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DCI membership votes overwhelmingly to allow ALL brass instruments in


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So an orchestra playing in an less than ideal venue has to compensate for being away from their proper home by using microphones. OK.

But outdoors, drum corps are in their ideal venue, one where they can shine and demonstrate their amazing ability to create a beautiful sound that thousands can hear out in the open and without amplification.

Vocalists in drum corps need a mic to balance with the brass/percussion...and instruments such as marimbas and vibes soound much better with amplification than without (all IMO of course).

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Vocalists in drum corps need a mic to balance with the brass/percussion...and instruments such as marimbas and vibes soound much better with amplification than without (all IMO of course).

Vocalists in drum corps. Hahahhaha. Bandos

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Ranks right up there with using audio and synthesizers. Nothing says drum corps like mono-sounding stereo phonics echoing about a football field. Now, we get to dilute it further by using concert brass insurments. Before long each corps will sit in their concert formation and play from sheet music. I hear the new term for this will be called the "wind ensemble."

Honestly, why would anyone or any group want to re-invent drum corps into something it is not? The attraction to drum corps is its purity and simplicity used to create amazing complex sounds, melodies and visual effects completely unaided by electronics or concert brass.

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I've got to disagree. When I was in high school marching band in the early 1970s, there were just two "corps style" bands in the state of Illinois...the Dundee Scots and Herscher. (A couple years later, Irving Crown, Dundee's neighbor, became hot.) Now, it seems every band is what we would have called "corps style" back in the day. What happened? Corps members went out into the marching band world and took their training to the bands, and directors started recruiting such people to keep up with the other bands.

Michael, Michael, Michael, my friend. You fail to mention the third, and the best '70s "corps style" marching band in the state of Illinois. The one that appeared in exhibition while they tabulated scores at Whitewater in 1971, before D.C.I. existed. The one that did the same at numerous drum corps shows in the early '70s. The one that marched in competition at Auburn High School in Rockford with the Phantom Regiment and the Des Plaines Vanguard, the victor to be decided by crowd acclamation, and the marching band won. The band that battled the Dundee Scots tooth and nail at the time, and beat them. Herscher's director, Dale Hopper, wrote musical arrangements for this band. The band whose director, Rchard C. Davis, and members assisted the band director at Dakota High School, Ken Miller, who went on to become the first band director at "hot" Irving Crown.

The band that had former members march in the Phantom Regiment, the Blue Stars, the Madison Scouts, the Kilties, the Troopers, and the Geneseo Knights, and had former members on the staffs of the Phantom Regiment, the Blue Stars, the Cavaliers, and the Geneseo Knights. Before you and I competed with each other in the summer of '75, at my first Blue Stars winter marching rehearsal, Bobby Hoffman asked me what drum corps I had marched with, and with a smile I told him "I never marched drum corps, I marched in . . . (you may remember the answer from when I related this personal anecdote to you) . . . (oh, and I was on the staff of the Cavaliers when you composed the opener "Jade," in 1983) . . . The Rock Falls Marching Rockets. We marched military "corps style" better than some corps, and many of us went on to march in corps, and some to instruct the Marching Rockets and other bands, as well as corps. I was a saxophonist turned baritone player before I graduated from high school - as preparation to march in drum and bugle corps. I firmly believe that woodwinds belong in marching bands, along with concert french horns, trombones, and Sousaphones. (Sorry Dan B., but all forms of bass clarinets, along with all double reeds, should not even be marched in bands. :mellow: They should march in the guard, or play saxophone. :smile: ) It's good to read your thoughts, Michael, on this momentus occasion, as you have a unique perspective, above the fray, from whence to view it.

Pardon, please, the vigorous defense of my alma mater's place in Illinois marching band history. We were American Legion, V.F.W., and "state" champions of that era. Those days are gone. I fear the golden years have passed for drum corps, too, and it's sad. "The future looks not so bright to me . . . ."

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Michael, Michael, Michael, my friend. You fail to mention the third, and the best '70s "corps style" marching band in the state of Illinois...The Rock Falls Marching Rockets.

Didn't mean to forget Rock Falls. Perhaps it's a bit too close to me as you know my only sibling—my deaf, blind and mute brother whom I love more than anyone or anything in the world—lives in a group home in Rock Falls and I go out there to see him once a month.

Two days before Christmas, I had dinner with BeenThereDoneThat and two of his friends from Rock Falls HS band, and I'm planning to be there on March 2 for Rock Falls' Percussion-Palooza.

I remember seeing a video of the Rockets in the mid-1970s and was blown away, but I never saw them live.

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What you're saying is that competitive marching bands (with woodwinds) are in fact drum corps.

With instructors, band directors and designers from drum corps, marching bands often have as much drum corps DNA in them as do drum corps. As for marching bands having woodwinds and drum corps not having woodwinds...that's kind of not so true anymore. Drum corps has woodwinds, but we refer to them as synthesizer patches. Why bother throwing clarinets and saxophones on the field when you can just push a button and shazam, there they are.

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Anyone who hasn't been happy with synths, should welcome this change as you'll be hearing real instruments instead of synthesized voices they mimmick being. I think this is potentially a very good change for drum corps.

oh i'm sure we'll hear digital versions too

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i think maybe there could be some truth to what you think..at least to some degree BUT as far as the electronics with DCA now adapting them they are here to stay SO what cant some move on..obviously if it trickled over to DCA there seems to be ( and maybe Im wrong ) but seems to be more accept than dont...we just always seem to hear from the nay sayers and thats kind of normal in most activities

clarification DCA has just added amps. not synths ( yet)

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gotcha ! and agree...more time needs to be spent on perfecting it if it's going to be used

why? the judges let it slide year after year.

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Vocalists in drum corps need a mic to balance with the brass/percussion

No they don't. There were lots of vocalists in drum corps before amplification, but it was understood that, just as you'd never be able to hear, say, one contra solo while the rest of the group was playing forte, you'd only be able to hear the vocals in special circumstances. It works that way in symphony orchestras too, you know.

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