Grandpa Joe Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 17 minutes ago, MikeN said: Honestly, I'd rather the judges just award straight up ordinals, and rigidly enforce the captions to avoid Caption Bleed. Right now, everything is driven by visual design and visual performance, including music captions. And (echoing others) trying to tell us that X corps is 0.02 better than Y corps in percussion performance is stupid beyond belief. Mike I'd be a fan of just axing the decimals and having whole number scores, or at least not going past tenths of a point. I can justify .2, but I can't justify .02. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjeffeory Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 42 minutes ago, Grandpa Joe said: I'd be a fan of just axing the decimals and having whole number scores, or at least not going past tenths of a point. I can justify .2, but I can't justify .02. I'd be ok with ties. Too much emphasis on not having ties is a problem, imho. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karuna Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 8 minutes ago, jjeffeory said: I'd be ok with ties. Too much emphasis on not having ties is a problem, imho. You guys are just proving my point! The "numbers" are not based on any sort of real objective reality. Yet because it's a NUMBER it's all to easy to treat it like it is. Because - MATH ! (or MATHS for the across the pond folks) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jjeffeory Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 25 minutes ago, karuna said: You guys are just proving my point! The "numbers" are not based on any sort of real objective reality. Yet because it's a NUMBER it's all to easy to treat it like it is. Because - MATH ! (or MATHS for the across the pond folks) GOOD! I think I agree with your point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenoris4Jazz Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 8 hours ago, TheOneWhoKnows said: Could have been, and honestly mostly was, great. The 3 levels of depth involved in the storyline was great. I just don’t think it was communicated well enough. Things actually overheard during Cadets' '16 show: "Why is the groom by himself on top of the wedding cake?" "Is he just going to stay up there the whole show?" "So, he plays a couple of times and stands there the rest of the show?" "Why is that guy just standing there doing bodybuilding poses?" "Is he not going to play, or twirl something? He's just going to pose the whole show?" "What happened to the color guard scaffolding up front?" "Did they rewrite the music AGAIN?!?" "If you have to explain it, you messed up the design." The actual story gotten hidden behind the constantly changing visual design and the two guys who got (literally) put on pedestals and left there. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenoris4Jazz Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 2 hours ago, karuna said: The point of the competition is the drive to excel, the attempt to exceed even your most optimistic expectations. Watching young people do things they have no business to be even attempting can be life changing for the members and rewarding for the teachers and entertaining for the rest of us. (And this is ignoring all the other life lessons drum corps imparts to it's participants which have been listed here many times). Anyone who takes the numbers seriously needs to get some perspective about what the activity TRULY is about. The sheets and the criteria are educational in and of themselves but writing down numbers for band is truly a futile exercise. BUT....competition and the numbers permit a bunch of OTHER benefits to materialize so everyone pretends they are real. Just don't forget we're all pretending. Oh good grief, I'm going to have to go there... From 1983 backwards, you were judged on your execution of your show 1st, the appeal to an audience 2nd, and the design 3rd. The point of the competition was... to perform well, score high, and have fun while accomplishing something, which might be a ring, a medal, and a flag. It was, above all else, A COMPETITION. Was that the best thing? Maybe not, but it worked for over 5 decades that way. Today, I don't see the point of scoring. Execution is all but abandoned, so what are they assigning scores to? Give 'em one score for the staff's design of a show, one score for doing it, and one score for whether the audience likes it or not. You only need three judges and they can use whole numbers... problem solved. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueStainGlass Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 4 minutes ago, Tenoris4Jazz said: Oh good grief, I'm going to have to go there... From 1983 backwards, you were judged on your execution of your show 1st, the appeal to an audience 2nd, and the design 3rd. The point of the competition was... to perform well, score high, and have fun while accomplishing something, which might be a ring, a medal, and a flag. It was, above all else, A COMPETITION. Was that the best thing? Maybe not, but it worked for over 5 decades that way. Today, I don't see the point of scoring. Execution is all but abandoned, so what are they assigning scores to? Give 'em one score for the staff's design of a show, one score for doing it, and one score for whether the audience likes it or not. You only need three judges and they can use whole numbers... problem solved. I wish I can insert a what gif for this. No execution score? That's literally on the score sheets how it's written and how it's executed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheOneWhoKnows Posted June 20, 2023 Share Posted June 20, 2023 58 minutes ago, Tenoris4Jazz said: Things actually overheard during Cadets' '16 show: "Why is the groom by himself on top of the wedding cake?" "Is he just going to stay up there the whole show?" "So, he plays a couple of times and stands there the rest of the show?" "Why is that guy just standing there doing bodybuilding poses?" "Is he not going to play, or twirl something? He's just going to pose the whole show?" "What happened to the color guard scaffolding up front?" "Did they rewrite the music AGAIN?!?" "If you have to explain it, you messed up the design." The actual story gotten hidden behind the constantly changing visual design and the two guys who got (literally) put on pedestals and left there. Not my problem people aren't willing to think intellectually. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DudleytheWest Posted June 21, 2023 Share Posted June 21, 2023 6 hours ago, MikeN said: Honestly, I'd rather the judges just award straight up ordinals, and rigidly enforce the captions to avoid Caption Bleed. Right now, everything is driven by visual design and visual performance, including music captions. And (echoing others) trying to tell us that X corps is 0.02 better than Y corps in percussion performance is stupid beyond belief. Mike It is. It's not a judicable activity. Every person approaches anything subjective with bias. Even judges are bias, and political, and there's no way around that. It's not a fair judging system, because it's impossible to be fair. There are few years where I think the best corps is obvious, but most years, to me it isn't. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DudleytheWest Posted June 21, 2023 Share Posted June 21, 2023 7 hours ago, karuna said: The point of the competition is the drive to excel, the attempt to exceed even your most optimistic expectations. Watching young people do things they have no business to be even attempting can be life changing for the members and rewarding for the teachers and entertaining for the rest of us. (And this is ignoring all the other life lessons drum corps imparts to it's participants which have been listed here many times). Anyone who takes the numbers seriously needs to get some perspective about what the activity TRULY is about. The sheets and the criteria are educational in and of themselves but writing down numbers for band is truly a futile exercise. BUT....competition and the numbers permit a bunch of OTHER benefits to materialize so everyone pretends they are real. Just don't forget we're all pretending. I understand the point of competition. The audience gets the best product on finals night because of competition. I think the corps themselves and the members take the numbers seriously. People go to the top corps for a variety of reasons and winning is one of them. Otherwise, we wouldn't see the Blue Devils all holding hands as the second place corps is announced and jumping for joy when they win. The sheets and the criteria are way too subjective, but how could you judge GE or content without subjectivity? It's impossible. I could even argue achievement is subjective. Then throw in politics. Then throw in the seemingly inability of judges to judge on any given night rather than based off what the judge the night before did. We have ample evidence of this. When the scores are hidden, there's a lot of movement, when they aren't it's the same. It SHOULD look like this every show (but never does): 6/18/2011 1. Crown 74.65 2. Cavies 74.30 3. Devils 74.05 4. Cadets 71.05 (scores were hidden and not announced) 6/19/2011 1. Cavies 74.35 2. Cadets 72.60 3. Devils 72.55 4. Crown 70.60 Had the scores from 6/18 been announced - guarantee the scores and placements on 6/19 would have been different. I can site other years where this has happened too, but this example shows either a major inconsistency issue with judging or proves a lack of ability on the part of the judges to make up their own minds. 4 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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