Відео

For me, GE is: I hear music I like that is arranged in a way that I also enjoy, the corps does cool marching things that go well with the music and does it all at an extremely high level, that's good GE for me. It all comes down to the music for me though. If I don't like the music, I'm not going to like the show, no matter how expertly it is performed. 2012 Blue Devils' "Dada" show may be an exception for me. I hated the music with a passion (though much of that had to do with the fact that they kept playing stupid electronic voice samples over the corps) but it wouldn't have mattered if I enjoyed the music because the concept was horrible. I have a personal problem with Dadaism. I certainly don't need nonsense and irrationality in my drumcorps shows (though you could argue that the whole drumcorps activity is irrational nonsense I guess lol) I also do not enjoy it when designers put politics into their shows. Nothing turns me off faster than seeing a drumcorps who is putting political messages in their show (Xmen's "Protest" and Cavies' "Propaganda" are a few that come to mind) My stance on politics in drumcorps is the same as my stance on politics in movies: Just make an entertaining show/movie and leave the politics out of it. Nobody cares about your political views anyway. I'm certainly not going to start spouting mine off. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but when it comes to politics, unless someone specifically asks you about it, you really should keep it to yourself. I also have a problem with show designers who come off as pretentious. Is that my fault/perception? Maybe. But I do feel that too many people take this activity way too seriously. In the end, it's just a bunch of kids marching (occasionally) around a football field while playing music and doing interpretive dance every now and then. Didn't mean to make this comment sound so negative. I'm a happy guy and I really like this season of drumcorps a lot. I just felt like these things relate to GE in some way. There's been a lot of that stuff lately, unfortunately. That being said, I really do enjoy Bluecoats' show this year and believe that they will go undefeated. I much prefer their 2016 show musically, but this show is not half bad and seems to have all the components to win. They are taking a lot of captions and that will probably be the key to their victory. I do believe that Boston will take the Sanford though and possibly the Zingali. Time (next Saturday!) will tell.

There are people who really think Blue Devils can't place any lower than 2nd? Um, yeah about that... My first year watching drumcorps (88), they placed third. Then the next five years they placed: Fourth, fourth (if memory serves, they tied with Phantom whatever they placed), fifth, fourth, fourth and I loved almost every show from those years (except 91). 2005 they placed fifth. Yowza! Anywho, gotta slightly disagree on Crown this year. I think they are a little less/lower than they have been recently. They are still performing at a very high level, but they seem dirtier this year than most and their show concept is really weak. Personally, I find their music to be incredibly boring. This is very unfortunate for me as they had my favorite show last year. I keep trying to like their show but it hasn't happened yet. I will keep trying but I'm starting to think it will never happen. I really enjoyed your take on things right now and appreciate your thoughtfulness. Cheers!

None of the corps have good drill. They refuse to march. Drill writers dont know how to writr drill

I think the biggest struggle with BD besides Boston and Coats doing really well this year across the board, is that they have a show design that doesn’t showcase their ensemble as well as previous years. Because their show is clunky music wise and claustrophobic drill wise, it doesn’t lead to grand moments that generate a ton of excitement. The cloaks also don’t help their visual.

I just discovered you on my recommended page, and your commentary is amazing. Your perspective and comments are really entertaining to listen to! Keep it up man, look forward to hearing you throughout the season.

It’s so nice to see some points other than whatever the loud majority is saying!

Great arguments! Thanks for the video

Boston's show is pure drum corps. One of my favorite shows I ever saw since the VFW stuff.

Quite possibly some of the best takes I’ve heard in recent memory.

Mr. Irwin...I marched 82-87 Sky Ryders. Thank you for this channel

Thought earlier that they (the Bluecoats) might set the record for the gap between 1st and 2nd (regardless of who is 2nd)

The Coats have that 'perfect' show... make the judges happy AND make the fans happy.

The biggest musical difference between corps, IMO, is individual talent. Phantom Regiment fans can cry all they want this year about why aren't they Top 3. Well, I can tell you why. They don't have as much individual talent as the 4 corps ahead of them. The trained ear can hear it. Their drill design also isn't as complex as the corps ahead of them. I love Phantom's show BTW. Its my 2nd favorite after Bluecoats

I think what you are describing as "inevitable" could better be described as a coherent and sensible narrative. But there are a few exceptions where this doesn't hold (the BD Dada show and the Bluecoats entropy show this year). Those shows scratch the itch of intellectualism by challenging narratives themselves. (Or if you are a hater of those shows because you absolutely need a clear theme, you would describe those as being pretentious/haughty).

I agree that you can pick any music and be successful competitively... Cadets 2012 did Christmas tunes and was top 4... but I feel the music is not the priority in providing effect. Emotional or otherwise. When Santa Clara did Miss Saigon, I didn't need to see a helicopter to know it was there. The music created the effect and it was powerful! In short, my preference is for music to be the priority of effect, allowing the guard to be guard and musicians to be musicians. Bending and squatting while playing True Colors adds nothing to the meaning of the tune, but unnecessarily creates something else to judge. Whereas the peace sign drill move, while playing a Vietnam show, is much more effective. Will always support the kiddos, but adult decisions are sometimes questionable (says the adult). Thank you for your videos, DCI and trumpet, and all the best!

I would submit it is at least to a degree what the judges see through their lenses.

I feel like in the last decade (2010-present), the bluecoats have begun to have a similar type of consistency to the blue devils. As in program design and quality

There’s a lot to digest here, which is a good thing. I watched the entire video and it opened my eyes to a lot of my biases and opinions about judging/scoring in drum corps. Personally, I would love to hear more of your opinion about GE. GE is a hot topic to me because it seems that judges are now giving more power to designers more than they are the members. For example, you can have the best performers in your corp, but have a bad show design and lose it all because of the weight that GE holds over the rest of the sheet, or the other way around. Many reasons corps score they way they do are out of the membership’s control, as a spectator and former marcher. There are corps this year that have sounded/looked much better in prior years, in my opinion, but have been scoring much better than they have before due to their staff’s better understanding of what a “well designed show” is. Of course BD has been winning all this time because a lot of their staff is well-equipped with knowledge and experience, plus the added bonus of them not having to revamp their staff like other corps do. Granted that it is not by much, Do you think it’s fair that GE is able to dictate the outcome in such a way that doesn’t reward performers? And do you think there’s a better way to have a balanced scoring system in modern drum corps?

Why the "look" when you mentioned VK? Haha...a good reaction IMO. Your analysis is pretty cool...I've been in the activity since 14 years prior to DCI and literally grew up with the changes the activity has undergone. Teach and judge to this day, only on the marching band level, but taught and wrote (early on) for decades...mostly with VK, but have gigged/taught other notables. Interesting! Agree with you on your "slotting" angle...judging is *hard* at this level, and ultimately it's all rank and rate. Most often they get it right.

I saw your show several times, I marched Spirit in 2001

Order of shows in the first half of the season are still determined by placement last year. I believe San Antonio, or just before San Antonio is when this year's scores impact performance order.

I remember performing twice in one day at the RCA Dome and the Alamo Dome. We were provided a free DCI box lunch between morning/night shows however. 😂

Another thing to keep in mind is that judges can adjust their scores digitally in Competition Suite as the show progresses. Spreads are much more indicative than actual scores.

If you look at Sky Ryders 1980 and 1981 recaps, you'll see an interesting study of a corps trying to break into the top twelve, and the difficulty of having a lagging caption. The horn line carried that corps, along with the guard, but the battery lagged far behind. In '80, the battery scores and level of difficulty dragged down GE and difficulty scores to the extent that it affected other captions. In '81, the hornline improved marginally, the battery less so, but unfortunately the show designer changed, and the drill design lacked difficulty--so the gains that should have put the corps past the top-12 barrier were counteracted by a show design with less potential. The horns ended up 7th place in 1981. The battery and visual elements far, far down. It's unusual to see one caption outperforming others to quite that degree. The corps would finally enter the top-12 in 1982, by focusing on simply being clean enough in battery, and impressive enough with horn and guards to take advantage of the audience approval factor and drag the corps into the finalist category. At the time, there were some heated moments in post-show recaps. It was difficult to be a fan favorite, and to have such a high-functioning brass line, and to feel hobbled by some genuine judging miscalculations on drum difficulty. And in 1981, there was a pushback by drum caption judges on a number that was a hybrid horn/drum feature. The drum portion of that show was probably not as well written as it could have been, but it was a scoring boon to the horns. Ultimately the number was dropped mid-season and the second drum feature from the previous season was re-inserted into the show. This actually hurt the horn caption a bit, but the reward in the drum caption never came. So, as to your mid-season adjustment comments--I think in hindsight that the radical show-shift probably WAS a miscalculation on the corps part, and the better pathway would have been to work on the drum book for that number. Of course, hindsight is 20-20, especially 43 years later!!

I've had it explained to me that Drum Corps cannot perform in random order because judges need a near-comparison to score accurately. To me, this hits at the very nature of slotting. If they can't objectively score a Drum Corps, then how do we know it's fair? These corps that constantly place lower, how do we know they're not being held down by the system, and so moving up would take years to happen (like Carolina Crown)? Generally, it's expected that if one corps performs after another, that they are slightly better. Let me put it this way... if the Blue Devils go on last every time, it's like getting the Pole Position in Nascar every single race.

when he was talking about splitting captions, our highschool placed 2nd in the state in all of the captions and finished 3rd. crushing for all of us but hey a medal is always good to come away with

The 2018 show was a DCI winner but I did not find the choice of white uniform and drab colour guards flags contrasted enough with the field’s white lines. But a great musical experience.

Beautiful.

Mình đang tìm hiểu phần mềm này. Trước giờ dùng encore và sibelius, phần mềm musescore tiếng hay đấy chứ

1350 and ff was one of my fave PUSH moments in a DCI show I saw this show live 3 times. Garfield will always be ....

Totally agree with your thoughts on amplified soloists around the 28 minute mark. I've never understood people being against that, like if someone prefers the more linear drill, less choreography heavy, less prop heavy shows of old, that's fine, its their preference for a different style of show. But amplifying soloists only expands what soloists can achieve by allowing them to play at the optimal volume to get their best sound like you said.

interesting analysis but I disagree with you premise. I think that, perhaps, they marching fast while playing ramped up in the late 80's and then peaked, as it was just stupid and sacrificed sound quality. But if you go back to anything in the early 80's and before, they had concert pieces where the purpose was to literally stand still and do a concert, with the emphasis on music and the technicality of the music. There were some small, repositioning, drill moves but they were very sparse. I think that a return to this type of concert emphasis would be welcome. My problem is the lack of actual melodic music starting at this time. Here you are comparing Star '91, which was the esoteric type show that set the stage for what we have today, to a modern esoteric type show. Both are difficult to enjoy musically. Using the word "accessible" here is interesting because neither show would have been considered that way in 1985. This is the point that Madison's staff were trying to make in the 80's through the mid 90's and succeeded, for a time, because of their consistent top 5 finishes which, correctly, rewarded them with high GE scores. I would argue the the most entertaining year for DCI overall was 1989, because of Madison's success the previous year. After that, Madison and a few others were fighting a losing battle for accessible music that resulted in what became modern esoteric and boring drum corps, represented by both of these corps. Boston Crusaders and other have made a go at a return to the high quality accessible music more recently but the judges have smashed these shows, incentivizing the jiberish instead of real music and we suffer.

You are really good at writing music man

he said he's a Mello player.. bro don't admit that!

Back then, it was about Sound and Power (along with necessary precision) ... now, it is about Theatre.

Great video - great observations. For pure drum corps excitement though, Star wins hands down. It's the perfect package 😎

Thank you for the drum corp appreciation class !!👍🏼

I miss musical percussion. Hannum was a master of this. While I love any battery today…it’s more like indoor percussion.

So you don’t like the old way of drum corp I see . You like the trombones and all that go with it ? Just asking very critical you are .

Nobody compares to Kyoto Tachibana's "Orange Devils" . . .

My impression of this analysis is that it’s an effort of logical dissent against many criticisms of contemporary design and performance. If one were to listen to your comments objectively, it’s clear that you give appropriate credit to the accomplishments of select moments from the 1991 Star of Indiana show, while (I would argue) broadly and subjectively applauding virtually the entire 2014 BD effort (yes, another superb product). You use Stars’ highlights to enhance all aspects of the 2014 BD content. Okay, sure. There’s no question that contemporary offerings are far more complex in design (particularly musically), but I believe you comments unintentionally downplay visual content and general effect aspects from the past (e.g., “They’re not moving that far,” “They’re not moving very fast.” “They’re using less value combinations.” “They’re doing the same things today as in the past, but better. with more musical demand.” Etc. I think that your comments identifying “bogus” claims, comments, or criticisms from others is revealing. In short, you apply a very technical assessment and perspective to performance art… using two show designs that are substantially different. You then use a very broad brush to minimize comparisons between eras. IMO, you may have a few validity and reliability concerns in your assessment. IMO, we’re seeing two products from two completely different activities… designed and performed literally decades apart. 🤷🏽‍♂️ The real question is, what impact or value do these products have on a broad, diverse audience of spectators, designers and participants? The answer to that question speaks to how the activity is currently valued or impacts those past and present.

Remove the age limit tbh. It’s so arbitrary and needlessly limiting. Source: Someone who never got to march cause cancelled covid season and no universal extra year then a family health crisis.

Please, what are "MuseScore playback intstruments" ? Are you talking about the instrument packages one can download with MuseScore 4 ?!?

I like it very much ! A very interesting piece of music :)

1961, look into it.

I think pretty much all DCI music as crap. I want to hear some songs.

Ironically todd Ryan was in charge of star in 1991, and is the person who later shaped the blue devils marching philosophy that we still use today.

The rectangular formation rotation at 25:20 was not very clean, especially the left side. But, this was their victory run and concentration might have been off a little.

Contemporary drum and bugle corps is mediocre Cirque du Soleil. Nothing but useless props littering the field and meaningless choreography. Marching Bands of America and WGI has won.

I'm going to comment on this as a total amateur, having marched at high school and college in the 90s, and an on and off fan of drum corp. And I'll preface by saying Star 91 is my favorite show ever so there's plenty of bias here. Having watched the two, I have to say, the Blue Devils show "looked" like a really good high school marching band, maybe competing for the top spot at Bands of America. Lots of grid shapes, lined up on the yard lines, and while I don't doubt the difficulty in the drill, to me, it came off not as entertaining. If I were to give an analogy, Dream Theater is among the most prolific technically skilled rock bands out there but I don't find their music to be inspirational while if you listen to Stairway to Heaven or November Rain, to me at least, it's truly moving. There's technical proficiency and there's the tugging of the heartstrings. I know which one is which for this analysis. Other great shows etched into my memory are Cadets 2000 and The Cavaliers 2002. Also I'd be super interested if you can do an analysis of Lassiter High School 2002, "Liturgical Sketches". Much thanks for your work!