"Sabre"-Metrics

[cowtown]

Something the OP hits at that I would add to is while the visual demand went up, the musical demand went down so it seems logical that the judging would more kind to the visual due to the context and perspective of the judges

And I do put this more on the judges than the sheets – there is a lot of room for bleed on the sheets for both music and visual but the bleed that shows up is often more visual

And I have seen some of those prefect visual scores preformed and they were not prefect or not any more prefect than some music scores that didn’t achieve perfect scores

[kickhaltsforlife]

How dare you say they are playing easier music now!!!!!

Seriously people... go back to some early 90s drum corps. Listen... the whole show. All the horn parts (not entirely sure about drums). But they were running just as much or MORE and playing a lot of notes, very well.

Today it's run around... and most sections are playing potato notes and unison "effect" rhythms for most of the show. Yes there are exceptions... but those exceptions DO NOT get the credit they deserve in the music captions for their book and performance. Crossmen come to mind for me. There is no much more than the melody going on in their shows, not to mention the style that they do well now, and they don't get credit. But musically they were the MOST underrated corps last year. Visual I thought was overrated... except for the color guard, which is one of the top in the activity. But I'm sorry.... staging was okay, integration was pretty good... but the drill itself??? Meh... at least it wasn't the scatter drill that tends to win championships often....

[mingusmonk]

The current sheets call upon both visual and music judges to understand the impact of each other's demand.

http://www.dci.org/news/view.cfm?news_id=5bc74534-fd5c-43c6-a28d-78c928fdd00a

The music execution judges are asked to consider "simultaneous or layered responsibilities."

The music analysis judges are asked to evaluate achievement including "range of musical, physical and environmental challenges."

The visual execution judges are also asked to consider "layered responsibilities" and "musical challenges" as they relate to visual.

The visual analysis judges are asked to include "challenge of the overall environment" including challenges in music.

So, as written, all of judges have elements of crossover. In my exposure to current tapes and judging content (and of course, IMHO), as a whole the music judges do a much better job understanding and factoring in how visual demands can play into music, as the sheets require. Visual judges, not nearly as much or as well

End result:

Visual = strictly visual

Music = Music with an understanding/consideration of visual

NOTE: I am talking about demands and execution and not GE related concepts of visual design and implementation as it relates to the musical content. Obviously that consideration is happening.

Edited February 6, 2013 by mingusmonk

[MikeN]

How dare you say they are playing easier music now!!!!!

Seriously people... go back to some early 90s drum corps. Listen... the whole show. All the horn parts (not entirely sure about drums). But they were running just as much or MORE and playing a lot of notes, very well.

For drums... different *kind* of difficulty these days. The drum vocabulary is so much different. As an example, Crossmen's '92 Puma snare feature had 22 flams in the first 8 bars. Carolina Crown's 2010 Danzon No. 2 had 21 in the entire song. However, Crossmen weren't having to play crossovers and essentially 32nd note runs (16ths in what is really double time) while tangoing. As someone who collects DCI drum scores, I firmly believe trying to compare drum difficulty is apples and oranges.

Mike

[charlie1223]

Interesting facts. Would the .25 discrepancy in lower music scores be because Music is more scrutinized BECAUSE it is more of a focus than visual? And that visual is probably more forgiving in errors than music because it is less of a focus and scrutinized less?

[corpsband]

Evaluating music has been around far longer then evaluating drum corps visual elements. It's no surprise that music scores are more consistent. I don't believe that Hostrauser's analysis inevitably leads to visual being more "important" than music. What wins is the sum of the spreads, not the absolute number. If the visual subtotals for the top 5 are all within a tenth of each other

A 29.2

B 29.1

C 29.0

D 28.9

E 28.8

but the music totals are lower but have larger spreads

A 28.5

B 27.9

C 28.9

D 26.5

E 28.0

the music score is more important (although it's lower in an absolute sense) because the spread is greater. You don't say visual was more important because 29.2 >28.9. Music was more important because (28.9-28.5) > (29.2-29.0) .

I think what H's analysis emphasizes is that the visual captions are far more variable in both actual execution and adjudication. There are probably larger differences in what takes place visually on the field corps-to-corps. And there's probably less consistency in the actual numbers assigned. They seem to crash into the top of scale more frequently.

If you want music to "count" as much as visual, do you want larger spreads from the music guys or smaller spreads from the visual guys?

Edited February 6, 2013 by corpsband

[matt_carstensen]

actually Plan, at the highest levels of band, you often see the same visual centric focus

May I reference Tarpon Springs here?

[Jeff Ream]

The current sheets call upon both visual and music judges to understand the impact of each other's demand.

http://www.dci.org/n...8d-78c928fdd00a

The music execution judges are asked to consider "simultaneous or layered responsibilities."

The music analysis judges are asked to evaluate achievement including "range of musical, physical and environmental challenges."

The visual execution judges are also asked to consider "layered responsibilities" and "musical challenges" as they relate to visual.

The visual analysis judges are asked to include "challenge of the overall environment" including challenges in music.

So, as written, all of judges have elements of crossover. In my exposure to current tapes and judging content (and of course, IMHO), as a whole the music judges do a much better job understanding and factoring in how visual demands can play into music, as the sheets require. Visual judges, not nearly as much or as well

End result:

Visual = strictly visual

Music = Music with a LARGE understanding/consideration of visual

NOTE: I am talking about demands and execution and not GE related concepts of visual design and implementation as it relates to the musical content. Obviously that consideration is happening.

BINGO with a bolded edit

[Jeff Ream]

May I reference Tarpon Springs here?

pick many

[kickhaltsforlife]

For drums... different *kind* of difficulty these days. The drum vocabulary is so much different. As an example, Crossmen's '92 Puma snare feature had 22 flams in the first 8 bars. Carolina Crown's 2010 Danzon No. 2 had 21 in the entire song. However, Crossmen weren't having to play crossovers and essentially 32nd note runs (16ths in what is really double time) while tangoing. As someone who collects DCI drum scores, I firmly believe trying to compare drum difficulty is apples and oranges.

Mike

That's what I figured. Thanks for explaining though.

FWIW... I like the old stuff better... seemed more musical??(I know some will argue) I just hear a lot of ramming notes today... that you can't hear in the dome anyway... just sounds like a constant buzz roll!!

I also feel like drum lines play it more safe now? Especially when it comes to volume... there was some awesome in your face stuff going on! One thing about nowadays, with pit amplification, I really enjoy that added layer to the sound. At impact points the pit isn't limited to all the loud banging things anymore... you can actually hear some pretty awesome stuff going on in the pit on the keyboards.

Basically overall I feel with the way things are judged now, we are losing the music in drum corps and the marching activity in general. I really do feel like a change to just judging music, and just judging visual might be needed. That way a corps cannot get away with focusing on just one aspect of the activity. Yeah, it is set up 50/50 right now.. but we know it isn't being judged that way, so we need to enforce that.

My question is, how do we do that without losing consideration of simultaneous demand and layered and environmental responsibilities?

Do the sheets need to be changed? Or is it the judges themselves that have to change?