A history of DCI judging and scoring, and the movement away from music emphasis

[Terri Schehr]

5 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:

I trust your research, I just don't remember that there were that many judges (10?) in the first half of the first decade of DCI, especially the first year. 

I can’t remember at all.  I do remember that Briske and Rick Maass were chief judges.  I marched with Rick’s son in Guardsmen.  He looked very gruff but he  was a very nice man.  He truly cared about the kids and I think it said something that he trusted the Guardsmen enough for his son to march there. 

Ten judges seems like a lot to me, too, but maybe there were.  I remember the ones who would walk down the line looking at feet in concert.  lol 😂 

[Terri Schehr]

18 hours ago, Lance said:

This is why I love Crown and Bloo in particular.  I can almost always count on a musical product that's just as important to them as visual.  It's simply not the case for the majority of corps anymore, and I don't blame them with the scoring being so heavily skewed towards visual.  

The fact that people with zero musical background are scoring music is yet another reason why scores are really a joke in the activity.  It's always been kind of a joke, though, lol.  

I’m out of the loop about judging but you’re saying that people with no music cred are judging music? Yikes. 😳 

[IllianaLancerContra]

5 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:

I trust your research, I just don't remember that there were that many judges (10?) in the first half of the first decade of DCI, especially the first year. 

I remember shows from that era w/ partial judging panels.  In DCM they would sometimes give zero in caption not scored so max score would be in mid 80s

[IllianaLancerContra]

29 minutes ago, Terri Schehr said:

I’m out of the loop about judging but you’re saying that people with no music cred are judging music? Yikes. 😳 

Kind of like DCP during the season.  But with consequences.  

[cixelsyd]

6 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:

I trust your research, I just don't remember that there were that many judges (10?) in the first half of the first decade of DCI, especially the first year. 

Well, you "only" had 6 on the field.  Two people ticking each of the major captions.  

Add one GE judge for each of three areas, and that is 9.  Music analysis made it 10.  (Technically, it was really 11 if you count the timing/penalty judge.)

[cixelsyd]

6 hours ago, BG984 said:

In the early years especially, a significant portion of shows were run by associations outside of DCI.....also, my data was only from DCI Championship prelims/finals....from 1972 to present............it was interesting to note the changes, though, and the short 6 year elimination of the 30% edge toward music I find to be mind boggling..........

It is mind-boggling.

Drum corps has had a way of bucking systemic influences, and steering a different creative course.  For many years (i.e. prior to DCI), it labored under scoring systems which gave very little credit for content, focusing almost exclusively on identifying and deducting for errors.  Yet many of the leading corps from that era were best known for introducing increasingly difficult things into the idiom, and pulling the whole activity in that direction against scoresheet logic.  This was true in brass, percussion and visual. 

Maybe the best example of that was the evolution of colorguard.  The original "colorguard" was literally an American flag bearer "guarded" by a couple of accompanying weapon bearers.  It defies all logic how that evolved with the ideas of adding hordes of auxiliary performers in the late 1960s, having them spin and toss equipment at risk of penalties in the 1970s, then develop dance into a fundamental additional skill in the 1980s - all when there was no caption in the scoring system allocated to assess and credit all these developments, a change that was still two more decades off in the future.

In similar fashion, when I look at the scoring shift 1994-2000, I do not see or hear the changes one would logically expect in response.  Those changes came distinctly later - changes like the concepts of "intellectual" and "aesthetic" effect; making thematic shows mandatory; the fetishes for props and climbing; the shift away from musical focus and progression toward the patchwork design that infests current musical programming, and the electronic crutch on which it relies so heavily; and a parallel shift away from drill focus and progression toward the patchwork design that infests current visual programming, and the pose-or-dance sets on which it relies so heavily.

[Vuitton]

12 hours ago, BG984 said:

So many staffs today work for "demand", and there is demand out there, though that certainly doesn't make it musical by any stretch.    Picking great music that is already extremely well-composed/arranged, and then simply transcribing it mostly and staying "true to the original", is something that is all but ignored these days.    Some staff actually list musical folks as "designers", instead of arrangers/composers, and it sounds that way.  "Quality of arrangement/composition"...(ie does it make musical sense, does it flow, is it expressive, is it emotional, is the musical form coherent) is non-existent in today's DCI judging vocabulary.   If it doesn't sound wonderful standing still, and does not move you emotionally, there is nothing the visual package is going to do to fix that......at least not for me...............

 

Phantom's 1996 brass book was fabulous, and they maxed it out at finals............ditto 2008........I remember laughing in 2008, because they received such a great audience reaction compared to the corps that "beat them" in quarters and semis..........I actually left before the finals scores, because I didn't want to witness the "perceived travesty".......but received a call in my car that surprised me...........though the margin was also laughable.......it wasn't close, IMO........

 

To me, modern drum corps is all about the visual. That's why I'm still involved in the activity. Since 2010, there are only three shows I listen to: Crown 2013 and 2015 and Vanguard 2018. When I want music I look elsewhere. It saddens me that really good music has left drum corps.

I'm not sure why one can't be true to the original composition and still have content. To me, playing actual music is more difficult than playing technical exercises in a Hooked On Classics type fashion for 10 minutes is.

[Triple Forte]

4 hours ago, Vuitton said:

To me, modern drum corps is all about the visual. That's why I'm still involved in the activity. Since 2010, there are only three shows I listen to: Crown 2013 and 2015 and Vanguard 2018. When I want music I look elsewhere. It saddens me that really good music has left drum corps.

I'm not sure why one can't be true to the original composition and still have content. To me, playing actual music is more difficult than playing technical exercises in a Hooked On Classics type fashion for 10 minutes is.

That’s why I love the Marine Drum and  bugle corps of the most. They are both highly technical and musical. 

[OldSnareDrummer]

15 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:

I trust your research, I just don't remember that there were that many judges (10?) in the first half of the first decade of DCI, especially the first year. 

In the dino tiimes. 

2 brass

2 percussion

2 M&M

3 GE

1 T&P

Though as mentioned, most shows were regional/AL/VFW with fewer. I marched in a show once where the field judges were also the GE judges. That show was evidently on a tight budget. 

[Mello Dude]

13 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

Kind of like DCP during the season.  But with consequences.  

OR, people with cred and no taste in music? 😛