Why don't corps compose their own music?

[UKSuperman]

Sorry y'all. Seems I've been living a lie since 2003! 

[jwillis35]

I think Jay Bocook composed a segment of music for the Cadets in 2005. I believe it's the section that immediately follows their Twilight Zone intro. I think it's called "Rain." It worked for that show.  What Robert Smith did for Suncoast Sound in 1985 and 1989 (A Florida Suite) is rare.  We've only seen that sort of thing a few times, where original music is composed for an entire show.

I think one of the problems is that arrangers/composers who write specifically for drum & bugle corps ultimately try to add in the big power hits, the chop & bops, percussion interludes, the section features, and they try to do so with a variety of tempo and meter shifts to increase demand and visual capabilities.  Basically they become too enamored with adding many of the stereotypical elements we've come to hear and see in the activity.  

The above can work, but usually such a method will not produce the best composition.  It's almost always better for a corps to take a 5 minute song written for another medium (say chamber strings) and arrange it for field.  Perhaps a 10 or 20 minute work and pull from it the elements they need. There is still the danger that a bad arrangement can ruin things.  A bad visual idea and show theme can easily force the arranger's hand as well, causing all kinds of problems.  But with 5, 10, even 20 minutes of excellent and proven material to chose from a good arranger can cherry pick from the best parts of the music and work it into the show as needed. 

I suspect we will see little snippets here and there composed for drum corps shows, but whether or not we see lots of original music books composed for a specific show I have my doubts. Maybe a song here or there, but full shows...not so sure we are heading in that direction, even with all the copyright hangups. 

Edited May 14, 2017 by jwillis35

[ShortAndFast]

8 hours ago, jwillis35 said:

I think Jay Bocook composed a segment of music for the Cadets in 2005. I believe it's the section that immediately follows their Twilight Zone intro. I think it's called "Rain." It worked for that show.  What Robert Smith did for Suncoast Sound in 1985 and 1989 (A Florida Suite) is rare.  We've only seen that sort of thing a few times, where original music is composed for an entire show.

I think one of the problems is that arrangers/composers who write specifically for drum & bugle corps ultimately try to add in the big power hits, the chop & bops, percussion interludes, the section features, and they try to do so with a variety of tempo and meter shifts to increase demand and visual capabilities.  Basically they become too enamored with adding many of the stereotypical elements we've come to hear and see in the activity.  

The above can work, but usually such a method will not produce the best composition.  It's almost always better for a corps to take a 5 minute song written for another medium (say chamber strings) and arrange it for field.  Perhaps a 10 or 20 minute work and pull from it the elements they need. There is still the danger that a bad arrangement can ruin things.  A bad visual idea and show theme can easily force the arranger's hand as well, causing all kinds of problems.  But with 5, 10, even 20 minutes of excellent and proven material to chose from a good arranger can cherry pick from the best parts of the music and work it into the show as needed. 

I suspect we will see little snippets here and there composed for drum corps shows, but whether or not we see lots of original music books composed for a specific show I have my doubts. Maybe a song here or there, but full shows...not so sure we are heading in that direction, even with all the copyright hangups. 

 

I'm pretty sure the Cadets' piece was called "Liquid", but the interesting thing is how heavily it's inspired by Whitacre's "Equus" - just listen to the two back to back. So why did the Cadets go with an original piece? I'm sure one answer to that question is "licensing costs", but another answer might be the stuff you listed - they needed certain technical aspects for the piece to work well competitively in DCI and they trusted Bocook to compose a piece with a similar mood/effect to Whitacre's, but with all of that build in.

The thing is, all DCI music needs to demonstrate the things that you mention. This often forces arrangers to do pretty awful things to a piece of music to make it "work", at least if you were a fan of the original. Pretty much any time you see a long rep list, you can guarantee that at most one or two of those pieces are going to be presented in any musically coherent way and the others will be pretty well shredded. I often wish that the corps instead had gone for an original composition.

[Lance]

did Cavies/Saucedo ever acknowledge that they used a bunch of McTee in 2000, or did they stick with it being a straight Daugherty/Saucedo original show?

[Lance]

2 hours ago, ShortAndFast said:

 

This often forces arrangers to do pretty awful things to a piece of music to make it "work", at least if you were a fan of the original. Pretty much any time you see a long rep list, you can guarantee that at most one or two of those pieces are going to be presented in any musically coherent way and the others will be pretty well shredded. I often wish that the corps instead had gone for an original composition.

if it's a good piece of music, there's only so much a terrible arranger can do to mangle it. 

dci has very good arrangers from top to bottom, so i don't agree with anything you're saying here. 

i agree that licensing and such is why we're probably going to see a lot more corps go for original music, though. 

[Lance]

wrong thread. feel free to delete. 

Edited May 14, 2017 by Lance

[jjeffeory]

35 minutes ago, Lance said:

did Cavies/Saucedo ever acknowledge that they used a bunch of McTee in 2000, or did they stick with it being a straight Daugherty/Saucedo original show?

That is a great question. 

Most people here seem to know that there's McTee in that show.

[Lance]

Just now, jjeffeory said:

That is a great question. 

Most people here seem to know that there's McTee in that show.

it was a masterful bit of arranging by saucedo and whoever wrote their percussion book that year. 

a great example of how you can take the motifs/themes of a very good composer, and make them work for just about any show concept. 

with the arranging talent currently working for dci, there are still infinite possibilities. 

[Zeke]

On 5/12/2017 at 8:25 PM, jjeffeory said:

A Florida Suite & Related Excerpts - Robert Smith et al. ( Suncoast Sound -'85 - '89 )

 

 

Man that was some seriously good writing/Music.

[Hrothgar15]

9 hours ago, ShortAndFast said:

 

I'm pretty sure the Cadets' piece was called "Liquid", but the interesting thing is how heavily it's inspired by Whitacre's "Equus" - just listen to the two back to back. So why did the Cadets go with an original piece? I'm sure one answer to that question is "licensing costs", but another answer might be the stuff you listed - they needed certain technical aspects for the piece to work well competitively in DCI and they trusted Bocook to compose a piece with a similar mood/effect to Whitacre's, but with all of that build in.

The thing is, all DCI music needs to demonstrate the things that you mention. This often forces arrangers to do pretty awful things to a piece of music to make it "work", at least if you were a fan of the original. Pretty much any time you see a long rep list, you can guarantee that at most one or two of those pieces are going to be presented in any musically coherent way and the others will be pretty well shredded. I often wish that the corps instead had gone for an original composition.

Seems like Bocook did the same thing in 2006 with their original piece heavily inspired by "Jim's New Life" from Empire of Sun, also where Cadillac of the Skies is from. Freelancers 1989 did a pretty tried-and-true arrangement of this, before music licensing was really a thing in drum corps.