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Members have changed so why not the activity


Tupac

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it's no surprise there's going to be a higher concentration of talent for the most successful corps.

and probably why we'd be hard pressed to find any other competitive activity out there where just 3 competitors ( Corps ) have won over 80% of all the titles since 1976. It is what it is, and where " change " is not in the wind in this respect it would appear.

Edited by BRASSO
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Having three sons of various ages who have since gone on into adulthood and parenting through all the good, bad or indifferent; kids don't change---and never have. They are still capable of being the pride of their parent's loins and a moment later...knuckleheads. Just like we all were.

What has changed is the huge amount of non drum corps activities available for them today; a selection of activities not "in the cards" for kids years ago.

In my opinion, it all changed decades and decades ago---when someone in the activity said to themself........."Hey, I can make some money off of this."

Edited by bill
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If your theory is

"there were WAY more kids back then so there were actually way more of all kinds of kids (including Talented Kids) back then"

then yes you *did* make that assumption (even if you weren't aware of it).

To conclude from that statement that I know what point you are attempting to make is inaccurate. I havn't a clue what your point is.

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With fewer units necessitating the need for many to travel, members are more likely to choose their desination corps. If you have to travel to audition and call-back camps, winter camps, training and tour, it's no surprise there's going to be a higher concentration of talent for the most successful corps.

Also, the world is smaller- people don't feel as pressed to march "local" anymore as they used to feel in DCI in particular.

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1. Its also undeniable it seems to me that there also was more talented guard , brass, percussion performers BITD than today on the competition field too. ( its a numbers game )

2. That said, the top DCI Corps of today are much larger and have much, much higher levels of talent in them than the top DCI Corps of BITD... for certain, imo.

3. None of these things are contradictory, nor mutually exclusive either, imo.

4. BITD competive Drum Corps had BOTH more talented performers performing in the activity, AND less talented performers, performing in the activity.

The foundation to what you are saying is that their were more members marching in drum corps in a given year BITD than there are today (let's just assume that's true even though I believe that number is irrelevant because there are without a doubt more students participating in the marching arts now than there have ever been. Including ALL marching arts not just drum corps) And then you assume that the distribution of talent would be exactly the same across the whole activity no matter the year. You assume this when you say that "BITD drum corps had both more talented and less talented performers."

So lets pick random numbers and say BITD there were 6000 drumcorps marching members in any given year and 4000 today. (again, the numbers are to indulge your assumption). Then lets say that 1/3 are talented (2,000) and 2/3 are not talented (4,000) BITD. Why would you assume this ratio will be the same today? It could be that today the ratio of "talented" and "untalented" to be much larger lets say 2/3 talented (2,667)and 1/3 not talented (1,333). In this case there would be far more individually talented musicians in drum corps as whole than there ever were BITD. The ratios are arbitrary and your assumption could be proven correct if the ratios were flipped but there is really no way to know the ratio of talented vs. untalented BITD without only making an educated guess. But from the description of kids being picked up off the street and given a horn to play I can imagine that there were more untalented members than talented members.

I do not have numbers and given more concrete data you may be right but the speculation here is enough to make your "undeniable" statements very questionable. But you then have to also take in information like the increased teaching standards in high school music programs and the increase in high school marching bands over the years to atleast come to the conclusion that the relevant pool of talented music students interested in drum corps has been experiencing an increase. That is to say the total pool may have decreased but more members of that pool are of the talented variety. This distorts the ratios that you think should remain the same so that the ratio of talented students to untalented students is actually higher (as in my example).

AND on top of that, this doesn't even go into what would be considered talented today compared to BITD which no one wants to get into..... So, bottom line is that your assumptions are wrong in that they cannot be assumed.

Edited by charlie1223
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My point is that if you tried to introduce some of these "new" band type rules with members in early days of DCI I think the members of the corps may not have been so happy with the corps morphing into a band type activity, but because most members are now coming from high school and college bands it doesn't seem to be a big deal to the current members.

In the 60's & 70's corps members always corrected anybody calling them a band, I don't think that holds true for current members.

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By the 1970's, the kids who marched in the elite corps probably could read music and had some musical training. I remember when DCI was first broadcast, one of the commentators mentioned that many of those marching were either majoring in music or were planning to do so when they entered college. In the American Legion/VFW days, that premise would be true, but DCI was formed because drum corps outgrew the existing structures. And of course, cranks were complaining at that time too much had changed, but that's another story. I do think the OP is correct in the contention that drum corps kids did not come from school music programs. In the Boston area, it was considered, at least in drum corps circles to be more of an honor to be in the worst drum corps imaginable than a high school band. Even the members of the bands in Boston's CYO circuit avoided high school bands and with both the drum corps and CYO bands, participants were told they could not participate in school programs and remain with the drum corps or CYO band..

At the time that many kids in drum corps came from the cities and were "kids from the streets" as the OP contends, a good number of kids who played high sports had no intention of going to college. Today most high school athletes have their eyes set on college. So should we change the rules of basketball, baseball, football, etc. to suit the new student athletes? I understand that drum corps is different and agree that the activity has evolved and in many cases had to evolve, but if we want drum corps to be the best, the activity has to set the standards and kids have to meet the standards. The activity cannot change to accommodate the marchers, at least in WC.

Changing the instrumentation in drum corps is not going to increase membership nor will it add to the number of corps competing, and since most WC corps have more kids who audition than actually march and most of the top 12 refuse more people than they accept, membership is not an issue. Instrumentation changes are largely for musical purposes. We'll just have to see how it works. My guess is that musically it may work, but I think it will be visually distracting, but that's fro another thread.

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So lets pick random numbers and say BITD there were 6000 drumcorps marching members in any given year and 4000 today. (again, the numbers

No lets NOT start with this faulty beginning point, because then what follows begins to unravel for you in your assessment. For example, in the mid 60's there were way more marchers doing Drum Corps in both Juniors and Senior Corps than a difference of only 2,000. ( Senior Corps had most of the upper level talent over the Juniors at this stage by the way..with all the Senior Corps marching over 21 year olders, average age about 30-35 and on the whole the best Senior Corps as good as, or better than, many of the Junior Corps then ). The difference in marcher numbers in the mid 60's in both Juniors and Seniors was easily 15 to 1 over the numbers of today... as there were over 700 combined competitive Corps in the activity at this stage and way more than the 2,000 marcher numbers that you incorrectly want to assume ( Corpsreps lists only about 60% of the total Corps in existence at this timeframe by the way ). As a result of so many more marchers, there were both more talented marchers marching drums, brass, guard then as well as much less talented marchers in drums, brass, guard doing competitive Drum Corps than today. Your assessment that most marchers couild not read music is inaccurate. There were actually more kids that could read music in the 60's doing Drum Corps than today doing Drum Corps because there were lots more doing Drum Corps back then,.. which also meant many more then that could not read music as well ( when they came in off the street ) were likewise marching. Ergo, much more diversity back then as it relates to overall marcher talent. Yes, the ratio of talented marchers doing Corps today is better than the 60's, but that is not what I said, nor replied about. Today, the talent tends to be concentrated in fewer Corps, with the top Corps today, better in talent levels in their Corps than the top Corps of the earlier eras like the 60's for example. But my statement is accurate, in that there were more talented marchers ( and less talented marchers ) doing Drum Corps in the 60's than today. As one that was present during the eras we are comparing and contrasting, and can make that observation comparison, I believe that I have the real difference in numbers accurately and can make such an informed assessment in the numbers. How old were you in the mid 60's, by the way ? and what were your thoughts on the numbers doing competitive Drum Corps that you were observing then compared to the total numbers you are observing doing competitive Drum Corps today ? Just asking by the way, because if we are discussing something in a comparison we both want to be certain that both of us were present when the comparisons of 2 ( comparisons on anything by the way ) observable things are being made between the two, thats all.

Edited by BRASSO
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The difference in marcher numbers in the mid 60's in both Juniors and Seniors was easily 15 to 1... as there were over 500 combined competitive Corps in the activity at this stage and way more than the 2,000 that you incorrectly assumed. As a result of so many more marchers, there were both more talented marchers marching drums, brass, guard then as well as much less talented marchers in drums, brass, guard doing competitive Drum Corps than today. As one that was present during the eras we are comparing and contrasting, and can make that obervation comparison, I believe that I have the real difference in numbers accurately and can make such an informed assessment. How old were you in the mid 60's and what were you thoughts on the numbers doing competitive Drum Corps that you were observing compared to the total numbers doing competitive Drum Corps compared to today ?

"As a result of so many more marchers, there both more talented marchers marching drums, brass, guard then as well as much less talented marchers in drums, brass, guard doing competitive Drum Corps than today"

Brasso, what you are failing to understand is this idea of ratios and that ratios change from decade to decade in the activity. Even if there were 10,000 more marching members BITD than there are today it DOES NOT tell you anything about the MAKEUP of said group. You assume... "well there were more overall marchers so therefore there were more individually talented members and more individually untalented members" But that is logical fallacy!! One does not imply the other no matter how large the total difference in the groups may be!! You need more concrete information about the members than simply there overall numbers!!!

You need to understand that you CANNOT say that unless you have a definitive ratio of talented vs. untalented members BITD. Maybe the ratio was 1:1 or maybe it was 1:100. Maybe everyone was talented or maybe no one was talented. Your personal observation doesn't matter and this discussion is useless if you are not logical about the statements you make. Also, you cannot make any such statements because we have not defined what "talented" actually means and comparing the talent of this generation to another is pointless. So, you can say whatever you want a justify it anyway you want but in the end it can NEVER be the undeniable fact that you claim it to be (that there were more individually talented members BITD than there were today). Your justification is not logical.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure there are now thousands of marching bands around the country with thousands of more students learning marching brass, guard and percussion than there ever was in the history of this nation. Regardless of talent, that's certainly more significant.

Edited by charlie1223
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