Checking in a decade later

[BlueStainGlass]

Crazy I've been listening to flo radio today and don't know any of the songs in these old shows  🤔

[2muchcoffeeman]

18 hours ago, mfrontz said:

It's something that's planned for in October but has to happen on the second Saturday of August.

Yes of course, but this is stipulated; there are a number of assumptions at work here: The talent and maturity is high (which is why you win in January, after the call-back camps); the performers will be on their A game in August (see, again, talent/maturity and also instruction); and a dose of luck, e.g. no waves of sickness, minimal injuries, no bus rollovers (also a factor of instruction, plus administration).

Point being: the fact that the kids are able to execute on the second Saturday in August is no accident. That part was taken care of in November, December, and January.
 

[mfrontz]

4 hours ago, FTNK said:

Not to hijack but the war was won by the heroic sacrifice of millions of people by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

https://youtu.be/SJSuMgEmEi0

[Mello Dude]

5 hours ago, FTNK said:

Not to hijack but the war was won by the heroic sacrifice of millions of people by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

Not to hijack this point but WW2 wouldn't have probably happened had the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics not made a deal to split Poland....

[drumcat]

On 7/27/2022 at 12:48 AM, Old Corps Guy said:

The "Song" statement hit home for me this weekend. I finally convinced my wife to watch all of San Antonio with me. For those of you that know me, you know she is not a big "drum corps" fan. It takes a lot to get her to watch one corps, much less, an entire competition.

So, we get to the final few performing corps and she makes the comment that she doesn't recognize any songs.  What makes that even more interesting is that BAC is playing the song we had for our first dance at our wedding.  I had to show her the melody in "What a Wonderful World" and she struggled to hear it.

One positive for her was the "Effect" in "Benedictus" by Crown.  While she didn't know the piece, the effect was something that she appreciated. I consider this "the moment" for this year.

 

Well, I thought this was going to get 3 replies and die, so nice to come back and see all of this. Flattered, honestly.

OCG, you've brought it home. I wanted to answer a few things here from a distance, and I'd remind everyone that instantly hated my post because they recognised a song that there are no absolutes in what I was saying. So a few points:

- I said I didn't care for samples, but I'm not bagging what or how kids are playing. It is my strong preference that sampling is not appropriate, and that "artificial bass" of any kind be avoided, but never am I bagging on a kid, their skill, or dedication. Don't mistake that. I also understand instrumentation has changed a lot over the years. Again, while it's jarring for me to hear a bass guitar and makes me instantly thing marching band, it's also an evolution. At least that's just reinforcement, and not sampling.

- As has been mentioned a few times, yes there are some songs. This post makes a better point of it. Few (not none) are something the average person would pick up on first read. The point isn't whether that is inherently good or evil or whatnot, it is an indication of 'popularity'. The activity might be healthy now, and I hope it is, but it will not get bigger given the comment above. Again, that's ok if you want it to be what it is, as popular as it is, and as attended as it is. Many activities would love to have such high attendance and engagement, but from an outside view, it is less approachable than it has been. If people stick around longer, and keep buying tickets, that's also a winning formula.

- A huge Thank You to those that recognised me. I can't say how nice it is to post something (I think) 7 years from the last time, and get a warm welcome. Truly appreciated. I know my opinion might not strike everyone the right way, and hey, what's forums for if everyone agrees, right?

- Finally, the irony of the night was I was actually considering buying the stream… "not available in my area". Apparently it's geo-locked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Thank you to everyone, including those that disagree. I think above all, once you can't march anymore, you quickly find out that the kids that are there, doing what you did and having those experiences… that's what you carry with you. OC, WC, whatever. We all did it. We all want kids to keep having those summers because they make us handle this insane world better than anything else.

Whakamihi to us all,

-drumcat

[jmc5682]

On 7/26/2022 at 10:40 AM, Mello Dude said:

Not to hijack this point but WW2 wouldn't have probably happened had the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics not made a deal to split Poland....

The Soviets also kicked my Grandparents out of the country and took their land and all their possessions, (they lived in Kiev) because they were Jewish.  Many others Jewish people were just murdered by the government.  I get that WW2 cost the Soviets more soldiers than any other country, but they, like most countries, certainly did not have clean hands!

[ftwdrummer]

9 hours ago, drumcat said:

 

Well, I thought this was going to get 3 replies and die, so nice to come back and see all of this. Flattered, honestly.

OCG, you've brought it home. I wanted to answer a few things here from a distance, and I'd remind everyone that instantly hated my post because they recognised a song that there are no absolutes in what I was saying. So a few points:

- I said I didn't care for samples, but I'm not bagging what or how kids are playing. It is my strong preference that sampling is not appropriate, and that "artificial bass" of any kind be avoided, but never am I bagging on a kid, their skill, or dedication. Don't mistake that. I also understand instrumentation has changed a lot over the years. Again, while it's jarring for me to hear a bass guitar and makes me instantly thing marching band, it's also an evolution. At least that's just reinforcement, and not sampling.

- As has been mentioned a few times, yes there are some songs. This post makes a better point of it. Few (not none) are something the average person would pick up on first read. The point isn't whether that is inherently good or evil or whatnot, it is an indication of 'popularity'. The activity might be healthy now, and I hope it is, but it will not get bigger given the comment above. Again, that's ok if you want it to be what it is, as popular as it is, and as attended as it is. Many activities would love to have such high attendance and engagement, but from an outside view, it is less approachable than it has been. If people stick around longer, and keep buying tickets, that's also a winning formula.

- A huge Thank You to those that recognised me. I can't say how nice it is to post something (I think) 7 years from the last time, and get a warm welcome. Truly appreciated. I know my opinion might not strike everyone the right way, and hey, what's forums for if everyone agrees, right?

- Finally, the irony of the night was I was actually considering buying the stream… "not available in my area". Apparently it's geo-locked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Thank you to everyone, including those that disagree. I think above all, once you can't march anymore, you quickly find out that the kids that are there, doing what you did and having those experiences… that's what you carry with you. OC, WC, whatever. We all did it. We all want kids to keep having those summers because they make us handle this insane world better than anything else.

Whakamihi to us all,

-drumcat

I think the problem I've been having thinking about this is the statement that I've bolded. Namely, that it assumes that there's an average person out there in terms of popular musical taste. I would argue there isn't.

As an example: I have...no specific idea what's on the Billboard charts currently or has been over the past year. I'm guessing that several things on the new Beyonce album are on there; I have heard none of it. I think I heard that that Kate Bush song that got used in Stranger Things went on the charts at one point? But that was written in the 80s, and I wouldn't have been able to tell you what it is if I heard it in passing because I don't watch Stranger Things (though I read critical discourse on it--I have interesting reading tastes). And I get the sense that anything that becomes a big deal on Tik Tok at least briefly charts after that, but that seems fairly flash-in-the-pan.

Which means you're stuck with going to older pieces that are presumably more permeated into the popular consciousness (mostly because kids presumably listened to their parents playing them and their parents presumably picked them up when there was a higher degree of popular musical monoculture). Which some corps are doing this year! But it's never quite just a straightforward presentation of the work. To a certain extent it can't be, just by the nature of adapting things written for electric guitars and pianos to a brass ensemble (I would argue there's no real straightforward way to directly adapt Smells Like Teen Spirit without it sounding like an excellently performed college football stand tune, for good or ill).

"What a Wonderful World" similarly suffers from the fact that very few brass ensembles sound like Louis Armstrong's voice. They get reasonably close to portraying it at its original intent--I might argue that the minor-key initial rendition is a poor structural fit for what they're trying to achieve and undermines the minor key setting of it that occurs later.

Moon River gets closer but Moon River was also written at least in part to be performable by this sort of ensemble because Mancini was a jazz band composer at heart.

TL;DR: The problem with looking at popularity and recognizability here is that it assumes the possibility of a level of monocultural popular awareness of a given piece that is not achievable (or at least, not achieved) in the current landscape.