Kamarag Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 Nope. I stand by my comment. In the top tier corps who all have strong talent, the design team wins the championship. Crown won 2013 and I'm sure had a great winter in 2014 but fell to 5th because of design. Cadets won in 2011 and came out in 2012 playing jingle bells and fell to 4th. Coats moved from 5th in 2013 to 2nd in 2014 because of design, not a better brass line or percussion. Oh, I have no doubt that's what you believe, but to assume anyone else believes that was why I pointed out how wrong you are. You're welcomed to believe whatever you want. It simply doesn't make you anywhere near right. Great design means nothing if the other factors aren't every bit as great. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
84BDsop Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 (edited) Oh, I have no doubt that's what you believe, but to assume anyone else believes that was why I pointed out how wrong you are. You're welcomed to believe whatever you want. It simply doesn't make you anywhere near right. Great design means nothing if the other factors aren't every bit as great. Indeed....you can have a design like the 2nd coming of Zingali, and an equally well-written brass, drum, and guard book...but if the performers can't pull it off, it ain't gonna score very high. Take the program from BD this year -- a corps that's averaged a top 3 placement for decades -- and give it to Pioneer -- the traditional cellar-dweller in World Class Take Pioneer's program from this year and give it to BD....who do you think's gonna win a head-to-head meeting? *hint...it WON'T be Pio* Program design may be a large element...but it's performance OF that design that wins. Edited December 2, 2014 by 84BDsop 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldbandguy Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 and likewise....if you give a less than AWESOME designed show to AWESOME talent...you end up with less than awesome results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatOneSlime Posted December 2, 2014 Author Share Posted December 2, 2014 I wanted to audition for blue devils because I plan on being a band director and would love to get in with a corps that is known for finishing high, and because I enjoy their style a great bit 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Detweiler Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 ThatOneSlime, Your last comment is the most important. If that's where you want to be and you like their style and it fits with what you envision yourself doing...then that's where you should be. There is great teaching going on all over the country. I personally know several of the people on Cavaliers brass staff and they are all fabulous band directors and educators. Don't feel that Blue Devils is the only place you will see great teaching. However, like I said, if the BD style is what you want...go for it. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Freedman Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 The most important factor affecting the final placement IMO is the age, skills and work ethic of the members to start with. The designs pop largely because the members sell it better than another corps. How often do we see a corps move up towards the end of the season because the members start achieving the program? Design changes happen too, of course. Causality here is pretty murky. But if you sit in on the auditions for even just the top six corps, I suspect you can place the final order with a correlation much better than chance. The designs certainly help, but the kids bring it home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cowtown Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Someone mentioned that BD looks for some dance background from their brass, makes sense but may be a rumor It’s precisely as difficult to make it into BD as it is to find a bed bug on a greased pig ‘s belly on a midsummer morning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lumbargleeful Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 The designs pop largely because the members sell it better than another corps. Using this theory 2001 Cavaliers would have been a 16th place drum corps. They could barely perform that show, even by finals night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soccerguy315 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 The most important factor affecting the final placement IMO is the age, skills and work ethic of the members to start with. The designs pop largely because the members sell it better than another corps. How often do we see a corps move up towards the end of the season because the members start achieving the program? Design changes happen too, of course. Causality here is pretty murky. But if you sit in on the auditions for even just the top six corps, I suspect you can place the final order with a correlation much better than chance. The designs certainly help, but the kids bring it home. a show moving up at the end of the season is a perfect sign of a well designed show. I think Bluecoats passed Cadets last year purely because of design. And I think Crown finished where they did purely because of design also. Give the BD kids the Jersey Surf show and see where they finish. Not anywhere close to first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.Holland Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 I'm certain we've all gone WAY off topic from this person's original questions of how hard do we think it is to make BD... But ... I've have had many a conversation with guys who write and arrange, and all of those conversations came back to "playing the game". so to speak. And they're all trying to do that. right now, there's only ONE group consistently playing the game. (design + execution + marketability) The answer is BD. They are setting the standard and the evolution of this activity. If you want to be in that tier, you have to figure out how to bring your group's personality (sound, movement style...etc) to the game that they've established. Crown did that, 'Coats did it sort of, Cadets sort of... but to finish on top, it goes back to hitting all three of those items on the head. Now many corps members in the top 12 can perform to extremely high levels, but not all the corps' shows can provide something that satisfies the game's equation. I would say your finals corps members have the potential to pop the near perfectly executed show on finals night. But it's not necessarily all about that. Its not just a performance based score, and in many cases, it feels like one set of scores, follows the other boxes whether it deserves to or not. The idea that one score can't go up or down until the others do. Gone are the days when ticks count against, and in some cases, what execution is and isn't is now grey area. Heck, we can't even count a corps provided acoustic enhancement system's failure against a performance now. And that itself can remove an entire section of the show, or pivotal moment in the performance but yet still not decide one group's placement over another. This activity, in some cases, doesn't compare apples and oranges against each other, but more often apples and forks. Ok, can we go back to giving this person advice on how not to fall on their face during fundamentals auditions? don't fall on your face kid. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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