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2012 DCA Rules Congress - Baltimore, MD


Glen

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Does anyone have the list of proposal that got approved or failed?

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As I said on there facebook post I never had a problem hearing the pit ... why amp them ... But I'm not the judge, and they know what they are doing.

Modern front ensemble books are quite different today than they were 20 years ago, even in DCA. While DCA is known for "traditionalists", the top handful of shows over the past number of years are not traditional drum corps shows. They're not yet designed to where DCI and BOA have been lately, but they're slowly moving that way. Arranging techniques change along that time as well and there's a big demand on the front ensemble from a music contribution standpoint that's expected from the judges. To be competitive, you have to write pit books that do not lend well to un-amplified sound. To match dynamics with the rest of the corps, you're playing at your head and using much harsher techniques at lower heights to project sound. This is really hard on the instruments and hard on performers' hands.

This is something that should have been done years ago, WGI and BOA figured this out well before DCI even. As for cost, it's quite low. A workable set of mics, board, amps, speakers and cables can be done reasonably. Most high school winter lines and bands can afford the equipment, and their operating budgets are a fraction of most DCA corps.

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You can hear us because we're playing up to our ears. This will finally allow us to play with the musical touch required for today's pit books, prevent unnecessary damage to our instruments (and our bodies), and have a much wider range of possibilities with percussion sounds that DCI has been able to achieve since they added mics (but have sadly moved away from with the use of synths...). They went just as far as I hoped they would.

On the other hand:

This is an outstanding first step. A long overdue one, as well.

Who's right?

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Oh well, amps in pits... *shrug*... now, the question remains how amps affected scoring for the DCI pits. I can see Class A and some Opens not using because of the cost and the larger Opens using because they can afford or find amps to use.

As long as the judges don't have the "they have amps they should get a better score" mind set... *shrug*.

I don't think they will judge on who is richest. But if it came to that, I would lose all respect for DCA.

On the other hand:

Modern front ensemble books are quite different today than they were 20 years ago, even in DCA. While DCA is known for "traditionalists", the top handful of shows over the past number of years are not traditional drum corps shows. They're not yet designed to where DCI and BOA have been lately, but they're slowly moving that way. Arranging techniques change along that time as well and there's a big demand on the front ensemble from a music contribution standpoint that's expected from the judges. To be competitive, you have to write pit books that do not lend well to un-amplified sound. To match dynamics with the rest of the corps, you're playing at your head and using much harsher techniques at lower heights to project sound. This is really hard on the instruments and hard on performers' hands.

This is something that should have been done years ago, WGI and BOA figured this out well before DCI even. As for cost, it's quite low. A workable set of mics, board, amps, speakers and cables can be done reasonably. Most high school winter lines and bands can afford the equipment, and their operating budgets are a fraction of most DCA corps.

Who's right?

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I could see MBI using the Dynasty amps/speakers/mics since they are sponsored by them, and are probably already using it for their indoor group.

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CorpsVets proposed the rule... Not Hoppy...

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