Time to unplug drum corps

[CaballarosJr.]

Regarding amplification and electronics.

Why don't you stop relying on cheating and go back to real Drum Corps where the performers training, talent and ability is what the crowd and judges hear and is judged. How about the instruments create the sound not a sound engineers board ? How about playing music people without masters degrees in music education can understand. Maybe instead of "themes" that requires pages of information to read and understand like Crown's empty box, we have songs like "Let It Be Me", "Ice Castles", "In the Hall Of The Mountain King", "Autumn Leaves", "Music Of the Night." songs that most everyone knows.

Discussions of electronics used in Drum Corps is pathetic. Why not have a system where doing bad stuff actually is subtracted from a corps score? Where it matters if people are cracking notes. There could be judges with score sheets on clip boards keeping track of people out of line, out of step, equipment not caught, cracked notes. Maybe they could make up a name like tics. That would require year long practice every weekend and once a weekday night practice-not just computers designing drills with performers using APPS to figure out what to do.

Maybe we could have high school band members being in corps with members from their cities, not like a Canton corps that practices in Memphis and has only a few members who actually lives in Ohio. And heaven forbid, let's have maybe VOLUNTEERS. We could have local circuits of corps, maybe 6 or 7 corps per metropolitan area giving a million or so youth members being called the best youth organization by TIME, LIFE, ABC, CBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, every newspaper, every local council, every governor, every congress member Presidents from Johnson to Reagan. Maybe bring back the days when Drum and Bugle Corps was second only to both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts combined in total number of member.

Maybe we could have drum corps every year take hundreds of thousands of youth kids from Jets and Sharks lifestyles into being doctors, lawyers, engineers, governors, mayors, legislators, CEO's. Not just be a source on music and performance majors resumes whose parents. make hundreds of thousands of dollars

Maybe we could have drum corps where everyone goes to local schools, lives on the same street, gets together at someones back yard to practice until neighbors want to go to sleep. Not flies on planes to rehearsal sites.

Maybe we could have what we had before George Hopkins took over Drum Corps.

It's time to unplug drum corps.

Edited May 28, 2013 by CaballarosJr.

[N.E. Brigand]

I too dislike the A&E. Make sure you attend a DCA show this year, since you won't hear drum corps unplugged after 2013.

The rest of your side is too broad.

[DrumManTx]

Hey look, another topic of this type! Nothing we haven't heard before...

I love it the way it is, regardless of how the shows are designed, I love it.

Things change, get over it. Posting a billionth thread rehashing what a ton of other people have before you will do no good.

Edited May 28, 2013 by DrumManTx

[jjeffeory]

Regarding amplification and electronics.

Why don't you stop relying on cheating and go back to real Drum Corps where the performers training, talent and ability is what the crowd and judges hear and is judged. How about the instruments create the sound not a sound engineers board ? How about playing music people without masters degrees in music education can understand. Maybe instead of "themes" that requires pages of information to read and understand like Crown's empty box, we have songs like "Let It Be Me", "Ice Castles", "In the Hall Of The Mountain King", "Autumn Leaves", "Music Of the Night." songs that most everyone knows.

Discussions of electronics used in Drum Corps is pathetic. Why not have a system where doing bad stuff actually is subtracted from a corps score? Where it matters if people are cracking notes. There could be judges with score sheets on clip boards keeping track of people out of line, out of step, equipment not caught, cracked notes. Maybe they could make up a name like tics. That would require year long practice every weekend and once a weekday night practice-not just computers designing drills with performers using APPS to figure out what to do.

Maybe we could have high school band members being in corps with members from their cities, not like a Canton corps that practices in Memphis and has only a few members who actually lives in Ohio. And heaven forbid, let's have maybe VOLUNTEERS. We could have local circuits of corps, maybe 6 or 7 corps per metropolitan area giving a million or so youth members being called the best youth organization by TIME, LIFE, ABC, CBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, every newspaper, every local council, every governor, every congress member Presidents from Johnson to Reagan. Maybe bring back the days when Drum and Bugle Corps was second only to both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts combined in total number of member.

Maybe we could have drum corps every year take hundreds of thousands of youth kids from Jets and Sharks lifestyles into being doctors, lawyers, engineers, governors, mayors, legislators, CEO's. Not just be a source on music and performance majors resumes whose parents. make hundreds of thousands of dollars

Maybe we could have drum corps where everyone goes to local schools, lives on the same street, gets together at someones back yard to practice until neighbors want to go to sleep. Not flies on planes to rehearsal sites.

Maybe we could have what we had before George Hopkins took over Drum Corps.

It's time to unplug drum corps.

I generally dislike synths in Drum Corps as well, but I think you're going to be called out on here. Maybe not as most performers are moving in right about now, but it's going to be a interesting read.

[BRASSO]

Regarding amplification and electronics.

Why don't you stop relying on cheating and go back to real Drum Corps where the performers training, talent and ability is what the crowd and judges hear and is judged. How about the instruments create the sound not a sound engineers board ? How about playing music people without masters degrees in music education can understand. Maybe instead of "themes" that requires pages of information to read and understand like Crown's empty box, we have songs like "Let It Be Me", "Ice Castles", "In the Hall Of The Mountain King", "Autumn Leaves", "Music Of the Night." songs that most everyone knows.

Discussions of electronics used in Drum Corps is pathetic. Why not have a system where doing bad stuff actually is subtracted from a corps score? Where it matters if people are cracking notes. There could be judges with score sheets on clip boards keeping track of people out of line, out of step, equipment not caught, cracked notes. Maybe they could make up a name like tics. That would require year long practice every weekend and once a weekday night practice-not just computers designing drills with performers using APPS to figure out what to do.

Maybe we could have high school band members being in corps with members from their cities, not like a Canton corps that practices in Memphis and has only a few members who actually lives in Ohio. And heaven forbid, let's have maybe VOLUNTEERS. We could have local circuits of corps, maybe 6 or 7 corps per metropolitan area giving a million or so youth members being called the best youth organization by TIME, LIFE, ABC, CBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, every newspaper, every local council, every governor, every congress member Presidents from Johnson to Reagan. Maybe bring back the days when Drum and Bugle Corps was second only to both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts combined in total number of member.

Maybe we could have drum corps every year take hundreds of thousands of youth kids from Jets and Sharks lifestyles into being doctors, lawyers, engineers, governors, mayors, legislators, CEO's. Not just be a source on music and performance majors resumes whose parents. make hundreds of thousands of dollars

Maybe we could have drum corps where everyone goes to local schools, lives on the same street, gets together at someones back yard to practice until neighbors want to go to sleep. Not flies on planes to rehearsal sites.

Maybe we could have what we had before George Hopkins took over Drum Corps.

It's time to unplug drum corps.

I'm as old as dirt, but I have no problem, for example, with the proper amplification of the sound of a solo. I see nothing artificial about the process at all. We all go to rock concerts or jazz festivals and whatnot where the voice or the instrumentation is mic'd so that the audience in back can hear it. My ears are not as good as they used to be, so if a Corps wants to mic' a brass solo from the field to me in the stands so I can hear it better, I'm cool with it. The Bluecoats had a mic'ed brass solo a few years back and I could hear it better than if it was not mic'd. Other Corps have done so as well.

Now, having said this, I am in agreement with you that the Thunderous Goo we oftentimes get from the electronics really can be an annoyance, and whenever superficiality is introduced into the shows, it lends a level of artificiality that I could live without. I like when the music I am hearing in Drum Corps is coming directly from the performers on the field, and not piped in from somebody else from somewhere else and from another place and time.

Edited May 28, 2013 by BRASSO

[bill]

I too dislike the A&E. Make sure you attend a DCA show this year, since you won't hear drum corps unplugged after 2013.

The rest of your side is too broad.

Depends on which corps are going to "plug in"; the Kilts are not planning on it.

[crownisking]

[charlie1223]

Cool Story Bro.

I love A&E!

I don't think you need a music degree to understand Christmas Music, Phantom of the Opera, Madame Butterfly, Malaguna, Fanfare for the Common Man, Pines of Rome, Earth Song and Im Sexy and I know it. (All of which were used in shows last year). So it begs the question which songs/shows specifically were you confused by?

Globalization, get used to it.

Local drum corps? Where everyone goes to the same school? And lives on the same street? And practices until late at night? HELLO, that's called highschool marching band and there are thousands all over the country doing exactly what you said under the exact conditions you prefer.

[BRASSO]

Maybe we could have drum corps where everyone goes to local schools, lives on the same street,

And wouldn't it be great if that local Church that once was there sponsoring the local Corps hasn't been bulldozed and in in its place we find Condos, Apartments, Banks, Middle Eastern Restaurant, etc and whatnot ? Raise you hand here if you're over 50 and still currently live in the same neighborhood that your local neighborhood Drum Corps was in when you grew up. For better or worse, time marches on, and most of us left these neighborhoods behind long ago too if we're honest about it. Some stayed put. But the overwhelming numbers left these neighborhoods too.

Edited May 29, 2013 by BRASSO

[Fran Haring]

Regarding amplification and electronics.

Why don't you stop relying on cheating and go back to real Drum Corps where the performers training, talent and ability is what the crowd and judges hear and is judged. How about the instruments create the sound not a sound engineers board ? How about playing music people without masters degrees in music education can understand. Maybe instead of "themes" that requires pages of information to read and understand like Crown's empty box, we have songs like "Let It Be Me", "Ice Castles", "In the Hall Of The Mountain King", "Autumn Leaves", "Music Of the Night." songs that most everyone knows.

Discussions of electronics used in Drum Corps is pathetic. Why not have a system where doing bad stuff actually is subtracted from a corps score? Where it matters if people are cracking notes. There could be judges with score sheets on clip boards keeping track of people out of line, out of step, equipment not caught, cracked notes. Maybe they could make up a name like tics. That would require year long practice every weekend and once a weekday night practice-not just computers designing drills with performers using APPS to figure out what to do.

Maybe we could have high school band members being in corps with members from their cities, not like a Canton corps that practices in Memphis and has only a few members who actually lives in Ohio. And heaven forbid, let's have maybe VOLUNTEERS. We could have local circuits of corps, maybe 6 or 7 corps per metropolitan area giving a million or so youth members being called the best youth organization by TIME, LIFE, ABC, CBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, every newspaper, every local council, every governor, every congress member Presidents from Johnson to Reagan. Maybe bring back the days when Drum and Bugle Corps was second only to both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts combined in total number of member.

Maybe we could have drum corps every year take hundreds of thousands of youth kids from Jets and Sharks lifestyles into being doctors, lawyers, engineers, governors, mayors, legislators, CEO's. Not just be a source on music and performance majors resumes whose parents. make hundreds of thousands of dollars

Maybe we could have drum corps where everyone goes to local schools, lives on the same street, gets together at someones back yard to practice until neighbors want to go to sleep. Not flies on planes to rehearsal sites.

Maybe we could have what we had before George Hopkins took over Drum Corps.

It's time to unplug drum corps.

Move along... nothing to see here... move along...