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The Inevitable Woodwind


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Yes. The same way it's always been. The same thing we are and have always been to the rest of the world. A bunch of kids young adults spending HUGE amounts of money (if they have it) marching around on a field playing things, hitting drums, spinning things, and wearing funny uniforms. Usually with strange hats on and getting no real world music education

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Fixed.

Kids and young adults. And lots of scholastic programs charge large amounts of money for their programs as well. Check out Avon or Broken Arrow, to see what their yearly fees are. Not DCI level, but still pricy, but dirt cheap compared to sports programs.

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Dirt cheap compared to what sports program? I don't remember spending 3 grand to play football and win state. Ya, I was a band jock. I do remember spending money on marching band and school but no where near 3 grand and I can tell you for a fact my school music education was FAR more real world centered for music education. FWIW a young adult is usually someone that can legally be an adult 18 for the most part. I didn't make the laws BTW, I simply agree a "kid" is not 22 years old.

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However, this isn't really a hurdle to pass the actual rule (designers want all the options... doesn't necessarily mean they have to think through all the logistics). I think Fred is right about passage, but I doubt corps will want to deal with the hassle. I think the mic'd solo usage of woodwinds is the only sustainable option, acoustically and financially.

Yeah, you could be right. I think mic'd solo/small ensemble usage could be very cool, though at that point you can get the same sounds replicated pretty darn close via top-of-the-line synth patch (i.e. an oboe or bassoon voice, for example). I think it would all depend on how persuasive the argument for or against is. Most designers and directors are old school drum corps guys. While a few of them want woodwinds, I wonder if there are more that do not (i.e. they know the difficulty of accommodating the logistics). I honestly don't know, other than woodwinds haven't been proposed in quite a while, and the last time they were I think they were overwhelmingly voted down. Any key brass passed because it made financial sense, and amping made sense because the one-time investment isn't too lucrative (compared to maintaining ww instruments, for example) while the creative possibilities are literally endless.

We'll see: I honestly don't know, and neither inclusion or exclusion of ww's would shock me too much.

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Dirt cheap compared to what sports program? I don't remember spending 3 grand to play football and win state. Ya, I was a band jock. I do remember spending money on marching band and school but no where near 3 grand and I can tell you for a fact my school music education was FAR more real world centered for music education. FWIW a young adult is usually someone that can legally be an adult 18 for the most part. I didn't make the laws BTW, I simply agree a "kid" is not 22 years old.

Most traveling sports programs clear the 3 grand bar easily. Or if you've ever checked out competitive cheerleading leagues, those prices blow DCI out of the water.

There are still lots of members under the age of 18 in DCI corps, so I used the term kids. It's both.

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Will someone clarify the prohibitive problem with woodwind care and weather? I am not a musician. What I do see is much more comprehensive use of wind instruments in high school and college bands than would ever seem to occur in DCI. For many, many years, several thousand large, traditional marching bands have used these instruments in wet weather, traveling great distance, etc. much as any DCI woodwind squad on the field would do. How are all these existing, full complement marching bands dealing with these same problems? I don't recognize a significant difference in this arena.

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Will someone clarify the prohibitive problem with woodwind care and weather? I am not a musician. What I do see is much more comprehensive use of wind instruments in high school and college bands than would ever seem to occur in DCI. For many, many years, several thousand large, traditional marching bands have used these instruments in wet weather, traveling great distance, etc. much as any DCI woodwind squad on the field would do. How are all these existing, full complement marching bands dealing with these same problems? I don't recognize a significant difference in this arena.

First rain storm in rehearsal, repad the instruments. Rain in performance, forget hearing the instruments. Wood clarinets out in the sun rehearsing, warped. Change of temp, same thing. Use plastic clarinets, sure if you want to sound like crap.

There are many more, those are just the upfront, coming from a band director in the midwest that deals with it from year to year.

That, plus any reed instrument. Chip that during warm-up, good luck getting a new one broken in and sounding good with time to play the show.

Some of these costs are small, but add up quick.

Oh, and after that first pile up, you're not just going to be able to pound out a few dents and straighten a few bent shanks on a brass instrument.

On average, in a 6 show, 8 week season in the midwest with marching band, we dump about $3,000 into general maintenance on the instruments.

Then if you talk high quality equipment, which I am sure corps would use for optimal sound, that money multiplies greatly.

It would be a foolish investment in my opinion.

I still don't believe that many of these costs have been considered.

And again, these are minimal and not for groups that are out there 12 hours a day for 12 weeks.

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There are still lots of members under the age of 18 in DCI corps, so I used the term kids. It's both.

I'm 55 years old. To me, my 30-something nieces and nephews are still kids. :tongue:

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I just can't see this happening. Others have already said it; the care required to maintain a woodwind instrument would be too costly and too time consuming in the world of drum corps. You can knock the crap out of a brass instrument, let it get wet, and repair it easily, and it will still play well.

Then there's the matter of member limits. If we raise the 150 mark, then what would the next step be? You'd either need to cut down the brass to allow woodwinds or add a bunch of members to the show. In my opinion the show would be way too cluttered if more people were added, as the more people you have means you have less space on the field, and possibly less awesome drill.

But even if these things worked out and we found the money and time to maintain the horns and the drill was fine... I can't think of a world where you'd have a big company front with 150+ members on the field with woodwinds and brass, and the woodwinds would be audible. Unless you had A LOT more WW than brass.

It's a nice thought, and a running joke that's been around since I've been involved with the activity. I can understand the problems people have had with rule changes, but every one I've seen has had a reason or hasn't been too far fetched. Amplification of the pit? Sure. Adding more brass instruments? Makes sense. But adding something that neither came from drum or bugle doesn't seem viable to me.

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This is very true. Weather is AWFUL on woodwinds. But why would you need a whole section when say a mic'ed quintet would suffice? It's already marching band on the DCI circuit, I say just do it and be done.

How would only a small ensemble of woodwinds touring with a corps work (legitimate question)? I would guess that it wouldn't be very appealing for good woodwind players (i.e. players whose primary instrument is a woodwind and they are good at it) to tie up their whole summer just to play a small portion of a show from the sidelines and not march. Also, I would guess that a good brass player is not going to be just as good on woodwinds, so that would make it tough for say in the middle of a show 10 of the trumpets to all of a sudden pick up 10 clarinets from the sideline and crank out a clarinet soli and then put down the clarinets and pick their trumpets back up and continue the show. Not that that couldn't actually be done, but the chances of recruiting brass players that are also just as good woodwind players I would think would be pretty slim.

Any ideas?

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