DCI and the triumph of the Simulacrum

[zigzigZAG]

It isn't. You have presented no evidence that the judges significantly rewarded any electronics this year.

Yes, the audience was excited by a new experience in drum corps, but as I read the sheets the music judges were probably scoring the brass performers on what they were playing, which was impressive.

I'm curious to know which judge you think highly rewarded the pitch bend.

The show that received the highest score ever, many have observed contains more staging than drill. Elecronics were used in that show to supplement the brass line, particularly in the bass register.

We've discussed the Coats simulacra aplenty, not just the pitch bend, but also amps supplementing the brass line, and it was a major reason that they passed the Cadets.

And the Cadets used narration - recorded and live - throughout, as well as plenty of props, colossal pics, and other overt gestures to tell a story that their drill and music wasn't telling.

Never have I seen more body movement replacing real drill from top to bottom in the top 12.

I could go on, but I hope, really hope, you see that this is far far more than just electronics I'm talking about.

[oldbandguy]

Would Bluecoats have earned a higher score if the pitch bend were actually performed live by the brass players? Several people suggested that over the course of the season.

But oddly enough....not a single judge.

[jjeffeory]

A lot of the electronics mania generated by a simulated pitch bend this year reminds me of the idea that "live" DJs are "performing", when at best, they're manipulating the Simulacrum.

Much in our culture no longer discriminates between true performers and manipulators of sounds, or the Real and Simulated, though, so I'm sure my opinion is invalid and that I'm a cultural invalid.

Have Grammy-award winning rappers like Eminem or Weird Al (who deserves a whole topic on his own here, the guy who satirizes the triumph and fakery of the Simulacrum in pop culture, like Stewart or Colbert in their areas (remember "truthiness"?), and the endless possibilities that satire could bring to DCI, which we've sadly lost with the death of VK and Bridgemen, and DCI by glorifying the Simulacrum has become so much HEAVIER and sickeningly EARNEST, even self-righteous, in the last unsatirical decade as they desperately try to manipulate the Simulacrum to add simulated profundity to show GE just as they try to add profundity to baselines, scrambling to balance out the Simulacrum with Seriousness and Meaning, and thus jumping the shark with tasteless desperation in design all too often), achieved the same level of mastery as musicians and performers as a pianist or violinist? Many in the young generation would say yes. And they'd say that piano and violin music are boring and irrelevant.

We're doing the same thing in DCI, enhancing world-class horn lines with amplification, or using voice samples instead of live narration, and talking about the "performance" if narration itself as if that's impressive or important (because, after all, narration is performance right, and it's just as hard to talk as it is to play difficult runs that would make for a great Arban exercise while marching backwards at 220bpm, and it's just as impressive for Drake to perform a rap as it is for Hilary Hahn to play a Bach Partita).

Same thing substituting and equating body movement with drill in terms of demand and GE. Simulated drill, simulated difficulty, simulated GE. We see body movement as so often ridiculous because it's filler, simulated demand, like lip-synched 'singing'.

We can't even say on these boards anymore that such and such a corps has lower demand, that body movement isn't as difficult as run-and-gun drill, that it's lower level for one corps to play much or most of the time when standing still, versus another corps playing and marching simultaneously for virtually the entire show. To the judges, and increasingly, to the audience, it's the same. Viva la Simulacrum!

The Simulacrum now dominates DCI. As expected, as WGI is recorded-music based, and relies on staging instead of drill, and especially because our culture is dominated by the Simulacrum - photoshopped social media pics, plastic surgery, marketing, corporate everything, national myths, etc.

Recognizing this, I'm waiting for the next step in DCI/WGI "evolution": live DJs. They are our culture's grandmasters of the Simulacrum - sampling other people's compositions, mashups, simulating live performance by pressing buttons on their MacBooks, and earning six and seven figures for simulated "concerts" in huge clubs worldwide.

The Cadets were the first corps to introduce minimalism into DCI, a music that was initially - and still - mocked by the classical music establishment as simplistic, repetitive, and not nearly as rigorous as, say, serialism. The Cadets will retake the title of "the thinking man's drum corps" that they held for at least two decades if they introduce Dub Step into DCI.

To quote Vanguard at the millennium, it's a "New Era".

I'm waiting for the Cadets, or a hip, innovative corps to stage Skrillex. (And I mean stage, because these days, you don't need drill. Corps members could do choreographed and blocked dancing, stop to play when needed, or pretend to play when the amplification takes over, because it is in the nature of amplification to take over.)

So many possibilities to grow the activity and reach out to new audiences.

I'm waiting to see something like this on the field in June 2015:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCawU6BE8P8

No more throwing babies. We'll have heads exploding.

Next year, whichever corps embraces the Simulacrum 100% will be the first corps to top 100.

Let's all learn to love the Simulacrum.

Love everything you've said, BUT Cavaliers already did Dub step... ...and had their worst placement in almost three decades...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlOGM_OpvOc

[jjeffeory]

The poster does have a point that increasingly, superficial sounds... prerecorded and not done live in competition..... can gather one points in competition. In other words, what adults create is increasingly being judged in DCI by other adults.

Prerecordings are self explanatory and should need no further explanations. They are sounds not created live in competition by the competitors, but are in fact just that..... prerecordings, oftentimes with creative, but nonetheless artificial and superficial manipulations thru the use of creative ( and clearly fan friendly it would appear ) clever technological gimmickry.

Its a new day. Embrace it ( or don't ).

What adults create has always been judged in DCI by other adults. Who do we think designs this stuff? Half the are basically odes to the designers and the design...

Edited August 15, 2014 by jjeffeory

[Pete Freedman]

The show that received the highest score ever, many have observed contains more staging than drill. Elecronics were used in that show to supplement the brass line, particularly in the bass register.

We've discussed the Coats simulacra aplenty, not just the pitch bend, but also amps supplementing the brass line, and it was a major reason that they passed the Cadets.

And the Cadets used narration - recorded and live - throughout, as well as plenty of props, colossal pics, and other overt gestures to tell a story that their drill and music wasn't telling.

Never have I seen more body movement replacing real drill from top to bottom in the top 12.

I could go on, but I hope, really hope, you see that this is far far more than just electronics I'm talking about.

Says who? Did you hear the judges tapes?

And tell me, are you able to discern the electronics covering the low brass when the judges cannot tell? Or conversely, are the judges saying, "Listen to that fake electronics brass sound! Where does I puts my 20.0?"

Oh, and if they all used lots of staging, then that wasn't the reason BD won, was it?

You can't simultaneously argue that staging wins and they all do lots of it.

[jjeffeory]

I'm so dumb I didn't know what "simulacrum" meant. When I looked it up I found it means "similarity".

So why not just use "similarity" or "simulation"?

Or are you attempting to be the wordsmith of the day on the O'Reilly Factor?

There's a whole class of uber-intellectuals, or people where everything is a highly serious and intellectual debate. I imagine that he has those leanings...

Edited August 15, 2014 by jjeffeory

[jjeffeory]

I find the post intriguing. If you look at this years shows, you will see an excessive amount of standing and playing and then moving slightly with choreographed movement (dance almost) and then continuing to stand still. Almost every show this year had a prevalent amount of this type of "drill" to simulate movement and it was a bit disappointing. I believe that it can all (both drill and music) be synthesized to a tasteful degree but I fear it has gotten out of hand. The most memorable and amazing shows throughout dci's history have not had excessive amounts of simulation. It should continue to be that way

You can not win without simulating it...

Edited August 15, 2014 by jjeffeory

[jjeffeory]

Yes, this.

I'm talking about simulated difficulty in drill, simulated difficulty in substituting body movement for drill, simulated difficulty in sleight-of-hand staging and arranging that avoids moving while playing, simulated sound, simulated GE (props galore, uniforms varying year to year, or within shows). And scores that seem to reward the Simulacrum.

I want real demand, real drill, real acoustic sound, and real achievement awarded by real scores.

You can not win DCI without doing this. Better get used to the Simulacrum if you want to approach 100 points, otherwise you're going to be stuck around 95-96 because of words like dirty, tired, boring, old-fashioned.

It's a brand new day!

[charlie1223]

This is a moot point, as there is no way a brass line could play anything comparable unless they were all on trombones. And even if that were the case, the crowd reaction would be "so what, that is what trombones do."

80 trombones doing a pinch bend though??? hmm...

[jjeffeory]

OK, so preliminary design elements for the simulacrum show...

- Boston keeps their animal masks. But some of the guard members will be "real" animals, and some the android animals.

- Part of the narration will be a Voight-Kampff empathy test.

- Music will be from Blade Runner. (Possible additions.)

- In a possible swipe at the Bluecoats (and/or others) the entire ensemble will be playing some piece, but then horns and sticks will go down, revealing that some recording (the musical Simulacrum, and possibly an inadequate one) had been inserted at some point. (Shades of a certain David Lynch movie there as well.)

- Should we throw in the "Tears in Rain" monologue? Probably.

- Protagonist either goes insane, discovers he's an android (a simulacrum, thus the mere illusion of the shell of humanity), or discovers that he's been spying on himself the entire time (element from Scanner Darkly).

Alrighty, then. Don't take any of that seriously. :-P

Why am I thinking of these?:

or