University Drum Corps International

[CaballarosJr.]

So, in about 3 to 5 years most of you will have Master’s Degrees in Music or Performance Arts, auditioning for your dreams of being the first chair in the London Philharmonic or San Jose Ballet. You will state that you were a member of say, the 2011 DCI Champion The Cadets. The director in the auditorium will yell back either “What is DCI?” or at best, “Aren’t they the corps that got a one point penalty for saying Amen ?

Drum Corps can’t survive with the business model, economic barriers to entry and well, elitist mentality requiring one to be a college music or performance arts major to even audition. While George Hopkins vision has wiped Drum Corps off the American Landscape. My vision is to have a Drum Corps for every city school district and university.

That audition embarrassment could be avoided by going to your Music or Performance Arts School VIP’s, maybe with 150 classmates out in the hall you appealed to at class, to incorporate Drum Corps, into the regular course offering either as a requirement or an elective that would count for at least 12 credit hours for those who actually competed.

If you can’t tell your deans, professors and classmates why they should be in a Drum Corps, then how are you going to tell the orchestra or dance director in a few years what you got of this thing you call Drum Corps and how it helps them? If it’s good for you, then why not all of your classmates?

Not only would it be embarrassing in 2015 to 2017, but it would be a waste of the $3,000 annual drum corps tuition, plus about $2,000 and lost wages opportunity cost of maybe $4,000 ($9,000 total estimated sacrifices for every year) you participated in an activity that less than a statistically immeasurable number of American musicians who remember since Danny Boy, and even less than the American population is involved. An activity where 95% of those who were involved pretty much think no longer exists.

In a filtered survey of those who claim to know something about drum corps. Most everyone would recognize 27th or Bridgemen, few would recognize the Carolina Crown, the “modern version of 27th.”

I do concede that if your dreams of being in a prestigious music group are crushed and you become like a Glee’s “Mr. Shuster.” Being in a Drum Corps would give you a competitive advantage over a non Drum Corps member, for a job as a High School Band Director to pay the bills. Especially if your football team sucks and the band has a booster club and needs a band worth being in competition.

If you march at the age of 19 then 20 until aging out at 21 you have sacrificed $27,000 of your parent’s money. Do you want that to be in a country filled with university drum corps in a friendly rivalry with youth DCI corps or in a country that thinks Drum Corps no longer exists and will so think when you graduate..

Aspects of the conflict of adding woodwinds, electronics, amplification, educational versus entertaining shows et al. will be decided by the fans with my revolutionary (sorry, One Life To Livers for using that word) scoring system that I’ll be able to get to describing in full gear with my Legacy Collection volumes that arrived yesterday at the library.

For now we have to get more Drum Corps in this country and get Drum Corps back to the popularity of the 1977 with its 700 corps or even more fantasized the thousands of corps on the night of the IC Reveries Sit Down Protest in 1966.

We have to get back to the days where the 1977-1980 PBS Broadcast where Phantom was the best but not champions. When the judging atrocity was viewed by 14 million or more viewers (needing no advertising but only word or mouth) all of who knew someone in a corps. When PBS got more pledges in the then 4 hour all 12 corps broadcast then the entire year. When every year a few dozen more corps per state would debut and could compete with borrowed instruments and a bingo game a week. When a music director of a prestigious orchestra attended shows to fantasize soloists ‘like’ Gerry Noonan, Dan Brady, or the McArthur Park soloist showing up for an audition after commencement.

Maybe we can get back to the days of the 1966 I.C. Reveries where, apparently, I have been e-mailed, there were a few thousand Drum Corps and every city and suburb had a drum corps that would have created Super Bowl like ratings if VFW/AL and CYO ever had the epiphany of unity back then to get Drum and Bugle Corps on maybe The Wide World of Sports or PBS.

On any given non winter day after school until about 1979, one could walk down nearly any side street (maybe 1 in 10 homes) and hear a drum corps youth practicing their corps music or see some rifle twirlers and flag twirlers practicing their head choppers.

The generation right before me biggest tragedy was not connecting drum corps with television until 1974. VFW/AL and CYO failed to capitalize on the sounds of Americas landscape as much as George Hopkins has destroyed Drum Corps.

Now we have a tragedy where drum corps, for all practical purposes, is no longer known to the public because of not just Drum Corps artistic but public disconnect. Where, since the Carolina Crown (the only notable success) started in 1990, only 6 other corps have survived. Where a below CW Ratings watched the final DCI Broadcast (835,000 viewers, translating to about 300,000 households) on ESPN2 simply because there weren’t and still aren’t enough people in Drum Corps. At least 95% of Drum Corps Nuts from before the 1990’s Preppie Invasion/Educational/Amped Up Era didn’t want to watch a bunch of preppies do something that their local high schoolers could do. That is when Drum Corps was ending being a social welfare organization, not an educational enhancer.

The possibility of going back to the days where everyone knew someone in a Drum Corps lies with you collegiates starting the process by convincing your university administrators to start what I am calling University Drum Corps where your age out year is when you graduate. In order to get competitions on field and on TV this summer, the already established infrastructure of the NCAA would temporarily coordinate events.

Eventually there would be an University Drum Corps International along with Drum Corps International with at least 75% of members 18 years or younger with the remaining 25% being either from colleges way too small for a drum corps or not even collegiates.

Just about anything regarding college competition gets fairly decent TV ratings. Usually there are many different games broadcast at the same time with each regional network covering tri-state-ish colleges. While Ohioans are watching The Buckeyes against the Wolverines, Bay Areans are watching Standford versus Berkeley. There are about 15 or so other regional contests with about 300,000 viewers per region. It’s unlikely an Ohioan would care about a Stanford/Berkeley contest in anything.

It’s amazing how anything college related, no matter how obscure it would appear gets decent ratings, simply because students and alumni just want their colleges to win something, even stuff that Erin Andrews used to cover, like Women’s Lacrosse, before she set up the peephole. People just browse channels, find something their school is doing and just want them to win even if they aren’t quite sure what is the sport.

UDCI would follow the same marketing strategy, leading to possibly 4,500,000 viewers (300,000 per region times 15 regions) on a Saturday afternoon. With the success and exposure of UDCI, there would be broadcasts on Sunday of corps with The Cadets, Blue Devils, Phantom along with hundreds of post 2012 Jr. Drum corps that would be formed. The more people involved in Drum Corps the more viewers, the more spectators, the more advertising revenue, the more corps, thus the less shows a single corps will have to be in. Thus lower costs due in part to less mileage to travel and days on the road.

During broadcasts would be an occasional crawler or pop up reading “To Find or Start a local youth Drum and Bugle Corps got to dci.org.” Links and searches would be there.

Except for a UDCI and DCI week long national competition, most shows would average 8 corps for a two hour broadcast with commercials. Advertising revenues

Would be split between the corps, UDCI and DCI. The DCI allocation would be used entirely for start up grants, financial assistance for struggling corps seldom broadcast, so that those millions of people whose drum corps died with The Preppie Invasion could start a DCI corps.

The application process would be quite extensive focusing on eventual financial self independence, long term strategies, maybe some artistic ideas, but most important the necessity of having a drum corps for the youth of its city. Someone like Theresa Bonfiglio with past Drum Corps experience with the Zingale’s, Ray Perez etc. would have a phenomenally better chance of getting a grant to restart the 27th Lancers than someone with a good idea.

There are two futures for drum corps. The total end with few even knowing anything after the 1980’s or in becoming once again part of the American Landscape. To use the mantra of the Garfield Cadets “The Future Is Here Now.” Either forget this idea and have fun wondering when your band director job will be cut by levy failure, or forget getting coffee on the way to the dean’s office (with classmates if necessary) and enjoy your auditions in 2015 and 2017 with a director who just watched a 45.8 Rating UDCI/DCI Super Bowl like broadcast.

[soccerguy315]

[CQuinn]

Geesh! Give it a rest already!

[NR_Ohiobando]

Apparently you didn't hear us in the other thread... so I'll just quote myself.

Hi there, current student teaching Music Education Major here.

Here's what my schedule looked like last semester. (Fall)

Compared to my peers and my past semesters' schedules, this actually has more free time than most music majors' schedules.

Keep in mind that I didn't take marching band this semester. Had I taken marching band, 4:00PM - 5:45PM EACH DAY would have been taken up out of my schedule.

Monday:

8:30AM - 9:20AM Classroom Methods

9:30AM - 10:20AM Choral Methods

10:30AM - 10:50AM WARM UP (oboe)

11:00AM - 12:00PM Meet with Counselor

12:00PM - 1:00PM LUNCH

1:00PM - 3:00PM PRACTICE (oboe)

*break*

5:00PM - 6:00PM PRACTICE (oboe)

7:00PM - 8:00PM DINNER

8:00PM - 10:00PM Wind Symphony (oboe)

10:00PM - ? HOMEWORK

Tuesday:

8:00AM - 11:15 Field Experience (teaching middle schoolers)

11:30AM - 12:20PM Music of Indonesian Cultures

12:30PM - 1:20PM Woodwind Quintet (oboe)

1:30 - 2:20 Band Methods

2:30 - 3:45 Wind Symphony (oboe)

4:00 - 5:00 LUNCH

5:00 - 6:00 PRACTICE (oboe)

6:00 - 7:00 HOMEWORK

7:00 - 8:00 DINNER

Wednesday:

8:30AM - 9:20AM Classroom Methods

9:30AM - 10:20AM Choral Methods

10:30AM - 11:30AM WARM UP (oboe)

11:30AM - 12:30AM LUNCH

12:30AM - 1:00PM PRACTICE (oboe)

1:00PM - 3:00PM HOMEWORK

3:00PM - 4:00PM OBOE LESSON (OBOE!)

*break*

6:00PM - 7:00PM DINNER

7:00PM - 8:00PM PRACTICE (oboe)

8:00PM - ? HOMEWORK

Thursday:

8:00AM - 11:15 Field Experience (teaching middle schoolers)

11:30AM - 12:20PM Music of Indonesian Cultures

12:30PM - 1:20PM LUNCH

1:30 - 2:20 Band Methods

2:30 - 3:45 Wind Symphony (oboe)

4:00 - 5:00 LUNCH

5:00 - 6:00 PRACTICE (oboe)

6:00 - 7:30 HOMEWORK

7:30 - 8:30 Woodwind Quintet (oboe)

8:30 - 9:30 DINNER

9:30 - ? HOMEWORK

Friday

*break*

? - ? LUNCH!

2:30PM - 3:30PM Woodwind Seminar

Yeah. I don't have the ####### time.

Also, my university doesn't have the ####### money. For example, I get charged 5 cents of our own money for every page of paper we print off of a university computer/printer. I don't think they are going to shell out money for a new traveling ensemble.

[MotoSurfBass]

[garfield]

What a jumbled, rambling mess smothered in nostalgic goo unrelated, and unrelatable, to current day reality.

There was more reality and real potential solutions in the Restructuring the BOD thread, and that one had to be put to sleep by the mods.

Ironically, your solution of "scholastic music" was exactly the solution premise of GH and the G7, even while you blame him for the activity's demise. But, at least, their solution started in the high school ranks to feed the university-aged membership so prized by the corps.

Further, as budget cuts reduce the demand for arts and music majors, the number of colleges offering such degrees will decline and, along with it, the number of students to fill your imagined UDCI ranks.

Relying on public budgets to demand and fund arts education is a quicker death to the activity than you imagine is real.

The activity needs to be funded by business, not by college tuition, public grants, private donations, or bingo. The sooner the support base realizes that the better chance it has to save and grow drum corps.

[Dan Balash]

My vision is to have a Drum Corps for every city school district and university.

So, let me get this straight: You want every school district in the US to have a drum corps? There's probably ~7,500 school districts in the United States (879 in my state of Illinois alone), and that doesn't include private schools, home schooled, charter schools, and universities.

Oh, and how is Chicago Public Schools going to get one drum corps out of the 500,000+ students in their school district?

Edited February 5, 2012 by Dan Balash

[Toby]

So, let me get this straight: You want every school district in the US to have a drum corps? There's probably ~7,500 school districts in the United States (879 in my state of Illinois alone), and that doesn't include private schools, home schooled, charter schools, and universities.

Oh, and how is Chicago Public Schools going to get one drum corps out of the 500,000+ students in their school district?

CPSA, CPSB, CPSC.

[Toby]

For all intents and purposes, you infer too much about what might happen, and it's leaning heavily towards the rosy end of the spectrum. Budgets already are being cut across the board, NCLB is making more districts lose money because of achievement gaps, and states/cities cannot raise enough funds to pay for salaries, buildings, buses, etc.

Universities are charging more for tuition than before, citing lack of state-subsidies and you expect more funding to cover staff for the ensemble? Universities have a responsibility to many forms of research, studies, and other academic advancement. Funds that can towards a biochemical lab for the study of cancers will be priorities over music and fine arts schools, unless it's gifted as such.

Thanks for making me realize my head can hurt more.

[GUARDLING]

mods shut this down....lol.this same posting with a different title is in another thread theres just more added in this one. Hey Mr CaballaroCaballero.....you dont seem to answer anyone ( Unless I missed it ) you just love to rant and run..thats cool...lol