has always been a tendency for corps to latch on to a few musical pieces and repeat those selections (especially multiple times amongst multiple corps). Is it because the corps staff thinks that the audience wants stuff they know and are comfortable with? Is it out of fear of trying something new? Is it out of Laziness? Please throw out some reasonable explanations for this to occur when there has to be thousands and thousands of non-played charts out there the audience would love to hear! I doubt there are literally "millions of choices" available to perform, but the simple reason is that most of the music out there aren't worth performing. Yes, there's a lot of music out there, but much of it is not really very good. One should really program music that works the best for what they want to do. Also, as far as popular music goes it's sometime difficult to obtain all the rights to perform and, ahem, sync it to video. Just IMHO... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRASSO Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 I understand the desire for a corps to honor an anniversary season by playing something from their past. However, on a normal basis, with millions of musical choices available, there has always been a tendency for corps to latch on to a few musical pieces and repeat those selections (especially multiple times amongst multiple corps). Is it because the corps staff thinks that the audience wants stuff they know and are comfortable with? Is it out of fear of trying something new? Is it out of Laziness? Please throw out some reasonable explanations for this to occur when there has to be thousands and thousands of non-played charts out there the audience would love to hear! I still can't figure out why so many people eat cheerios every morning, when there are thousands and thousands of other choices out there for the morning palate. Like waffles. Why ? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjeffeory Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 I still can't figure out why so many people eat cheerios every morning, when there are thousands and thousands of other choices out there for the morning palate. Like waffles. Why ? I've come up with another reason: Much music doesn't translate well to drum corps. With the addition of synth, that's changed a little. I, however, do think there are a bunch of good choices that haven't been tried by some corps which should be done soon. We can look at the suggestions that come up here every so often. There are many fresh choices on the list! What we need is more corps and more time to get to the worthwhile pieces. This ignores the fact that there are some worthwhile pieces coming out each year. The Mackey stuff is something that comes to mind that HAS been performed by corps. The Holsinger stuff is something that also comes to mind as being done in the past that was "fresh" at the time. Now that seems to be old to me.... I still like it though... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted September 29, 2011 Author Share Posted September 29, 2011 (edited) According to Boo it is audience driven just like top 40 radio; according to Brasso it is a comfort issue just like Cheerios; according to jjeffeory it is because most all music is garbage. Sorry, but not buying any of those arguments and here is why: Design teams do not pole the audiences to make choices like radio stations; while the audience does set taste limits they do enjoy stuff never heard before, for example, they had never heard Empire State of Mind before and went nuts; and any person who has spent any time in a music library listening to various CDs, or has spent time at a used CD store listing to music, will attest there are thousands and thousands of great charts out there which are wonderful and transferable to the field but have never been attempted. So again, sorry, but I am not buying into those reasons! Edited September 29, 2011 by Stu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRASSO Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 (edited) According to Boo it is audience driven just like top 40 radio; according to Brasso it is a comfort issue just like Cheerios; according to jjeffeory it is because most all music is garbage. Sorry, but not buying any of those arguments and here is why: Design teams do not pole the audiences to make choices like radio stations; while the audience does set taste limits they do enjoy stuff never heard before, for example, they had never heard Empire State of Mind before and went nuts; and any person who has spent any time in a music library listening to various CDs, or has spent time at a used CD store listing to music, will attest there are thousands and thousands of great charts out there which are wonderful and transferable to the field but have never been attempted. So again, sorry, but I am not buying into those reasons! I would gauge that a lot of the music played by Corps this season has never been heard before by the general audience member in a Drum Corps setting... or at least not for awhile anyway. Much more than half of it, anyway. The instant recognition of the familiar music for a lot of the audiences was probably the exception, not the rule. So I'm not getting this angle that you think that unfamilar music not played by Corps before is not getting its fair share of the musical selections that Corps are offering. Edited September 29, 2011 by BRASSO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted September 29, 2011 Author Share Posted September 29, 2011 I doubt there are literally "millions of choices" available... According to techcrunch.com here is a fact for you: Over 10 million different tracks are available on just iTunes alone. So acoording to you the overwhelming majority of them are not good and not transferable to the field. Really? You have listened to all 10 million charts? Link: http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/06/itunes-sells-6-billion-songs-and-other-fun-stats-from-the-philnote/ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stu Posted September 29, 2011 Author Share Posted September 29, 2011 I would gauge that a lot of the music played by Corps this season has never been heard before by the general audience member in a Drum Corps setting... or at least not for awhile anyway. Much more than half of it, anyway. Theinstant recognition of the familiar music for a lot of the audiences was probably the exception, not the rule. So I'm not getting this angle that you think that unfamilar music not played by Corps is not getting its fair share of the musical selections that Corps are offering. Please reread my opening post. I never stated that corps were "not" playing new material each season. My question was why there is a rather high percentage of repeated charts (go to corpsreps.com, look through the charts played by "all" corps each year, and you will see my point about a few charts being played multiple times by multiple corps) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRASSO Posted September 29, 2011 Share Posted September 29, 2011 (edited) According to techcrunch.com here is a fact for you: Over 10 million different tracks are available on just iTunes alone. So acoording to you the overwhelming majority of them are not good and not transferable to the field. Really? You have listened to all 10 million charts? Link: http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/06/itunes-sells-6-billion-songs-and-other-fun-stats-from-the-philnote/ Since 1963, The Connecticut Hurricanes have played " Magnificent Seven " at least 24 of those years in competition. ( as recently as 2008 ) Nobody's complained so far, near as I can tell. Edited September 29, 2011 by BRASSO Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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