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Professional Development Lessons from Drum Corps?


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Several weeks ago, I finished Building the Green Machine: Don Warren and Sixty Years With the World Champion Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps. (Here at Amazon.)

It's a nice read, full of history and background not just on the Cavaliers, but on early drum corps developments generally. Of course it is Cavalier-centric, however, and rich with Cavalier traditions and the sense of brotherhood that corps inspires. Alumni profess their genuinely life-changing experiences marching with the corps.

I wonder, though, is there something in the drum corps experience that differentiates it from other intense group experiences during those late teen years. For example, is the comradery in drum corps something different from what guys might experience on a high school baseball team battling successfully through early summer conference tournaments, sectionals, regionals, and state championships?

Drum corps participation appears to help develop teamwork skills, leadership, and self-discipline. In addition to the specific musical and artistic talent. Is there something else that is unique to the experience? Is there a connection between drum corps participation and later professional development that is tough to find in other activities?

Not at all trying to diminish the drum corps experience. With respect to later professional (or maybe, even personal development), I wonder if there is something specific to point to in drum corps that likely can't be matched by other experiences.

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9 hours ago, mjoakes said:

Several weeks ago, I finished Building the Green Machine: Don Warren and Sixty Years With the World Champion Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps. (Here at Amazon.)

It's a nice read, full of history and background not just on the Cavaliers, but on early drum corps developments generally. Of course it is Cavalier-centric, however, and rich with Cavalier traditions and the sense of brotherhood that corps inspires. Alumni profess their genuinely life-changing experiences marching with the corps.

I wonder, though, is there something in the drum corps experience that differentiates it from other intense group experiences during those late teen years. For example, is the comradery in drum corps something different from what guys might experience on a high school baseball team battling successfully through early summer conference tournaments, sectionals, regionals, and state championships?

Drum corps participation appears to help develop teamwork skills, leadership, and self-discipline. In addition to the specific musical and artistic talent. Is there something else that is unique to the experience? Is there a connection between drum corps participation and later professional development that is tough to find in other activities?

Not at all trying to diminish the drum corps experience. With respect to later professional (or maybe, even personal development), I wonder if there is something specific to point to in drum corps that likely can't be matched by other experiences.

Yes, there is so much different from participating in high level sports.  While you do want your teammates to improve, and want everybody to do their best, there is also the competition for playing time, that leads some to not care as much about whether the worst guy on the team is improving or not, because unless things become chaotic, they will never play when it matters.  In drum corps, all the members must play, and be at their best every night.  It builds a level of work-ethic, self-responsibility, and trust in yourself, and your peers that sports will never be able to develop.  I'm not downing school sports, heck I even coached high school and middle school basketball for 12 years, but drum corps is in a league of its own.  Even travel (insert sport here) teams don't spend nearly the amount of time together that drum corps members do.  Eat together, sleep together, travel together (packed tightly on a bus, and maybe no shower until you reach your next destination), everything together for over 2 months.  If you don't like somebody, you better figure out how to get over it, or be able to be a professional and at least know how to work with them, whereas in sports you can go home at night (or after the weekend).  

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I think it comes down to something quite simple. The individual and the experience.

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Agreed, it comes to the individual. My wife isn't a musician, but when she was around the same age I marched (before we met), she spent on a summer on a "teen tour". She and two buses worth of kids who had just graduated high school spent three months touring the country, doing a combination of sightseeing and volunteering at various charities. That said, we have a lot of similar stories and view the experiences very similar.

 

So, maybe it's the travel aspect? Or the being away from home? Or the uniting with people you don't originally know to work toward a common goal?

 

What drum corps provides is definitely life changing and character building, but I feel it's just a medium to deliver on some universal concepts and ideas to an impressionable-aged group, and there's other mediums that do the same.

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8 hours ago, tesmusic said:

I think it comes down to something quite simple. The individual and the experience.

 Agreed..and well said.

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