Why is Drum Corps not as good

[Jimisback]

As do I. I see about 123 champions marching championship drills about as well as they can be marched. Unfortunately, not every corps draws talent of that caliber, and equally unfortunately, not every corps seems to realize it.

And even those jaw-dropping Cavies shows, at whose altars I worship, are not "as good as they can be" -- i.e., 100% clean.

Unless I mistake the OP, I think what he's wondering is why more corps don't try to find a balance between what's mind-bogglingly cool and what can reasonably be executed. Why, after practicing for months and months, is there still dirt at Finals? Why is the stock SCV assessment "would've won if they'd had another couple of weeks to clean it"? (Oh yeah? What about all those weeks they just had?) I think that's what he's getting at.

Thats it, Thanks for putting it better than I did.

[EKBari]

The one thing I noticed this weekend in Atlanta were the feet, especially in the contra lines. Except for the top 3-4 corps, most of the contras spent a good part of the show either phasing their steps or were just plain out of step. It was enough to make me wish for the days of M & M.

[Tekneek]

Now that I have thought about it, I think the lack of precision can be directly linked to the build-up system of scoring. The more difficult the show, the more potential points you have to earn. So shows are so difficult they will never really be clean and they just hope to be slightly cleaner in a more demanding show than everyone else.

Edited July 31, 2006 by Tekneek

[WWonka]

One of my favorite drum corps charts is from Blue Knights 2003. They opened with Kaval Sviri, a relatively obscure piece composed by Bulgarian Petar Lyondev and sung by the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir. But you know, it's a great piece, and certainly filled with melody. I, for one, am grateful that drum corps are willing to expand out, to take on new challenges, rather than sit back and play the same Chuck Mangione charts year after year. Where's the entertainment in that?

Yeah but I don't know if that is exactly what he was getting at. Kaval Sviri is humable and has some good melodies in it. Revo is doing a version this year. Being obscure never kept a piece from having some good melodies in it or being enjoyable. I think it's more the bop and splat arrangments a lot seem to be doing. Yes being able to play syncopated eigth notes from an entire ensemble over and over in perfect time is hard but it doesn't really impress me any more. Also 32nd note runs over and over for the sake of playing them and scoring brownie pts does about the same thing for me. Nothing.

And that doesn't mean go back to bad arrangments of pop tunes either. :P

Just a balance somewhere in there.

Back OT - I have noticed a ton of crooked lines and stuff from corps rotating shapes and dirty feet and these were from corps in the top 6. Is covering down that much harder now?

[EKBari]

Back OT - I have noticed a ton of crooked lines and stuff from corps rotating shapes and dirty feet and these were from corps in the top 6. Is covering down that much harder now?

Noticed the same thing too. Even in close formations or situations with a straight line, it never failed there was more than a few who were not in line. And the bad thing was, the lack of effort to correct them. For example, I saw one hornline that had a drill move in which an arch collapsed into a company front with the horns being no more than 2 steps apart. In both the afternoon and evening show, there were people who were either in front of or behind the arch and when the company front hit, they were still not in formation. And it stayed that way when they marched forward. It just urked the flim-flam-filth out of me.

[Jazzycat1]

I'm sure this has been said numerous times but - BECAUSE OF THE AMPS!!!! OK - maybe it's not so bad if you leave the amps for the pit only - and by that I mean for their instruments! No singing, No narration, blah blah blah... And turn them down!

[Hup234]

I feel that corps in the past decade or so have strayed too far into the "esoteric", the "artsy", the whatever you want to call it: Music that has no melody, just a disjointed series of notes and rhythms and runs. I don't leave the stadium anymore humming someone's show music, because it doesn't make much sense as music anymore. You may call me old, and old-fashioned, and out of touch, and not on the leading edge, but I just miss the days when you could say, "BD is playing Mangione and Star is playing a Disney show, and PR is doing Elsa's Procession," etc.

Now it's, "the Green Marauders' show is entitled "The Windmills of Your Mother's Twisted Mind", featuring music by obscure Bulgarian composer Elmo Blatch. The show opens with an obscure musical reference to the famed Helsinki dodgeball incident of 1919, featuring the percussion section on sitars and ancient zulu tribal bells. The warm sounds of Symphony number 13.67 follow, including a cymbal solo which decries the lack of fresh bread in stores on Monday mornings. A beautiful ballad, evoking the sounds of cattle lowing on alpine hills, transitions into a fiery closer featuring 19.3 seconds of silence in protest of apartheid. The show is a metaphor for the triumph of the human spirit and the love of mother earth as we look to the future without global warming, AIDS, and capital punishment."

Thank you for saying that. It's truthful, direct, and stingingly accurate to a fault. And your phraseology is as succinct as a Shakespearean sonnet. Please post again and again.

[madalumni]

How about long winded, self congratulatory, over-hyped

press releases about shows that do not live up to said hype!