What will help DCI become more entertaining

[MikeD]

Keep running until you're out of firing range. :tongue:/>

[Jeff Ream]

Apparently as close as you can come to intelligent conversation

clarinet and intelligent conversation do not go hand in hand

:tongue:/>

[corps8294]

Eliminating the dizzy spin gong mallet contest during intermission.

[The Other Mike]

What would be a good idea would to actually have intelligent conversation about an activity we all must love to be here. If things don'yt change it will not be around long and you will have to chose cage matches, monster trucks and wrestling.

Please feel free to point someone out that I can have an intelligent conversation with.

[The Other Mike]

I'll get in trouble here (especially as a dinosaur): Better (musically) educated audiences.

While I was going to agree with you, since the title of the thread is about entertaining, I can't.

To ME, entertaining is providing an audiance a pleasurable experience on their level of understanding ( or close to it ) As a somewhat musically educated person, just because I can appreciate and understand what most corps present, it doesn't mean I enjoy it.

[Tim K]

Audiences, at least according to some are too old school, too unsophisticated, and to be fair, some have accused audiences as being snobs and elitists. However, all these people and more make an audience, so how can everyone be pleased and how can we attract new audiences? One answer could come from the world of baseball.

Years back, the Boston Red Sox's farm team the Pawtucket Red Sox could not give tickets away, now they have sell out games. Some who attend the games are diehard Sox fans who want to see the next great players as they move up through the farm system to the major league team. Most are families. The draw: ticket prices are reasonable, drinking is kept to a minimum, the seating is good, and there's ample parking. Some of these issues do not apply to drum corps, but there's also another major draw: it is an event. There are trivia games, visiting celebrities give aways, and all kinds of ways to keep the people in the stands interested.

I'm not sure how this would work for drum corps, but making the moments between corps more interesting could engage the audience. If stadiums have jumbotrons or mechanical message boards, explain the judging, give facts about the corps,etc. Have trivia games to please old schoolers, showcase local musicians that might not have other venues. There are all kinds of ways this can be done and I know that at some DCA shows, this is exactly what happens.

Edited April 12, 2013 by Tim K

[TESB]

that's the only one off in 10 or so years, and really, if BD's percussion hadn't melted down.....

Craziness, just goes to show how much the tenths and spreads matter. 1's and 2's all across the board for bd except in percussion (5) and music ensemble (4), which are probably related since perc can make or break the timing integrity of the ensemble. A single tenth of a point higher in either of the percussion judges' sheets and they would have tied, a tenth in both would have put them .025 above Phantom. A tenth added to BD or subtracted from phantom anywhere else would have made the difference because the perc 1 and 2 were the least weighted columns for which a single judge could have been responsible.

It was entertaining no matter who should have won, and that was even a decade after BD was anywhere close to a threepeat, let alone a repeat.

But certainly what isn't making DCI more entertaining in general is a single winner. Although, in my opinion, BD certainly deserved every gold medal they've gotten since 07, there probably aren't many kids in corps today who marched in or before 07 or 08. What does that mean? Well it probably means that for most of these kids' conscious drum corps lives, all they know is BD winning, winning the entire summer, and winning by a very very healthy margin. Even in 08 they only "lost" twice, and in 11 they were in 1st for like, two of the last three weeks. Idk if there's much to be done about it, you can't force numbers one way or another for reasons as flimsy as 'they win too much'. but it's interesting to think that pretty much all these kids now know is BD is BD and wins because they're BD and it's probably not doing much in the way of entertainment. Just looking at their rosters, it looks like they still have a few holes, so either they're super selective or they just aren't getting kids, because....they don't want to? or they don't think they can? It's not like I'm in the room or anything, but just speculating numbers and whatnot is entertaining for me.

Edited April 12, 2013 by TESB

[Nine White Russians]

I'll tell you how to make DCI more entertaining. Get rid of the stuck up, self-righteous, know-it-all WGI designers/judges!

Get some new blood in the activity. People who are truly open minded and who do not restrict creativity. These self-appointed a-holes

##### about how the rules used to be too restrictive to their creativity...how ironic that these same people ensure that the judging sheets

are written to only reward certain types of creativity, but punish other styles. They also speak of how relative art is...yet, it's only

the art they approve of that gets rewarded. Sadly, most of these "beautiful people" have no clue what art and creativity are in the first place.

So yeah, run them out of the activity and get some new blood in there....but it will never happen.

[perc2100]

doug, the turnstiles make the ultimate determination, not you and I. I have a tough time accepting that selling tickets is not at the top of the list. It IS about money, as ugly as that sounds. In many cases, this activity has kept its heads above water by raising prices to counteract decreasing volume. That has its limits. I'm afraid those limits have now been reached. Somehow, we MUST find more people to buy-in. Even if that means changing the product, or its price. Unfortunately, even WITH those steps, our current economy will be a huge problem. The amount of discretionary income is decreasing. Restaurant business is down in my region. It has nothing to do with the food.

doug, my point is, I'm afraid drum corps needs to move closer to what has shown to "work" for more customers, even if it means some of us will just have to hold our noses until conditions are better for "niche" activities.

In that case, we should look at WGI since they sold out this season BEFORE the week even began! WGI, for whatever reason (hint: mostly because they have a strong root in the scholastic world, which DCI could not really emulate because of the expense of start-up costs) has no problems selling out, and programatically seems pretty popular by your logic of

the turnstiles make the ultimate determination

[perc2100]

that's the only one off in 10 or so years, and really, if BD's percussion hadn't melted down.....

It's the only one off in the sense that it was the only time a corps was stronger musically than visually that won. It's not a one-off in the sense that the corps with the strongest OVERALL performance/program wins. Blue Devils won last year having strong visual AND strong music (same as 2009 when BD won 2 music captions + 3 vis captions & 2010 when BD won everything BUT percussion). Cadets won in 2011 because their music was as strong as their visual (they won 2 music caption and 2 visual captions). None of this is new: best over-all show wins; corps who can get their weaknesses competitive enough so their strengths push them ahead win. Saying, for example, BD continually wins DCI because of visual is a huge discredit of their music with is also constantly Championship-winning or at the very least very competitive. Yes, their visual is a strong point, but their music is also great.

On the flip side, yes Crown is strong IN BRASS, but is weak in percussion AND over-all visual captions (at least last year when they were too far behind BD in all visual captions for their brass line to compensate: remember, they were 6th, in percussion, so really Crown's brass carried them pretty far and even then they were only .1 ahead of BD in brass, .2 in front of BD in Music Performance, and only a few tenths in front of BD in GE Music).