Meet the 2024 Madison Scouts Color Guard Team

[DCP NewsFeed]

The Madison Scouts are pleased to announce the Color Guard Instructional Team for the 2024 season, led by PJ Tankard, Caption Head. Read the rest of the article here.

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[greg_orangecounty]

I love Madison, and wish them a return to glory soon.  

And there are two things I will never understand; the tattoo obsession and the number of instructors required in modern Drum Corps for a single section.

 

[TenHut]

14 minutes ago, greg_orangecounty said:

I love Madison, and wish them a return to glory soon.  

And there are two things I will never understand; the tattoo obsession and the number of instructors required in modern Drum Corps for a single section.

 

I'm with you on both 100%. I'll never understand tattoos and think they all look terrible...and why corps need dozens and dozens of instructors is beyond me.

[RContra]

5 hours ago, TenHut said:

I'm with you on both 100%. I'll never understand tattoos and think they all look terrible...and why corps need dozens and dozens of instructors is beyond me.

How many times do people have to explain this? These people aren’t all doing massive stints on the road. Most of the great instructors have other commitments in the summer time. The larger staffs allow coverage all summer by tagging in and out. 
 

This isn’t hard, y’all. 

[arabica]

7 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:

…there are two things I will never understand; the tattoo obsession and…

 

 

7 hours ago, TenHut said:

…I'll never understand tattoos and think they all look terrible...

I scoured the staff pics posted in the announcement three times and didn’t see a single tattoo…what?

[greg_orangecounty]

6 hours ago, arabica said:

I scoured the staff pics posted in the announcement three times and didn’t see a single tattoo…what?

I didn't either.  It was a general comment. 

[contraguard05]

14 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:

I love Madison, and wish them a return to glory soon.  

And there are two things I will never understand; the tattoo obsession and the number of instructors required in modern Drum Corps for a single section.

 

I've gotten to work with two groups. Both times I was only available for a couple of weeks, as were the majority of the staff. I showed up, worked with them when I could, then went home. Same with everybody else. We generally had 5-6 guard instructors in front of the students on any given day. That breaks down to a dance person, 1-2 weapon people, 1-2 flag people, and someone in the tower. About the same as what it was when I marched and had the same five people on the road with us all summer long, minus the burnout.

[craiga]

This is true.  Not only that,  but back when I was alive (80s), there wasn't anything like a 60 day tour which had to be staffed.  DCI had what amounted to 2 two week tours....we even referred to them as Tour A and Tour B.  So, drum corps staffs just made sure to all get those specific weeks off to go on tour. It is difficult to get staff these days to be able to get 60+ days off from their jobs so that's why they cycle in and out and more staff are needed to cover the rehearsals. 

[greg_orangecounty]

8 hours ago, RContra said:

How many times do people have to explain this? These people aren’t all doing massive stints on the road. Most of the great instructors have other commitments in the summer time. The larger staffs allow coverage all summer by tagging in and out. 

Yes, yes, I've heard the explanation.  Mr. Ream kindly explained to me how teaching in modern Drum Corps works.  I "get it" but don't understand why. Instead of paying stipends to 17 people how about hiring 1 or 2 full-time to stay all summer?  Which one of the 17 do you listen to.  Too many cooks in the kitchen. 

I see a lack of cohesion in color guard.  This one's throwing a quadruple, that one's doing pirouettes, while the other is doing flag work all at the same time.  It's as if they're independent of each other.  (Preface:  Boston is the exception and sometimes Blue Devils).  Makes me wonder if the revolving door of instructors is the cause. 

I do love modern drum corps it just puzzles me sometimes. 

[contraguard05]

5 minutes ago, greg_orangecounty said:

Yes, yes, I've heard the explanation.  Mr. Ream kindly explained to me how teaching in modern Drum Corps works.  I "get it" but don't understand why. Instead of paying stipends to 17 people how about hiring 1 or 2 full-time to stay all summer?  Which one of the 17 do you listen to.  Too many cooks in the kitchen. 

I see a lack of cohesion in color guard.  This one's throwing a quadruple, that one's doing pirouettes, while the other is doing flag work all at the same time.  It's as if they're independent of each other.  (Preface:  Boston is the exception and sometimes Blue Devils).  Makes me wonder if the revolving door of instructors is the cause. 

I do love modern drum corps it just puzzles me sometimes. 

By hiring instructors to stay on all summer, you preclude them from lines of work that are NOT teaching. This is particularly challenging for color guard people, as we do not teach it as a class for any real compensation outside of Texas and a few select suburbs. I can't think of an office job that would give me the whole summer off to go on tour, nor could I imagine being away from my young children for that long.

Regarding your comment about the lack of cohesion, that is by design. Multiple lines in music call for multiple visual elements, so 15 minutes of unison would not live up to the depth and complexity of what we are hearing. That would also make the big moments far less impactful because we'd already seen so much unison. The flag hit from SCV 2017 is a great example of this.