Hotlanta On My Mind - July 29, 2023

[MikeRapp]

2 hours ago, saxfreq1128 said:

It’s CRAAAZY to *me*, personally, IMHO, that the beauty and groove of Bloo’s show doesn’t trump most complaints about what is effectively very little narration. I really don’t get letting the narration bother you that much. So many beautiful things have already happened by the time we even hear the poem. There are so many moods and shades and grooves in their music that I just don’t care about the narration at all — and when it becomes a remixed rhythmic bit early on that doesn’t even count as “narration” to me, because it’s clearly part of the music. (IDK if everyone realizes this but words can come with music; we still call it music). I don’t get it! 

For me, a huge BC fan, it’s never about narration per se. Almost all shows have some narration now. But DCI isn’t a narration competition. When narration becomes distracting, when it overpowers or worse dumbs down the creative message of a show—it’s bad. This was my complaint of Crown last year, and some of the cringiest Cadets shows. 
 

Session 44 is one of my all time favorite dci shows. Same with E=mc2. Narration played an essential story telling role, that supported the music and marching. The narration of this year’s BC show is at times way too central, and doesn’t help tell the story.

but that is JMHO.

[MikeRapp]

2 hours ago, saxfreq1128 said:

But wasn’t that just singing, not “narration”? I don’t think I’d call those the same. 

There was a lot of narration, and you don’t notice it as such because it was woven into the story telling.

[kdaddy]

48 minutes ago, ThePlanets said:

For the record

I hate this show

It's beatific!

[IllianaLancerContra]

35 minutes ago, 3PoC said:

Some of the critiques of the Bluecoats show have gotten pretty lazy imo and so I'll come out of lurk mode to give a response. It's fine to not care for a show for any number of reasons - I have my own issues with certain bits found in many shows but I still find enjoyment from those shows because there is still good performing of drum corps taking place even in the most cheesy, choppily arranged, retreaded concept shows. 

"Bluecoats have done too many years of 60's shows" - Unless the idea of flowers and love is enough to make something "60s", I would guess that this show probably has the most modern music on the field this summer (apart from the original poem):
 
"The Garden of Love" the poem by the Romantic poet William Blake - 1794
The Woods - Chick Corea - 1977
Garden of Love - JacobTV - 2007
Bump - Anna Meredith - 2019
Finding and Believing - Pat Metheny - 2009
____45____ - Bon Iver - 2006
So Many Layers of Color Become A Deep Purple Heart [To Steve Reich] - Edda Magnason - 2022

"Too much narration" - The Bluecoats music team have been influenced over the past decade by the musical ideas of the pioneering and influential minimalist composer Steve Reich who is known for his shifting and "phasing" layers of rhythm and sound. He also pioneered the idea of what he called "speech-melody" which integrates into the composition as an element of the musical design, not as a separate layer of narration where the music is an underscore. Here is an excerpt from Musical Persona: The Use of Human Speech in the Music of Steve Reich by Rachel E. Weiss, West Virginia University:   https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/3679/

"From his earliest works to his most recent ones, Steve Reich has found ways to incorporate human speech into his music. The natural melodic qualities of the human voice, which he called "speech-melody," interested him from the beginning of his musical career. In his early tape pieces, Reich manipulated recordings of human voices in order to create varied melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic patterns. Later, he used such recordings for both their melodic content and subject matter in Different Trains (1988), The Cave (1993), City Life (1995), Three Tales (2002), and WTC 9/11 (2011).;Using human speech as a foundation, Reich composed works that are both musically complex and rich in meaning. Most of his speech-melody pieces focus on events of sociopolitical and historical relevance, such as the Holocaust, the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, or the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001."

I'm not usually a fan of narration and voice-overs myself as it often is too cheesy or literal for my tastes, but I hear the Garden of Love voice integration into the sound design as part of the music (I also think Bloo's 2015's Mr Maps was brilliant voice/music integration - which BD echoes this year with the French voice-over/battery segment which I also enjoy). Doesn't mean you have to like it, but maybe if you try listening to it as it was intended to be used, it might make it more enjoyable. After all, it's still some great drum corps being performed.

The Scooby-Doo style props scream late 1960s to me. 

[Super Don-O]

[WarriorWay]

38 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

For me, a huge BC fan, it’s never about narration per se. Almost all shows have some narration now. But DCI isn’t a narration competition. When narration becomes distracting, when it overpowers or worse dumbs down the creative message of a show—it’s bad. This was my complaint of Crown last year, and some of the cringiest Cadets shows. 
 

Session 44 is one of my all time favorite dci shows. Same with E=mc2. Narration played an essential story telling role, that supported the music and marching. The narration of this year’s BC show is at times way too central, and doesn’t help tell the story.

but that is JMHO.

Session 44 IS my favorite Coats show. Then downside up after that. This hippie stuff needs to come to an end so they can explore some other genre 

[WarriorWay]

I get the argument that it isn’t technically a 60s concept and it’s based in the poem sure, but the uniforms tell a different story

[DrumManTx]

Imma say sorry for being spicy on here last night (especially to you @Cappybara )

I will be the first to admit (and ALWAYS have) that I have a Bluecoats bias and it has been pretty grinding reading comments about narration and costuming ALL season long when there is so much cool stuff in the show to talk about, especially with the changes last night (enhanced awesome impact in the opener and the end of part three, added dynamic shaping and solo work in the ballad, all the changes to Bump, and the new ending to name a few!).   

If those aren't for you, totally get it and it's a forum so people can talk about whatever they want, but at this point those things are there and there are so many other cool things in what they do to talk about!  

With that I think I'll just take the rest of the season off and enjoy what the corps are offering.  

 

[Chief Guns]

16 minutes ago, DrumManTx said:

Imma say sorry for being spicy on here last night (especially to you @Cappybara )

I will be the first to admit (and ALWAYS have) that I have a Bluecoats bias and it has been pretty grinding reading comments about narration and costuming ALL season long when there is so much cool stuff in the show to talk about, especially with the changes last night (enhanced awesome impact in the opener and the end of part three, added dynamic shaping and solo work in the ballad, all the changes to Bump, and the new ending to name a few!).   

If those aren't for you, totally get it and it's a forum so people can talk about whatever they want, but at this point those things are there and there are so many other cool things in what they do to talk about!  

With that I think I'll just take the rest of the season off and enjoy what the corps are offering.  

 

I really hope you reconsider and don't leave. 

DCP is losing way too many cool people. 

It's bad enough we lost @Hook'emCavies 

Hopefully we don't lose you either. 

[BlueStainGlass]

39 minutes ago, DrumManTx said:

Imma say sorry for being spicy on here last night (especially to you @Cappybara )

I will be the first to admit (and ALWAYS have) that I have a Bluecoats bias and it has been pretty grinding reading comments about narration and costuming ALL season long when there is so much cool stuff in the show to talk about, especially with the changes last night (enhanced awesome impact in the opener and the end of part three, added dynamic shaping and solo work in the ballad, all the changes to Bump, and the new ending to name a few!).   

If those aren't for you, totally get it and it's a forum so people can talk about whatever they want, but at this point those things are there and there are so many other cool things in what they do to talk about!  

With that I think I'll just take the rest of the season off and enjoy what the corps are offering.  

 

This is how I feel whenever stars come on and the talk is about props the whole time instead of all the cool tricks the guard does, field coverage the corps has, and just the jams they play. Now I literally close DCP whenever they go on because it's the group that collectively seems to be the least favorite finalist and the group everyone wants to be passed. Realized after second stream that sentiment and almost left myself but at the end of the day I won't let a bunch of people (including myself) that can't do what they are doing on the field dictate how I feel about the show.