How Does the Activity Expect to Survive.

[keystone3ply]

6 minutes ago, craiga said:

Plus, there's the whole "I can't rehearse in the rain because it will destroy my pads" mantra that woodwind players have been using for decades....

Not if we design all "synthetic" reed instruments.  Gotta think outside the box; something like this...

 

 

[RiverCityAndTroopersFan]

39 minutes ago, craiga said:

Plus, there's the whole "I can't rehearse in the rain because it will destroy my pads" mantra that woodwind players have been using for decades....

As a woodwind player I’ve hated that idea and only put my instrument away when my director told me to

[RiverCityAndTroopersFan]

41 minutes ago, craiga said:

Plus, there's the whole "I can't rehearse in the rain because it will destroy my pads" mantra that woodwind players have been using for decades....

Also at some colleges they give the woodwinds plastic covers to protect the instrument,

[RiverCityAndTroopersFan]

1 hour ago, keystone3ply said:

Not if we design all "synthetic" reed instruments.  Gotta think outside the box; something like this...

 

 

Would a plastic clarinet with fake reed work? Because it doesn’t get its sound from wood.

[LabMaster]

Can we end the woodwind discussions once and for all?  It won’t happen. As an old British friend once said “may we stop the flogging, the horse is dead.”

[keystone3ply]

39 minutes ago, RiverCityAndTroopersFan said:

Would a plastic clarinet with fake reed work? Because it doesn’t get its sound from wood.

 

36 minutes ago, LabMaster said:

Can we end the woodwind discussions once and for all?  It won’t happen. As an old British friend once said “may we stop the flogging, the horse is dead.”

My comments are all in jest.  I'm ok with any instrument used in a solo setting*, but I'm a "keep drum corps all brass" kind of guy.  ✅

*I prefer the "all brass" sonority ensemble sound especially with the use of euphoniums or with a blend of baritone & euphs.  I absolutely loved Crown's 2019 "Gabriel's Oboe" trumpet/flugel duet, but the use of an oboe soloist would have also been spectacular... (maybe?)

The full peak @1:33.  Wow...

 

     

Edited February 19, 2023 by keystone3ply
cx

[IllianaLancerContra]

One more comment of adding new instrumentation - it isn’t just the instruments that would be added.  It would also require more caption heads, individual instrument instructors, & techs.  And this would increase transportation and food costs.  In an era where we need to contain costs adding new instruments the last thing the activity needs. 

[scheherazadesghost]

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Edited June 12, 2023 by scheherazadesghost

[keystone3ply]

3 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:

I played a woodwind instrument. Those things can be so temperamental... and necessarily so... they produce integral, unique, lovely sounds for pristine, climate-controlled, indoor settings. It's their "home" and "purpose," if you will.

Woodwinds, yup.  But the "double reed" instruments take it to a 'whole notha level'. 😂

 

  

Edited February 19, 2023 by keystone3ply
cx

[Slingerland]

Good lord people, try to get back to the point.

Open Class drum corps are dying because of a lack of participants relative to expense. WORLD class drum corps are suffering because of the fiscal demands of the tour and the relative paucity of audiences at the big venues that would allow DCI to make up some of the many millions (not a typo) in annual revenues they now don't have because physical media is as dead as Julius Caesar. I've seen the numbers, and what most of the legacy WC corps make from DCI now is in the very low six figures - about as low as you can go before you hit five figures. Doesn't do much to help you on the road when it costs $1m a year to even play the game.

My POINT when I brought it up was that those hoping that 100 community based open class drum corps will spring up as a fix to the problem is Not. Ever. Going. To. Happen.  When the impossible solution reveals itself as such, a rational human being looks at what is perhaps less desirable, but would address MOST of the problems, and heads in that direction. School band programs already exist.They have kids, they have parents, they have instruments, and in at least some cases, they're going to have combinations of adults and kids who might think doing 6 or 7 DCI competitions every summer would be fun. 

Do I give one rat's posterior about whether those potential summer bands in their own division are playing clarinets while they compete? Absolutely not. Why? BECAUSE INSTRUMENTATION ISN'T THE ___ING POINT - participation is, ya lovable numbskulls. 

The collective "you" of legacy drum corps fans pine for the day when there were 300 drum corps competing, and every state east of the Mississippi had dozens of corps competing. Well, those days ain't coming back with "drum and bugle corps". The closest realistic option would be to create a summer competition format that embraced what local drum corps was - local and cost-effective - and work at making that a reality, regardless of what those members are playing. 

(Last point - those who say "band directors want the summer off" might want to check out the bios of most of the music staffs of drum corps - it's weird that so many of the adults who choose to teach drum corps in the summer are........band directors during the school year.)
 

 

Edited February 19, 2023 by Slingerland