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North Canton, OH - Saturday, June 22, 2019


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A few thoughts on the Bluecoats:

I love this show musically.  Perhaps it is my age (59) but I can identify with 95% of what they are playing, and they play it very well.  They will absolutely be one of my favorite corps from this year to listen to in the car in the future.  Having said that, I think there may be an area of vulnerably for them visually.  For the third year in a row, the visual design seems very compressed due to all the props, and most of their movement seems like running follow the leader 2 across up, over, and down the ramps..then into hold sets.    Is it effective? Yes.  Does it compare with the visual complexity of Crown and Boston (each of whom have over 190 drill sets this year)?  That is debateable, I suppose.  Now, I am a designer and I get the fact that there is no place on the sheets for a set count....lol.  But BLOO is already maxing this caption out with an excellent performance level. I wonder as Crown and Boston get cleaner, if the GE numbers might change. 

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1 hour ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

In 1976 Madison did stop competing, redesign, & change the show mid-season.  They got 2nd place.

In 1980 Guardsmen did a massive redesign & made it into finals (12th out of 44 Corps in  "world" class),

In 1982, 27th Lancers re-wrote all but 132 counts of drill during the season; they finished 6th at DCI.

 

It CAN be done.  The Corps just has to want it bad enough.

Not today IMO. The season is much shorter. Designs are much more complex and complete day one. Your examples actually prove my point:  you are citing things that haven’t happened in 40 years!  I think the first shows determine the groupings (1 through 6; 7 through 10; 11 through 15). and that’s where the corps will stay. There may be some minor movement within each group. That’s about it though. 

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1 minute ago, HockeyDad said:

I think the first shows determine the groupings (1 through 6; 7 through 10; 11 through 15). and that’s where the corps will stay. There may be some minor movement within each group. 

Slotting in other words.

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6 minutes ago, HockeyDad said:

Not today IMO. The season is much shorter. Designs are much more complex and complete day one. Your examples actually prove my point:  you are citing things that haven’t happened in 40 years!  I think the first shows determine the groupings (1 through 6; 7 through 10; 11 through 15). and that’s where the corps will stay. There may be some minor movement within each group. That’s about it though. 

I'm good with that assertion.  I'd think it would extremely difficult to make major changes today. 

Edited by OldSnareDrummer
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14 minutes ago, Ghost said:

Slotting in other words.

Whether conscious or unconscious on the part of the judges. Yes. 

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25 minutes ago, HockeyDad said:

Not today IMO. The season is much shorter. Designs are much more complex and complete day one. Your examples actually prove my point:  you are citing things that haven’t happened in 40 years!  I think the first shows determine the groupings (1 through 6; 7 through 10; 11 through 15). and that’s where the corps will stay. There may be some minor movement within each group. That’s about it though. 

Perhaps.  Until some corps actually gas the gets to try a massive change all we can do is speculate what would happen if they did

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2 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

In 1976 Madison did stop competing, redesign, & change the show mid-season.  They got 2nd place.

In 1980 Guardsmen did a massive redesign & made it into finals (12th out of 44 Corps in  "world" class),

In 1982, 27th Lancers re-wrote all but 132 counts of drill during the season; they finished 6th at DCI.

 

It CAN be done.  The Corps just has to want it bad enough.

Absolutely.

In that era, the format of shows allowed desperate measures to work... with an acceptable cost in manpower and effort.

It theoretically could be done to a degree today, but it would require losing a couple weeks of shows, getting lucky on the rewrites and total buy in from a talented set of members to repeat their 'spring training'.  It's a really high bar... probably not worth it.

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1 hour ago, craiga said:

A few thoughts on the Bluecoats:

I love this show musically.  Perhaps it is my age (59) but I can identify with 95% of what they are playing, and they play it very well.  They will absolutely be one of my favorite corps from this year to listen to in the car in the future.  Having said that, I think there may be an area of vulnerably for them visually.  For the third year in a row, the visual design seems very compressed due to all the props, and most of their movement seems like running follow the leader 2 across up, over, and down the ramps..then into hold sets.    Is it effective? Yes.  Does it compare with the visual complexity of Crown and Boston (each of whom have over 190 drill sets this year)?  That is debateable, I suppose.  Now, I am a designer and I get the fact that there is no place on the sheets for a set count....lol.  But BLOO is already maxing this caption out with an excellent performance level. I wonder as Crown and Boston get cleaner, if the GE numbers might change. 

Looking forward to seeing Bloo live in New England next weekend.
My initial take is musically and conceptually it doesn't quite measure up to "Session 44" but  then again I wasn't wowed by Crowns "Relentless" early on which I ended up loving.

 

 

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2 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

I wonder why Corps don't do massive re-writes any more?

The average talent level these days far exceeds the talent BITD (the talent of the strongest players in any given Corps has not changed.  But the weakest players today are far stronger than BITD) so I suspect the members can rise to the challenge..  Maybe staff egos don't allow for re-writes?

Well, in a way... they actually do this today.  But it's all part of the plan.  The normal operation for contending drumcorps is to have written multiple versions of a section (each with increasing demand and GE interest) so that the group can strategically insert these sections at particular points in the season.

But this isn't about waking up one day and realizing that you need a rewrite... it's already done and being rehearsed (often from the beginning).

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5 hours ago, cfirwin3 said:

I appreciate your assertions.  I don't see you providing any evidence... and we are beating a dead horse because of it.

More specifically to the assertion that you can't give examples due to the subjectivity, these are the rubrics:

http://www.dci.org/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=209936977

They have 5 box scoring bracket categories that deal exclusively with quantifiable observations.  This is an objective construct.  These brackets alone separate the placements that we are discussing.

If your assertion about subjectivity is as complete as you say, then these rubrics couldn't exist.

Performing arts adjudication is not an exclusively aesthetic medium... because it involves performance.

So, one last time... Name a corps that was denied placement due to early scoring.

I never said any corps was denied placement. Here is what I said:

A) The words on the GE rubric sheets do set peramiters, but they are far from being objective criteria. Math equations written on a sheet are objective, descriptors of what constitutes general effect design are not.

B) The words on the GE sheets are interpreted by the judges who are trained in that particular interpretation.

C) The judges then observe live performances and apply their training to the best of their ability.

D) The end result of scoring and ranking is therefore Subjective not Objective. Opinion not Fact. No corps has ever been denied a placement. They are placed in accordance to their ranking range. A range that is set early on for each corps, and reinforced by like minded subjective observation throughout the rest of the season.

Edited by Stu
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