Ever Have To Make A Drill Change On The Fly

[idontwan2know]

I marched with a person who never seemed to quite learn the drill the way they should have...towards the end of the show we had a mesh where a back line filled into windows in a line in front of us.

Well, this person never seemed to find the right window, frequently stealing mine and forcing me to "run to daylight" as the football coach would say. I learned to keep my eyes open, that's for sure.

[marktarrantkeele]

I remember being in a show with my first drum corps in the UK when I was about 15 and somehow we ended up coming onto the field back-to-front, so instead of percussion setting up right of 50 we were left of 50. We practically had to make the entire show up. By some miracle the music held itself together (just)!

[cymbal_steve]

Well the 'S' looked pretty nice.

Here's a pic of the entire thing when we learned how to finally spell SDSU.

Anyway, in my 03 show at the end of the opener the angle setter always seemed to be in a different place and I was near the back of the line. That was always fun to look for.

Plenty of good seats still available..........

[bluecoats88]

it was either 84 or 85 but our drumline once had to shift as a unit around a line of horns that were coming right for us.

We were coming up the field in a form with snares and tenors in front and basses arced behind the line. Well we didn't get far enough to the right in our previous set and the end of a line of horns moving backfield was coming right for us. so as a unit the whole drumline moved in form and avoided the end of the hornline. We had just learned the new drill that day during rehearsal and didn't quite get it right.

After that we started being called the marching amoebas because we just kinda moved as one entity.

[danieltenor]

It happens every now and then over here that we have tattoos where the field just isn't big enough for drumcorps, so that's when our whole show ends up in a big improvisation.

I remember a tattoo in Katwijk with the worsed field I ever marched on, it was like 40 to 40, there was a big parkingmeter in the middle, a lantarn on the right side and a pavement on the left side. It was normally used as a parkinglot but on that day they setted up a small tribune.

So we come to this set where, if we marched it like it was written, we would walk straight into the parkingmeter, so one tenor decided to pass it on the front, I thought to pass it on the back and the last tenor on the front, so we ended up marching the a big part of the show as a triangle, because the field was so small there wasn't space to fit me in anymore.

[goglassmen]

In the 1985 27th Lancers a fellow contra player and I wound up in each others spots at the end of the drum solo and instead of switching back we just marched in each others spot till the end of the show. The staff and judges never noticed. It was quite a feat marching the wheel in a new spot.

[PageantryVisGuy]

I had to march a piece on the fly before...our college band would change show formats like every week, so it was often difficult to remember where to go. One show, we were planning on doing one format, but before the game, we were told to do the one from the previous week. While doing the halftime show, we had a scatter transition to move to the next piece...well, I was supposed to be in the front of the field with the rest of the mello section, but somehow ended up in the back of the field with the trumpets. I had to use some pretty fancy drill movement on the fly to get back to where I was supposed to be without being obvious. Afterwards, I went to the director thinking he would have noticed it...He said "huh??"...didn't notice it at all. SCORE!!

[84BDsop]

I've never done it in show, but it happened in practice in 04, before I got the podium back.

There was a move the sopranos had in the early part of "Boogie Wonderland" wherfe we were supposed to end un in a line behind the altos, and then turn into a follow the leader behind the altos.

The person guiding the sops miscalculated where to go and put me in a position to collide with someone else on the FTL...had to do a big wheel around that guy amd #### near jazz run to make my spot...but I did it.

At DCA there was another spot in the same chart where a member missed a stop in the set and got WAAAYY out of the form. A turn backfield, and that member makes it back into the form, but in the spot of the guy next door....great frecovery as they switched spots during the next move...almost looked like it was planned!

[mr.mello]

In 2001, there was this show where the sops made a file after the free-form in the drum break. Me and two other sops made the file but too bad it was five yards away from the actual section file. We recovered pretty flawlessly in the next set. After the show Ed Devlin was asking around the corps, "Who were my three Stooges tonight?" I didn't think I did anything different, so the why that happened still stumps me.

Last season, there was a show where the mello blob did not go far enough and some interesting adjustments had to be made for the next two sets. Since our show description asked "What if Dvorak came to America today?", there was a part where the imagined confused Dvorak was dodging incoming traffic. Me and a friend used "Dvorak" as a term for marching ticks. After the show I told him it was "like having 14 Dvorak clones on the field, each more confused than the last".

These are always good for a laugh!

Edited January 10, 2006 by mr.mello

[sopchick_01]

I can't think of any such moment off the top of my head, but reading these stories did, however, instantly make me think back to a picture I saw posted on Erika's Myspace:

I know I'm not brilliant, but she attends San Diego State University. Something's not right.

OMG! That was a moment of brilliance by our band there...lol!!