I want a clear, honest, and well thought answer to this

[rut-roh]

What is the purpose of drum corps? Why do the members get out of it? (I guess I will have to watch the Cadets' show, so they can tell me what to think in the inevitable voice-over(s))

From everything I've come to understand about this particular show, nobody will be telling anyone in the audience what to think. (Why people assume that any show with spoken word in it is automatically trying to tell the audience what to think is beyond me.) The members of the corps will be telling you...along with some of the most amazing marching, drumming, playing and spinning you can imagine...what THEY think as it relates to THEIR experience in the Cadets. From there, you can think whatever you wish....just like any other drum corps performance. But I digress...

We go to the movies, listen to music, watch television shows, go to sporting events, and (fans) attend drum corps competitions to be entertained. Drum corps used to be about entertainment. Corps would go out and play a couple of cool tunes jam packed with power chords, screaming sopranos, ferocious drum breaks, heart wrenching ballads, and eye-popping drill moves. Somewhere along the line, DCI corps started coordinating their productions not to entertain, but to win. Walt Disney once said, “I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.” It seems that now corps design their shows to win, and if people like it, then that is just a positive side effect.

A few things: To say that drum corps used to be about entertainment would be a fallacy. At least in part. Drum corps has always stressed competition. One can debate the amount of stress they've put on it through the years, but please don't make it sound as if nobody cared about winning or getting high scores or walking away with national or world championships back in the day. It's just not true.

The other thing is you make it sound as if just because a corps is interested in getting high numbers, they could care less about being engaging and entertaining to their audience. That is a gross and inaccurate generalization.

I have seen dramatic changes in high school marching bands coming out of my home state. In the old days, the band that would play and march the best would win. Such is not always the case anymore. Throughout the past six or seven years, bands have started to realize that they can communicate their theme more effectively when they have narration telling what the music is supposed to be portraying. The activity has been changed in efforts to get higher scores, to win. In many cases, scoring higher at competitions becomes a contest to see how many props, special effects, mindless visuals, hornline dance sequences, and voice-overs can be fit into one show. Music education is no longer the goal for these bands, and if DCI continues in path of this “art,” music education will no longer be a goal for DCI either.

I don't really know how to respond to this. I haven't seen the bands you're talking about, and when you use terms such as mindless, you lose me. Bands and corps have been utilizing many techniques over the years to help tell stories on the field. Santa Clara made a living out of it in the mid-1980's. More props, costumes, magic tricks and uniform changes than you could shake a stick at. People LOVED those shows. Yet if you go back twenty years earlier, they would probably have been derided as pandering to the judges with gimmicks in order to get higher scores. In other words, your cut and paste of the definition of "entertainment" is a good one. Realize that entertainment is a subjective thing and that what entertains you might not entertain someone else...and vice versa. The 2006 Cavaliers won DCI, and there were a lot of gimmicks in that show. They were also VERY popular amongst drum corps audiences everywhere they went. Competitive AND entertaining. It happens quite a lot these days. If you pay attention.

Why do people keep on insisting that synthesizers are necessary for “artistic expression?”

Who says they are necessary? Don't confuse NEED with WANT.

Pat Metheny is a musical genius, and his works are often arranged for new mediums. I love hearing the Pat Metheny Groups’ many outstanding works in their original form and as they are often arranged for marching bands and drum corps. Let’s say corps X is playing a Metheny song, and they decide to use a synth to better duplicate Lyle Mays’ keyboard skills. Although this would sound less like a drum corps, it would definitely sound more like the original work. The next step would be to mic some vocalists, because some of the pieces in the PMG’s “Brazilian-influenced period” had vocals, too. That would make the corps sound a whole lot more like the recordings on the PMG albums, but the directors would probably assume that the corps still isn’t up to its highest level of “artistry,” so they would add a guitar and bass to better reflect the PMG’s sound. Before they knew it, they made a Pat Metheny Group of their own to play the show, and the hornline and battery was subjected to accompaniment roles.

That's an excellent EXTREME example of something that will most likely never happen. On the most rare occasion, after more than twenty years of viewing marching bands, I've seen a show where something like this happened. Where a soloist was so good, they were featured throughout the show and the rest of the ensemble played more an accompanying role than as their own entity. Then again, in the drum corps world, I've seen shows like the Glassmen flugel horn soloist shows of the early part of this decade, or the 1989 Blue Devils when large portions of the show were staged to focus one or two performers and the rest of the corps was relegated to an accompanying role. My thoughts? If you've got a horse or two who can mesmerize an audience with a professional-caliber of excellence night after night, go for it. I'm reasonably certain a group like that would be the exception rather than the norm.

Why can’t drum corps just be drum corps?

Drum corps will always be drum corps...an ever changing and amazing activity filled with extremely passionate and dedicated people.

[Meaghatron]

Again, keep DCI the way it is. Enjoy BOA the way it is. WGI can wow audiences the way it does. Each organization covers a different time of the year. I think there's enough variety for everyone.

If you aren't content, petition BOA to make their own summer marching band league. Maybe it'll rival DCI. But for now, keep DCI what it should be- brass and percussion (and guard).

[drumcat]

And I'm sure there would be a TON of people who would love it. Besides, does it really matter how many people it attracts?

Yes. It does matter how many people it attracts. DCI, when it's all said and done, is a business. Corps are non-profits, but they are still around because they attract enough people that pay real $dollar$bills$ to see these groups perform. It's not an academically, tax-sponsored program as high school bands are. Every BOA unit gets tax dollars through school funding of some level, even if it's just paying the band teacher's salary. Drum corps are independent, and do not get academic funding -- at least generally don't. (Spirit may be the exception?)

So while your little dreamworld of world-class performers doing band instrumentation may be a cool thing in your mind, and hell, if it were real, might not be terrible, it's different. Many people spend thousands of dollars on drum and bugle corps as it is. Without those dollars, there is no drum corps in its current form, including whatever corps you're in. So before you believe that changes for artistic freedom or whatever would be cool, you're looking at it from the point of view that money is no object. Maybe that's your disconnect with reality... if you were in a summer marching band, fewer people would go out to see you perform this summer. A lot fewer. That would endanger your corps' existance financially, and may indeed eliminate your opportunity altogether.

[skewerz]

Adding new elements does nothing to harm what you are looking for.

unless you are looking for what drum corps has offered in the past and present...

Evolving one art form into a sort of conglomeration and influences of those that already exist would infact *gasp* create something new and different!.

it alreadys exists...why change yet another art form into something that already exists?

So, once drum corps goes BoA, where can I listen to brass and percussion ensembles? I don't always want to hear ensembles that have every instrument at their disposal... sometimes, especially in the case of drum corps, I like hearing what can be done with only a certain group, here brass and percussion.

you go listen to a DCA show, and when they finally succumb to what happens...you listen to legacy cd's, and watch legacy dvd's..because drum corps will be gone.

The brass and percussion thing is great, and I love performing in them, doesn't get any better,

if it doesn't get any better, why change it? (muahaha...i'm a quote cropper)

after an informal count...i see 6 for, 6 riding the middle ground, and 32 against...(plus a few comments that didn't really elicit an opinion)

so, we should change the whole thing because a SMALL miniority wants it changed?

[NR_Ohiobando]

wow. this thread got really big, really fast.

Amp/WW/Narration discussion is the Viagara of Forum Topics.

[Gator Eagle]

My 2 cents:

Amps: OK but not really necessary

Woodwinds: No way Jose

Narration: Annoying to say the least.

I vote with my $$$'s - that's why I always drop at least a $20 spot in the donation jars at PR & The Troopers souvie stands. Time may change that, who knows?

[SF2K4]

Yeah, but how would it happen though? Drum corps is the best avenue for it. It's not like it isn't already happening, as I expressed in my very first post.

Question, SF2K4, where do you go to school and what is your major

Just because it's "already happening" doesn't mean I have to like it or accept it. I like MikeD's idea to have a different circuit in DCI for this kind of thing thougn I see one flaw, that being I have a feeling most (if not eventually all) current corps would make the switch to the "bigger, better circuit."

And for whatever reason you want to know, I go to THE University of Alabama and I'm currently majoring in (but possibly changing/revamping soon) Mechanical Engineering.

[SF2K4]

I have another question... people always say that us on DCP are a "minority" in reference to the entire drum corps community, but that gets me thinking... what is the majority opinion of ALL drum corps fans on this subject? From what people tell me, people like it the way it is (I remember someone saying some former marchers who hadn't seen shows in 10+ years came in and loved what they saw) so I get the feeling that both of us, those wanting complete change and those wanting total traditionalism are the real minorities... the majority simply being, "Hey, this is cool."

Edited April 18, 2007 by SF2K4

[Phirefenix]

Yes. It does matter how many people it attracts. DCI, when it's all said and done, is a business. Corps are non-profits, but they are still around because they attract enough people that pay real $dollar$bills$ to see these groups perform. It's not an academically, tax-sponsored program as high school bands are. Every BOA unit gets tax dollars through school funding of some level, even if it's just paying the band teacher's salary. Drum corps are independent, and do not get academic funding -- at least generally don't. (Spirit may be the exception?)

So while your little dreamworld of world-class performers doing band instrumentation may be a cool thing in your mind, and hell, if it were real, might not be terrible, it's different. Many people spend thousands of dollars on drum and bugle corps as it is. Without those dollars, there is no drum corps in its current form, including whatever corps you're in. So before you believe that changes for artistic freedom or whatever would be cool, you're looking at it from the point of view that money is no object. Maybe that's your disconnect with reality... if you were in a summer marching band, fewer people would go out to see you perform this summer. A lot fewer. That would endanger your corps' existance financially, and may indeed eliminate your opportunity altogether.

Thank you for beating me to an answer. Well said.

I think changing the current activity in a radical manner will basically kill it. Will we eventually reach what Einstein is looking for? I don't doubt it. As much as bands used to look to corps for inspiration BOA is now a testbed for ideas that enter the DCI realm. Many top programs in both circuits have the same staff. I said earlier that regardless of the squabbling that goes on in forums such as DCP, DCI will become whatever the BoD decides, and our input in that is ultimately a non factor.

[thePerfectbuzz]

I have another question... people always say that us on DCP are a "minority" in reference to the entire drum corps community, but that gets me thinking... what is the majority opinion of ALL drum corps fans on this subject? From what people tell me, people like it the way it is (I remember someone saying some former marchers who hadn't seen shows in 10+ years came in and loved what they saw) so I get the feeling that both of us, those wanting complete change and those wanting total traditionalism are the real minorities... the majority simply being, "Hey, this is cool."

I really agree with all of that