BRASSO Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 (edited) If adult show designers.. known for putting out quality designed shows.. put out a subpar show design in a given year, no amount of marcher talent and execution can save the day for those marchers. They are doomed to reaching their placement goals for that season ( not thats why they should be marching that Corps that seaaon in the first place, imo ). The staffs are what principally determines placements in modern day DCI.. not the marchers busting their tails all summer at practice and in competition. Nobody that follows the activity ( and is honest about this ) really believes otherwise, ie that the talented and veteran marchers of the Cavaliers were not going to suffer placement slide in 2012 when they lost one adult staffer that previously designed their shows. No amount of hard work, execution, cleaning, etc was going to stem their placement slide once they lost Gaines. The show the Cavaliers went out with in 2012, doomed that Corps and its marchers to placement slide from the moment the bus pulled into the stadium for their first show that summer. It wasn't the marchers that were judged that summer in all those shows. It was Gaines replacement that was judged, and was principally HE that was primarily responsible for the Cavs finishing 8th in 2012.(, after finishing in 3rd in 2011 with Gaines ), not the Cavaliers marchers in 2012. They had little to do with any of it, imo. This is true with all the Corps. Its not the marchers that principally drive the placements. Its essentially the Show Designers. They drive their Corps to higher placements, or lower placements, or similar placements. Not primarily the marchers in these Corps, despite what some might have us believe. Edited June 24, 2014 by BRASSO 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GUARDLING Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 so transfer policies from the other thread wont mean anything 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfirwin3 Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 The original question is kind of silly... good changes in staff always help and bad ones (or the exit of good staff) always hurt. Consistency is a bit overrated, I think. There is something to be said for it, but plenty of corps have made great strides from one year to the next because they picked up someone that knew what they were doing and had the pulse of the activity. I think that the issue of design is much more influential on the rise and fall of a corps. In the Cavies case... when you lose the best designers and replace them with lessor ones... well what would you expect to happen? In the case of Spirit... It seems that their designs for the past 10 years have been chasing a low tier competitive objective. I'm not sure that it is on purpose. As I said on another thread, I think that writing shows that seek to contend at a higher level than where one is at... while holding to the restriction of marketing strengths and avoiding weaknesses, is what gets a low tier corps to move up. Example: If you don't have technically proficient members... then make sure that you program a heart-wrencher of a ballad with the most current and in-tune visual presentation that you can dream up. Strike where you can, when you can. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeneralTsoChicken Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 most of '08 was re-written during spring training or slightly thereafter by Tony Hall. nick's work was crap those years. 2008 was saved by music and Tony Hall. I completely agree. I'm not saying Nick hasn't matured since then, though, because I think he has. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
azul Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 It doesn't take a staff change to completely flop in the opposite directions. Bluecoats '10 3rd place, Bluecoats '11 7th place. Same design staff and caption heads as 2010 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
c mor Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 so transfer policies from the other thread wont mean anything I just got home...thought exactly the same thing.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
corpsband Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 (edited) If adult show designers.. .... They drive their Corps to higher placements, or lower placements, or similar placements. Not primarily the marchers in these Corps, despite what some might have us believe. So if instead of leaving, suppose Gaines had quietly designed 2012. The entire drum corps world is convinced he left and is replaced with some young new designer Gaines discovered in Japan (Kaito Tanaka). Do the Cavies plummet because the name is no longer there? Or is Kaito the new dariling of DCI destined to make us forget all about Gaines? IMO your contention (it's just about the designer) is quite incorrect. It's about the product not the designer. Cavies didn't plummet because they lost name recognition. They dropped because Gaines was integral to the quality of their design. OTOH great design is worthless without all the other pieces. A composer can write the most amazing sympony ever but it still takes a great orchestra to bring it to life. ALL the pieces matter. Design. Instruction. Performer. Admin. Logistics. Edited June 25, 2014 by corpsband 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAvery Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 I suppose that all depends on what time frame you are talking about. In the early years of DCI, there really wasn't a lot of " names " known to the national Marching Band community.. and specifically its marchers... that were attracted to certain Corps based upon the " names of of the staff " in Drum Corps,.. And the " names of staff " were distributed among 3 times as many Corps... with some " names " early on writing for similar level Corps in competition too. Additionally, the Blue Devils did not quickly rise to the top in DCI because they had " the staff names ". Most of them were in their late twenties and early 30's themselves on that BD staff back then, and far from household " names" even in the national Drum Corps community, let alone in the national Marching Band community outside of Calif. So the comment that its " always been about the names of staff" and that " its been this way since the beginning of DCI " is not my assessment of this at all... nor is it my recollection of this back then either. Marchers today are far more attracted to Corps " Staff Names " than they were back " in the beginning of DCI " ( as you stated here .) And more importantly, as shows have evolved into the highly stylized and elaboratte productions they have today than they were BITD, it is the adult Show Designers that are scored and placed in DCI today, far more than thew marchers are.. with Cavaliers of 2011, and 2012 being Ehhibit A for evidence of this ( I could easily give dozens of similar examples of this, by the way, to bolster the evidence on this). I will agree that staff names are more known today, but disagree as to the effect of having a "name" staff BITD. To say the name "Bobby Hoffman" didn't have an effect on a corps that didn't attend DCI in 1975 (when it was less than two hours away) to 6th place in 1976 is not correct. Also, in the mid-70's if your drill was written by Chops or your drum book by Sanford you most certainly received extra points. When I marched Cavies in 1979 they had not made finals in 78 and Chops wrote our drill. It was not good, in fact Blue Stars (who he wrote for also) had several of the same moves we had. At mid season when we were on the bubble to make finals the word came from DCI we needed to hire Ralph Pace to rewrite our drill. We did and we ended up 11th. Now you could claim that the effect on score had nothing to do with the name and everything to do with the product and there would be no way to disprove this. IMO names have always driven DCI and the judges seemed to have always been in awe of certain names. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfirwin3 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 I don't think that this has squat to do with "names" and age (that whole "adult designer" remark is kinda strange). Good designers make for good drumcorps programs (assuming that there are also good clinicians and technicians to teach as well). Michael Gaines has a "name" because he was in-tune with the times and knew how to push the activity forward. Corps need people like that to do well. When people like that get on board, then good things begin to happen immediately. I see a lot of struggling corps that have designers chasing and emulating the existing vocabulary. Contending is usually about 'saying something new' to some degree... something 'worth listening to'. This is about pushing vocabulary... invention... identity. Emulating Gaines (for example) will get nowhere these days. ALSO, these personalities that have become synonymous with greatness have benefited from the guidance of great program directors and collaboration. That's why one writer may write for 2 corps... Corps A is a top 5 and corps B isn't in finals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjeffeory Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 So if instead of leaving, suppose Gaines had quietly designed 2012. The entire drum corps world is convinced he left and is replaced with some young new designer Gaines discovered in Japan (Kaito Tanaka). Do the Cavies plummet because the name is no longer there? Or is Kaito the new dariling of DCI destined to make us forget all about Gaines? IMO your contention (it's just about the designer) is quite incorrect. It's about the product not the designer. Cavies didn't plummet because they lost name recognition. They dropped because Gaines was integral to the quality of their design. OTOH great design is worthless without all the other pieces. A composer can write the most amazing sympony ever but it still takes a great orchestra to bring it to life. ALL the pieces matter. Design. Instruction. Performer. Admin. Logistics. There was more to it in this specific situation than 1 designer, so you're right. He was just the last design piece to change and other things were happening too and it all just added up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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