drumcat Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 I would have thought that I would have seen the demand of the audience to see the Foley, and require kids perform, and not sample. It seems that at least so far, I've been proven wrong. xandandl is right; there are no more penalties. Think of it this way... what does it say about your judging if the judges can't tell something is illegal? One of my favorite quotes is that "Art is in the resistance of the materials." I used to assume that at its core, DCI was art. Maybe it once was, but it isn't nearly the same. I failed to account for the paying audience, as we often do. We yearn for art, but we pan the unfamiliar... until we familiarize ourselves with it and it is gone, never to be again. It is performance, and the business requires admission fees to continue. A museum can subsist on donors, but a museum can't get "weird" until it doesn't need the door revenue. DCI was starting to trend in that "weird" area, but can't live without the door take. Thus, we are left with a populist form, and the ardent supporters are left wanting more. DCI built its base on popular tunes and memorable performances, and unfortunately electronics is a platform which helps achieve that goal. So while I lament the 20th Century version of sound effects by wobbly metal sheets and homemade marching machines, air raid sirens and mallets too hard for their bars, I have to relent that these unenforceable rules are where we are today. 2004 was more of a change than many of us wanted, and the genre has changed. With it, enforceability has probably left as well. We would all do well to try and let it go, lest we see the half-dragons and dusty parts of Disneyland's back stage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cixelsyd Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 So...we're concerned that a corps is going to substitute a pre-recorded brass performance segment for a live performance segment and no one's going to know. The problem with "getting away" with this is pretty fundamental. 150 performers will know. 30-50 staff members will know. Many parents and fans will know (because they go to practices duh) . But somehow, someway the corps is going to keep this BIG SECRET from everyone else? REALLY? gotta love conspiracy theories. Does everyone know whether the Cadets orator was live or recorded backup at any given moment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xandandl Posted September 23, 2014 Author Share Posted September 23, 2014 (edited) Does everyone know whether the Cadets orator was live or recorded backup at any given moment? already discussed in this thread, page 6 posts 55 -63. Answer in brief: live and with recorded back-up on another mike. cf. previous posts. Edited September 23, 2014 by xandandl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cixelsyd Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Well, corpsband did not think so. yes it's all canned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drumcat Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Does everyone know whether the Cadets orator was live or recorded backup at any given moment? The more salient question is did anyone but a small minority (read: DCP) care either way? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perc2100 Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Does anybody remember the "one trigger, one event" thing from WGI eleventy billion years ago? That's kind of where I am with this. Otherwise, why not prerecord soloists, even sequence the entire show with a click and place a speaker on the back hash. If some things are ok and some are not I think this point is a logical dividing line. I aged-out during this era, and to be blunt it was a stupid rule. Its intentions were supposed to be so groups couldn't get time from a pre-recorded/sequenced source, but that is a VERY short-sighted application of sequencing. Once WGI and its member groups started exploring/learning the truly cool capabilities of sequenced sound effects (i.e. not as a click track), they changed that rule. Talking specifics is a great thing, while talking in very broad strokes is dangerous. Making a rule against what you say is obviously a no-brainer that I suspect every DCI BoD member would vote on. But going to archaic "one trigger/one event" rules is just goofy. I marched in a unit that had a TON of sequenced stuff that was ALL conversation/speaking: stuff like "you have mail," "virus detected," etc - some of them full sentences. There was a grey area in the WGI rule book about what was sequenced "music" (i.e. what could be sequenced and used to help aid time vs a sequenced vocal phrase that would literally have zero bearing on giving a unit tempo) and my unit interpreted the rules as sequenced vocals were OK. We got DQ'ed from a WGI Regional a week or so before Finals (after not being DQ'ed at other WGI Regionals prior), and the week of Finals we spent in a parking lot completely redoing large portions of our show to conform to that goofy rule. We did OK, but I suspect we could've finished higher if we would've been able to use a lot more time for cleaning rather than reworking stuff (this was a PIW group that had medaled two seasons prior, and missed medaling the season before by a few tenths). WGI revisited and tweaked that rule a few years later, and have continued tweaking things ever since. It took forward-thinking designers to help a large group of people realize the full capacity of sequencing, and instead of applying a very broad "one-size-fits-all" type rule to things they got into specifics that were far more logical, kept the spirit/intent of the original rule, and still allowed designers their creative space. TONS of cool stuff has come from that rule tweak over the years, and I don't doubt DCI is taking its lead from WGI in this regard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
perc2100 Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 I would have thought that I would have seen the demand of the audience to see the Foley, and require kids perform, and not sample. It seems that at least so far, I've been proven wrong. xandandl is right; there are no more penalties. Think of it this way... what does it say about your judging if the judges can't tell something is illegal? One of my favorite quotes is that "Art is in the resistance of the materials." I used to assume that at its core, DCI was art. Maybe it once was, but it isn't nearly the same. I failed to account for the paying audience, as we often do. We yearn for art, but we pan the unfamiliar... until we familiarize ourselves with it and it is gone, never to be again. It is performance, and the business requires admission fees to continue. A museum can subsist on donors, but a museum can't get "weird" until it doesn't need the door revenue. DCI was starting to trend in that "weird" area, but can't live without the door take. Thus, we are left with a populist form, and the ardent supporters are left wanting more. DCI built its base on popular tunes and memorable performances, and unfortunately electronics is a platform which helps achieve that goal. So while I lament the 20th Century version of sound effects by wobbly metal sheets and homemade marching machines, air raid sirens and mallets too hard for their bars, I have to relent that these unenforceable rules are where we are today. 2004 was more of a change than many of us wanted, and the genre has changed. With it, enforceability has probably left as well. We would all do well to try and let it go, lest we see the half-dragons and dusty parts of Disneyland's back stage. Being a band teacher in SoCAL, I've been backstage at Disneyland literally dozens of times. I've seen ride and prop parts, I've seen the old cars of rides long-gone or being refurbished, I've seen characters without their head eating (or...gasp...sneaking a smoke). NONE of that detracts from the 'magic' of the park for me and only makes me appreciate the coolness of the park a bit more. Knowing that synth low-end effects help beef up the depth of a corps sound, knowing that one person playing a sub-bass patch on a sequencing pad is what REALLY makes up the cool sound of a large drum feature for a gold-winning WGI PIW performance, etc. doesn't detract anything from me. If nothing else, the ingenuity involved in making that stuff even cooler than "just" 'marching and playing clean' kind of adds to my admiration of the show a bit more. Bluecoats show would NEVER have been as memorable without that pitch-bend finale, and the amount of coordination involved in making that work is amazing. Pre-2004 that would've been impossible and that show would've ended with a standard big show chord progression ending: it would've maybe gotten fans hyped to hear loud brass and all, but no where near the extent they did in 2014. I still have seen/heard zero evidence beyond anecdotes that any corps is fudging things enough to have a member completely fake a solo while a sequencer plays a pre-recorded, perfect one. There are SO many factors that would go into that being hidden (the last of which being judges on the field, or audiences at smaller shows still being able to hear the organic playing of the soloist on the field + out of the speakers; and intonation being different from night-to-night depending on weather, so if the corps is, say, a quarter step sharp one night but in tune together, the solo would sound awful) I can't imagine a corps would even seriously consider trying that, let alone trying to pull it off in practice 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 I too agree that what Bluecoats (one word) did was an obvious modulation of their hornline so that all hearing knew it was not meant as a mere duplication of the live performers but a change. And it worked very well. Cixelsyd raises some great nuances and clarifications. Some of what cixelsyd presents grasps another facet of the subject of the thread. When DCI rules are compared to WGI (whether indoor percussion or guard or now winter winds) or BOA or another band circuit, the reality rears its head that the designers/instructors/techs now often do the marching activity in all 3 arenas. What is peculiar to one sometimes glosses to match the other two. Sometimes DCI is a trend setter, as often and perhaps more, it is playing catch-up. Let's face it, there are about 25,000 high schools in the U.S., 6000 colleges/universities/schools of higher learning but only less than four dozen competing drum corps. The numbers of minds, imaginations, and resources is much greater in the world of WGI and the band circuits merely by the numbers. How something is effective for one arena is now almost de rigeur for the other two arenas because the major designers are writing for bands, drumlines, guards AND corps. Thus the standard protocol today almost presumes "that line" is danced on and over. Penalties, other than practicing in a restricted area, are non existent today. (Should the T&P judge be dropped and replaced with an electronics judge???) The OP questions become more complicated unless one follows MikeD's thinking to allow everything anytime for DCI (in costumes, not uniforms, right Mike?) some band circuits have rules that are far more concrete, but really, it's tough to enforce Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 So...we're concerned that a corps is going to substitute a pre-recorded brass performance segment for a live performance segment and no one's going to know. The problem with "getting away" with this is pretty fundamental. 150 performers will know. 30-50 staff members will know. Many parents and fans will know (because they go to practices duh) . But somehow, someway the corps is going to keep this BIG SECRET from everyone else? REALLY? gotta love conspiracy theories. well Jabba laugh didn't come out til after the season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 I would have thought that I would have seen the demand of the audience to see the Foley, and require kids perform, and not sample. It seems that at least so far, I've been proven wrong. xandandl is right; there are no more penalties. Think of it this way... what does it say about your judging if the judges can't tell something is illegal? One of my favorite quotes is that "Art is in the resistance of the materials." I used to assume that at its core, DCI was art. Maybe it once was, but it isn't nearly the same. I failed to account for the paying audience, as we often do. We yearn for art, but we pan the unfamiliar... until we familiarize ourselves with it and it is gone, never to be again. It is performance, and the business requires admission fees to continue. A museum can subsist on donors, but a museum can't get "weird" until it doesn't need the door revenue. DCI was starting to trend in that "weird" area, but can't live without the door take. Thus, we are left with a populist form, and the ardent supporters are left wanting more. DCI built its base on popular tunes and memorable performances, and unfortunately electronics is a platform which helps achieve that goal. So while I lament the 20th Century version of sound effects by wobbly metal sheets and homemade marching machines, air raid sirens and mallets too hard for their bars, I have to relent that these unenforceable rules are where we are today. 2004 was more of a change than many of us wanted, and the genre has changed. With it, enforceability has probably left as well. We would all do well to try and let it go, lest we see the half-dragons and dusty parts of Disneyland's back stage. the only person on a judging panel truly required to know if something is legal or not is the chief judge and T&P person. The other judges are there to judge their sheet and that sheet only. Now...if a judge suspects something shady can they raise their concerns? Yes, and they have. But if you're on music ensemble, it's not your job to have the entire rulebook memorized. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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