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General Effect.... Disagreement?


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1 hour ago, GUARDLING said:

Yes I došŸ‘

I do agree , personal likes or dislikes should not be part of a judges approach to judging, Do I believe for the most part that is exactly what happens.Yes, I know for me when I approach any judging situation in the past I could care less who is on that field or go into viewing anyone with an expectation. Are there questionable peopleĀ  over the years and their alleged Bias?for sure. When looking at some of this which has been a question probably sinceĀ  the beginning of any judgeable activity one has to ask is the complaint due to notĀ  liking an outcome or believeing the outcome should be different or actual shady activity. That I'm sure is yet another debate that can be had.

As far as MMs coming up with some kind of judging system. Well I have always been of the belief that marching members need to be just that, members, not teachers, directors judges etc etc, If they want any of those then move on to that BUT remember as far as judging or how a corps is judged and the weight of captions etc etc is decided by the corps and they have the ability to change something if the want.

With allĀ  that said I do believe that if there are serious situations of either bias of shady activity coming out of the judging community OR a judge is not being held accountable for their decisions then the corps collectively need to step forward and investigate the situation and not ignore it. Accountability BITD was for judges was a hot mess with the old yet often used verbage of " I called it like I saw it " and that's where the conversation ended. I think being part of both I personally can say it's better now, as far as that anyway.

>> Ā remember as far as judging or how a corps is judged and the weight of captions etc etc is decided by the corpsĀ and they have the ability to

>> change something if the want

OK so hereā€™s the thing do all the corps have equal say or is it Ā like our political system in this country where only the alpha voices are heard and everyone else is left by the wayside? And I get it on paper they all have an equal voice but honestly behind the scenes what really happens?
Ā 

as far as raising issues and filing formal complaints how far do they really go? I know in my professional life that if I go to management with certain issues they will fall on deaf ears and I may jeopardize my own work experience by even bringing it upĀ 

it would be great if there was a lot more transparency in the judging process and the oversight of the judges themselves but I realize I am pipe dreaming on that one unfortunately

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18 minutes ago, Triple Forte said:

>> Ā remember as far as judging or how a corps is judged and the weight of captions etc etc is decided by the corpsĀ and they have the ability to

>> change something if the want

OK so hereā€™s the thing do all the corps have equal say or is it Ā like our political system in this country where only the alpha voices are heard and everyone else is left by the wayside? And I get it on paper they all have an equal voice but honestly behind the scenes what really happens?
Ā 

as far as raising issues and filing formal complaints how far do they really go? I know in my professional life that if I go to management with certain issues they will fall on deaf ears and I may jeopardize my own work experience by even bringing it upĀ 

it would be great if there was a lot more transparency in the judging process and the oversight of the judges themselves but I realize I am pipe dreaming on that one unfortunately

Well I can only tell you my experience, When teaching If I had an issue with a judge it was alwaysĀ  addressed, not to overturn anything but to make know my issue with the way they thought, ALSO a person has to know to put their own ego aside and listen to whats being said and adjust if necessary. This today is way better than the early days of DCI and other systems.

Does everyone have the same say? well there will always be the louder voices than others, thats life BUT I will say that even the smaller corps signed offĀ  in agreement on many issues over the years with the louder voices.Ā 

Edited by GUARDLING
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11 hours ago, GUARDLING said:

Well I can only tell you my experience, When teaching If I had an issue with a judge it was alwaysĀ  addressed, not to overturn anything but to make know my issue with the way they thought, ALSO a person has to know to put their own ego aside and listen to whats being said and adjust if necessary. This today is way better than the early days of DCI and other systems.

Does everyone have the same say? well there will always be the louder voices than others, thats life BUT I will say that even the smaller corps signed offĀ  in agreement on many issues over the years with the louder voices.Ā 

Twice in my HS band career we got dinged by a judge (hard) because of a personal disagreement in style, which should never happen.Ā  Our OTL was Spirit of the Bull, so the first two notes are supposed to be loud as hell.Ā  The judge/band director believed in slipping slowly into a show, so he dinged us a point or more after only 15 seconds of our show.Ā  We listened to the tape and we're all like "Have you HEARD the song before you idiot?!?!?!"

The second time was in concert at spring competition.Ā  We closed with Chorale and Shaker Dance and it brought down the house.Ā  The first two judges gave us 99/98.Ā  The third guy gave us an 86.Ā  He liked playing the piece very legato and our director had made us put breath marks in our music so we would have obvious pauses/breaks in the performance.Ā  (If you listen to recordings of this piece by college and all-star bands, that's the way it's supposed to be played)Ā  The judge came by after the sheets had been turned in and apologized.Ā  He said he screwed up, but the scores were what they were.

Bottom line is, if you're a judge, you should be evaluating the performance of the product that night/day.Ā  You may not like the music selection, the uniforms, or the drill, but that should not be a part of your evaluation.

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2 minutes ago, Tenoris4Jazz said:

Twice in my HS band career we got dinged by a judge (hard) because of a personal disagreement in style, which should never happen.Ā  Our OTL was Spirit of the Bull, so the first two notes are supposed to be loud as hell.Ā  The judge/band director believed in slipping slowly into a show, so he dinged us a point or more after only 15 seconds of our show.Ā  We listened to the tape and we're all like "Have you HEARD the song before you idiot?!?!?!"

The second time was in concert at spring competition.Ā  We closed with Chorale and Shaker Dance and it brought down the house.Ā  The first two judges gave us 99/98.Ā  The third guy gave us an 86.Ā  He liked playing the piece very legato and our director had made us put breath marks in our music so we would have obvious pauses/breaks in the performance.Ā  (If you listen to recordings of this piece by college and all-star bands, that's the way it's supposed to be played)Ā  The judge came by after the sheets had been turned in and apologized.Ā  He said he screwed up, but the scores were what they were.

Bottom line is, if you're a judge, you should be evaluating the performance of the product that night/day.Ā  You may not like the music selection, the uniforms, or the drill, but that should not be a part of your evaluation.

Actually you are partially right and sorry you had a judge like this BUT Uniforms ( If you decide theme uniforms are part of the production ) are part of the overall viewing. Color can also play into the vide a corps decides to create, mood , another. Bottom line " IF" a corps chooses to theme something and doesn't meet that threshold then it will play a part.

You are right about judging the performance BUT today the choices made to a programĀ  also does and should mean something. If you present it it's judgeable

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On 8/9/2022 at 7:18 AM, billj said:

When practically every subcaption ordinal aligns with each corps' overall placement (with an occasional variance in percussion or guard) I call BS. You can't tell me that some corps march better than they play and vice versa.Ā 

I don't think that's happening all. One of the reasons why BD is 1.5 points head of everyone is because Crown, Vanguard, Bluecoats and Boston are all receiving 1s, 2s , 3s, 4s and 5s across the ordinals whereas BD is has mostly 1st place finishes, with one or two 2nd or 3rds, and maybe a 4th here and there. If the ordinals reflected the placements, the 2nd place corps would be a lot closer to BD.

Edited by henry7184
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Iā€™m my humble opinion it is slotting that Is applied just before finals every year that gives the effect and reality of judge bias. Corps should be given the scores they achieved without relationship Ā to each other. And the weighting of GE higher than everything and in addition the invisible or elimination of drill scoring by including it in GE diminishes the real proficiency of a corp. GE is way less important than music in performers growth as a musician or otherwise.Ā 

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35 minutes ago, dureau said:

Iā€™m my humble opinion it is slotting that Is applied just before finals every year that gives the effect and reality of judge bias. Corps should be given the scores they achieved without relationship Ā to each other. And the weighting of GE higher than everything and in addition the invisible or elimination of drill scoring by including it in GE diminishes the real proficiency of a corp. GE is way less important than music in performers growth as a musician or otherwise.Ā 

that depends who you talk to . I have said this before BUT I had gone to the symphony a while ago and the visuals to the fantastic music were crazy good. lighting, lazers dancers etc etc. When talking to people there as well as one of the musicians they siad it brought a whole new audience in.

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20 hours ago, Tenoris4Jazz said:

This gets a little long and technical, so bear with me or just skip to the next post.Ā :whistle:

I've been a cost accountant for 20+ years and I minored in statistics... I can number crunch with anybody on the planet.Ā  I gave this a go over a decade ago and ran out of free time and got an inconclusive result.Ā  What I can tell you is the subcaption scoring limits seriously affect placement and overall scoring.Ā  I only got to look at brass scores before I had kids and lost all my free time, so looking at M&M/Visual/GE never happened.Ā 

Back in '73, Argonne should have gotten a 10%-15% margin for music analysis.Ā  Their book was the hardest thing anyone had ever seen by a mile.Ā  But due to there being a 10 point ceiling and a lack of rules governing difficulty, the difference between them and Vanguard was 1/10th of a point instead of a full point... which absolutely did not represent the difference in complexity and difficulty of those two programs.Ā  The most obvious example of the score gap actually resembling reality is '78 brass ensemble:Ā  Spirit scored a 14.0/15 and Devils were second with a 13.0.Ā  In other words, Spirit's ensemble performance was judged to be 6.67% better than the rest of the top 12!Ā Ā Going back another point from 2nd put you in 8th place.

If you want to talk about one score affecting another... 1973 again, 27th placed 3rd in brass execution in semis, but 16th in analysis.Ā  Played the hell out of lousy book.Ā  Meanwhile, at Finals, Vanguard placed 1st in analysis and 3rd in brass overall, but was 8th in execution.Ā  Great book, played like crap.Ā  Meanwhile, Blue Stars finished 2nd in brass execution, but 4th overall (behind Vanguard) because they had a 1.1 point differential in analysis.Ā  Stars' line was obviously better than Vanguard's, (Stars Field Brass score was 1st at 13.0, SCV was 9th at 11.9) but the huge gap (9%) in scoring for analysis minimized their actual edge in execution (5.6%).Ā  Field brass and ensemble brass were each 15 points, but were averaged together and added to the 10 points for analysis to get the overall brass score of 25.Ā  The gaps between execution scores (maxed out at 15) were smaller than the gaps on analysis (maxed out at 10).

What does all this accounting and math really mean?Ā  The difference in how well you played was not reflected in the scores to the same proportion as how much better your design was.Ā  A mediocre performance of a great design scored better than a great performance of a mediocre design.

Fast forward to 2022... show design still limits performance scores, just in a much more obvious way.

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Thanks for the lore and knowledge.

I'm going to pull away from GE briefly just to demonstrate my point.

I had no way of actually knowing that JONZ were the best on the field when we marched. (No clue. I was in guard; had a great music education up til then so I could hear better than most in my section, but it was more difficult for MMs to compare sections back then.) But for whatever reason, JONZ knew in their souls that they were the best and it changed how I approached the work. I know it did for many others. JONZ has and always will be the heartbeat of the Santa Clara Vanguard when that's paired with a sharp, caring instructor, it feels like nothing can stop them. I love that.

But I learned early in HS that the game is made up and the points don't matter. And to @C.Hollands point, perhaps, my achievement and growth as a performer was ALWAYS limited not only by design, but my instructor's ability to gain my trust. If you're beaten down every day, it's hard to achieve.

Anyway, there's waaaaay more important things to learn and experience in drum corps than ring chasing or pouring over scores and placement. I think JONZ always works hard for their positioning, but they're still beneficiaries of a system that is subjective and relatively intangible. Doesn't matter to me, I'll still sing their praises all the dang way home! (I got to be the first to tell a cymbal alum that JONZ are ahead this year. He was so proud and is gonna tune in this week. The first thing he asked is where's the Vanguard yell this year?!) šŸ’šā¤ļø:babies:

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Something that might be a bit helpful for context: an actual GE judge's tape.

(I'm down the DCI judge's tape rabbit hole on YouTube today. There are some good Prosperie tapes out there.)

This is Joe Allison on GE Music for Cadets at the Massilon show in 2013.

I figure it might provide some insights on what GE judges actually talk about and look for.

It's worth noting that Allison's score for them this night was 19.4, tops in the caption for the show (0.1 over Crown). It's also worth noting that for however in the bag for them he sounds here, when he judged them in Prelims two days later they were second on his sheet, 0.2 behind Crown. (IIRC from someone who actually heard that tape, it had something to do with the difference in how the music came across in LOS vs open-air).

Ā 

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