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Original Music...the future of drum corps


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Meh.  It's been around for some time.  It's one of those things that it has to be good or just don't.  Familiar music or music that we know is good may only get heard once.  People rave about when Suncoast did it in the 80's...I was not one of them.

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1 hour ago, Ghost said:

Original music worked for the Cavies in the early 2000's.  Wasn't it composed to fit their great visual drill?

Yes. But musically speaking, I find "Four Corners" and "Frameworks" to be about two minutes of interesting music each stretched out five times too long. "Spin Cycle" holds up. It's the second-best original drum corps composition, in my opinion. "Machine" is somewhere in between.

 

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1 hour ago, mingusmonk said:

Anyone else ever get the feeling they've been around these forums too long?

 

Just me?

I probably gave the same responses to some of those earlier threads. Do any of them include a list of all music composed for drum corps? That would be helpful, I think.

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9 hours ago, larry333 said:

I believe original music compositions is the future of drum corps. It is becoming increasingly common to hear corps performing original music, composed specifically for the corps. I believe corps will be rewarded for original music within the scoring system. It’s a great opportunity for growth and advancement of the activity. What do you think about this?

It's way less common than it was at its height in the mid-00s, and thank whatever deity you believe in for that. Only one Finalist in the past 10 seasons has had a music book composed of primarily original music: Xmen's Continuum (Andrew Markworth) in 2016. Otherwise, it's been over a decade since Blue Stars flirted with original Frank Sullivan shows, SCV tried out original Key Poulan music, Cavies used original Saucedo music, etc. It's a mostly-passed trend, thankfully, and that's even apparent in the BOA world: long time original music hold outs Tarpon Springs (Sullivan) and Carmel (Saucedo) have been using real music for the past 5+ years, and have found much more consistent success with it.

Original music on the field has always been a pet peeve of mine, especially at the high school level. I was teaching at various band camps during my college years in the late 00s and early 10s just when this trend was sweeping through the high school marching band world, and I watched way too many groups I worked with spend 5-6 months focused on nothing but a wind book that most would call musically uninteresting and unworthy of performing, lacking in all hallmarks of musicality other than some non-organic technical passages.

One caveat: at this point, heavily original music shows seem to be suitable for lower tier drum corps (not marching bands, whose students should still be learning how to play musically) who are rebuilding, or who need a cohesive vehicle that can take them to a certain point. There's something to be said for the design team creating something together and tying up elements that maybe weren't aligned before --- a great example is Genesis this year, or Mandarins leading up to 2017. Granted, using all or heavily original music shows keeps a ceiling on the group as well (Mandarins 2016 went about as high up as they could with that show), but I do think it can provide a cohesive vehicle for groups near the bottom who maybe don't have one otherwise. Once you get to a certain point in the rankings, all-original music books don't hold a candle to a masterfully-designed music book with great source material.

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14 hours ago, cybersnyder said:

Before they go to original music, I hope someone is looking into the licensing and rights. "Publish" through a DCI entity so that steaming rights are clear. I was in an a band that did originals. A local brewery wanted only original music because the assumption was that they wouldn't have to pay ASCAP, BMI, SESAC performance fees. That's not actually case if the originals were published through something like CD Baby or whatever. Even if the original artist is performing their originals, performance rights still come into play. It sucks, but they have lawyers on staff that go after venues all day, every day. So, if Blue Devils come up with all original music for a year and it's published through something that filters up through BMI, streaming rights are still an issue. I guess Phantom is in the clear for a lot of their music which is considered in the public domain.

I like my pot-stickers fried, not steamed.  🙂 

Snark aside, I hope that, if this comes to play out, the corps end up owning the rights so that any band that wants to play drum corps music has to pay the corps (or DCI) the fees.

Now that I'm thinking, I'm wondering if maybe DCI should be the rights-holder to all original music played during its shows.  Interesting potential revenue stream...

 

Edited by garfield
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13 hours ago, JimF-LowBari said:

Which brings up the question of who should corps play for? The people in the stands or corps staff....

The judges obviously.

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34 minutes ago, garfield said:

I like my pot-stickers fried, not steamed.  🙂 

Snark aside, I hope that, if this comes to play out, the corps end up owning the rights so that any band that wants to play drum corps music has to pay the corps (or DCI) the fees.

Now that I'm thinking, I'm wondering if maybe DCI should be the rights-holder to all original music played during its shows.  Interesting potential revenue stream...

 

Sorry, missed that autocorrect. But you should see some that I fortunately catch. It can't be too expensive to become a rights holder. There are thousands of small, self published labels out there. ai doubt there will be a huge revenue stream unless some music gets picked up for commercials. But, they'll be in control of their music.

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