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Should judging be flat?


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Where EVER do you get such a reading of what Guardling wrote? All he said was that the music and visual together maximized the impact of a corps performance, noting both 2-7 and Regiment as examples.

IMO he is absolutely correct. In this idiom, marching/music, it is all about the melding of music and visual, and it really has always been so, even pre-DCI, IMO. Some of the great memories I have of the long distant past are visual in nature, some are musical, but a LOT are a combination of the two.

Unlike the above, I speak only for myself and MHO.

HE LIKES TO BAIT...so he can hear HIMSELF talk..........................im not going down that road again. Ive had a very long career in the activity.....to long I think sometimes....lol...i base my comments on experience,knowledge of others involved at all levels, things actually said to be by piers, judges,directors and yes maybe a little of my own bias ( which I try very hard to put aside ) and I think I'm pretty good at that.

Personally who cares why a person like drum corps, what they see or hear first, what came 1st the chicken or the egg, as long as someone can enjoy it and no analyze it to death. I think thats a judges job to do that.

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wouldnt be so sure of that BUT I could answer that question but im very sure many here dont want to hear it...........theres been a debate for years............do we hear 1st or see 1st....are we audio 1st or visual people 1st......even when the numbers were in favor of music 1st you could rest assure some of the hot coprs of the past ...lets say 27 or PR would still have rocked the house musically BUT never as much as what the visual added............yes even back then

This is a great point

When I marched, one of my instructors "taught" us to employ the "jedi mind trick." That essentially means when a judge is in front of you, and you play a phrase that is performed by the section (i.e. snare section - but FWIW we were NEVER dirty and always played everything perfect all the time) noticeably dirty, you act like you played it clean: you nod your heard triumphantly, cheer out a "yeah" or "woo" or something, etc.

Comically enough, maybe 50% of the time the judge would be fooled, likely because what he was seeing "trumped" what he heard: our reaction caused the judge to doubt what he thought he might've heard wrong. I still teach that to students, and in the band world it works more often than it did in drum corps. And there were other judges who would call us out, or say stuff like, "come on - don't accept that dirt as good" or "ha; you're not gonna fool me, that tenor lick was dirty."

The point being visual often trumps aural.

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"Squat, pivot, squat, turn" is not nearly the same effect even if it does fulfill SD requirements because it adds so little in the way of actual playing technique.

All IMO, of course.

1) that is VERY naive. I don't mean that as a negative, I mean that genuinely you saying that body movement during, say, a percussion feature

does not add nearly the same effect... because it adds so little in the way of actually playing technique

is flat out not really having an understand of exactly what is being attempted, achieved, intent, etc.

2) you can look at videos from Blue Devils 2007, as an example. The battery was playing some roll passage during a feature, while performing body movement. The times I saw them live (including Finals Week), there was a LOT of positive audience reaction. You can hear audience cheering on various YouTube videos & the finals video

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HE LIKES TO BAIT...so he can hear HIMSELF talk..........................im not going down that road again. Ive had a very long career in the activity.....to long I think sometimes....lol...i base my comments on experience,knowledge of others involved at all levels, things actually said to be by piers, judges,directors and yes maybe a little of my own bias ( which I try very hard to put aside ) and I think I'm pretty good at that.

Personally who cares why a person like drum corps, what they see or hear first, what came 1st the chicken or the egg, as long as someone can enjoy it and no analyze it to death. I think thats a judges job to do that.

The only 'bait' which is out there which I have utilized are the many, many postings written by you which maintain, 'It is ALL about the Visual', that 'Visual is the driving force of the activity', 'Music is a factor, but its function is to enhance the Visual', and the generalizations about human nature that, 'Visual (sight) is the main human sense above all the other senses’. You also seem to really care about the Chicken/Egg issue because you constantly post on DCP, in various manners, that the Visual is first! And since you just now posted that you believe it is only a judge’s job to analyze, and unless we are mistaken you are not a DCI judge, it seems rather hypocritical for you then to post your analysis concerning visual vs. music and debate those who differ in opinion. But alas I forgot, this is all ‘perception is reality’ in your own mind.

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1) that is VERY naive. I don't mean that as a negative, I mean that genuinely you saying that body movement during, say, a percussion feature

is flat out not really having an understand of exactly what is being attempted, achieved, intent, etc.

2) you can look at videos from Blue Devils 2007, as an example. The battery was playing some roll passage during a feature, while performing body movement. The times I saw them live (including Finals Week), there was a LOT of positive audience reaction. You can hear audience cheering on various YouTube videos & the finals video

No, that's not what I said. Go back and read it again (and, BTW, spare me the negative attacks even if you do qualify them; you and I both know what you're saying and you don't know me or my history or experience well enough to make such statements). What I said was that there are excellent and legit examples of movement in the drum lines of several past shows that actually add, visually, to the percussion performance. I cited several examples from the litany that can be found in history, and none of them were of the squat-pivot-squat-turn style that seems so prevalent today in meeting the SD requirement.

Is it impressive that a drum line can squat and parry while playing tough rhythms? Rarely, IMO, because it's gratuitous movement to satisfy the sheets. The lick they're playing may be fabulous but the body movement is meh and adds little to the "demand" of the lick. Again, 2000 Cadets tenor line had plenty of SD even PRIOR to their solo on the sideline, but that extra movement (rotating up the drums while spinning down to the bottom) was impressive not because of itself, but because it added so well to the book that was being played. Similar Cadets 2011 (among many others who have done the same): marching across the field with a large separation between the two halves of the line, marching an odd, stagger-step meter at a high tempo, AND playing alternating sixteenth fours that sounded like they were standing static in a straight line. Now THAT'S SD, IMO. (BD is excellent at alternating note blocks as well - I'm not favoring Cadets particularly).

If you're talking about the 3:00 mark in '07 BD's show, when the drumline is doing LOTS of body movement, pay attention to the rest of the corps - they were all doing the same body movements and, visually, it was VERY cool because of they symmetry across the whole mass of blue uniforms. That's not gratuitous SD for movement sake alone, which is what I object to. If you're describing another point in the show, please point it out with a time stamp or something I can identify.

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The only 'bait' which is out there which I have utilized are the many, many postings written by you which maintain, 'It is ALL about the Visual', that 'Visual is the driving force of the activity', 'Music is a factor, but its function is to enhance the Visual', and the generalizations about human nature that, 'Visual (sight) is the main human sense above all the other senses’. You also seem to really care about the Chicken/Egg issue because you constantly post on DCP, in various manners, that the Visual is first! And since you just now posted that you believe it is only a judge’s job to analyze, and unless we are mistaken you are not a DCI judge, it seems rather hypocritical for you then to post your analysis concerning visual vs. music and debate those who differ in opinion. But alas I forgot, this is all ‘perception is reality’ in your own mind. for

EDIT:

:bigsmile:

Edited by GUARDLING
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