QuadraticBeats

I think the best written part of your usual Key Poulan show is the keyboard music. The other parts can get rather annoyingly dull when you've played key poulan music before... there are too many similarities between the shows I think. Poor winds... they don't usually get to tweak their music much.

I would write my own completely original show... with a one minute-long drum break. Loud chords, along with parts for each instrument that would make good music on its own. What I mean by this is if you listen to really good Drum Corps, and listen to each section, they usually have complex parts that still blend wonderfully with the ensemble.

Wow. We're not the only ones in the pit of despair! But at least we have two more years before we will have the first large (and influential) class of seniors. Too bad that will be my last year... I feel jipped. And... we don't have a new band director to destabilize things (if you can even call them stable here), as well as the opportunity to go to BOA contests.

Well... unfortunately, our band seems limited to merely local competition due to our newness right now. So we lack that sort of excitement... and also have a rather tense atmosphere at times for fear of being the next victim of one Mr. C.'s random verbal explosions (he doesn't curse, he just tends to insult the player more or less... or threatens to throw the person off the part. The thing about it is that it just seems so random... and uncontrollable).

Actually, I've heard a recording. I forgot that. Though I admire the boldness to attempt to play that Blue Devils 2003 pit run (they did whatever more or less watered down version of it quite splendidly), I must say one thing: Urg? I just don't like it when drum corps shows are copied at all... emulation of their style is one thing, but ripping anything from a really good show... Unless it's just based off the same piece of music existing originally from before the Drum Corps show.

I'm a Drum Corps fanatic, so I think that the Allen Marching Band's size is the most absolutely stupid thing to ever exist. That's more like a Mongolian horde given instruments than a true band... not to say that the players are necessarily bad, but there just really isn't much skill required to fill in a form when there is 600 people to make them. Lining it up (musically and visually) would be the only great challenge, and even then their chance for serious error (let's just call such errors "marching solos") is close to non-existant. They should be limited to exhibition, if they aren't already... unless of course two large 5A bands can combine to make one comparable band.

I wouldn't know, since last year I was in the pit, and this year our percussion drill kept us in the back the entire show. So we didn't really notice the judges.

Concert season... gr... the only saving grace for percussion is Solo and Ensemble, and the occasional piece of well written concert percussion music. And then spring drumline camps... if those really count as concert season activities.

Though I've heard of them, I've never seen or heard Reagan. I don't know if anyone can strongly compete with them within the state of Texas either... besides maybe Churchill or a few other schools from around Dallas, San Antonio, or Houston. Are they really a fair comparison to the majority of schools here?

I wondered why Hebron was so ridiculously large compared to the other 4A bands (including us) when I saw them last year... I thought the school just had an excessive amount of band kids and I dubbed the band the "Hebron Horde"... I guess I was wrong.

I'd say a total number of performers ranging 160-200. That way your band isn't so large as to have essentially no mobility, which means crappy/boring drill, and the pathetic if ever so strangely useful advantage of being able to hide the poor musical skills of weaker performers behind a horde of people (especially with winds, whom can just kind've follow their section around and pretend to play). A 160-200 person band, if directed right, can be a far more elite group than bands that are excessively large through the ability to put not only better drill on but the grater necessity of good playing in order to compete with the very large bands; it also takes away the excuse of "larger bands hiding their mistakes" from those viewing it.

Haha... haha... yeah, I saw that at the LHS-CPHS game as an eighth grader, (Eight Grade Night), where I was happily getting to play toms. I thought Leander was the best thing I'd ever seen, and thought Cedar Park was just... well... stupid. But now... I sometimes considered attempting to transfer into Cedar Park, particularly on band competition days when we were performing like crap, in my opinion. Thankfully, the drumline redeemed itself from the previous year's crappiness, and managed to actually beat all the drumlines in our divisions in the band contests we went to (not Lone Star Classic... we got 6th and best front ensemble in their Division II category there), namely being Capital City Marching Contest and Westlake Marching Competition (We also were the first band to play in our divisions at both of those contests). From a crappy drumline to what we have now, and all in one season... good times.

That's just... an unspeakable evil. But it's not completely the same, I think...

Goodie.

The time posts an hour earlier than it really is.

Our band does not do chair tests or serious pass-offs essentially at all, at least in the top band (kind've weird). Our percussion director had us audition for concert season with selections from the All-State music, which I totally screwed up because I hadn't practiced on it (I attempted to sightread two mallets and timpani). Our band got to no finals competitions, unlike last year. Our drumline, however, won best drumline in all the band contests we went to in our divisions and sixth place, along with best front ensemble, in Division II at Lone Star Classic... and we went from a crappy crappy group to beating better established lines with mainly freshmen and sophomores in one season. But that's besides the point... I'd like to hear from some members of bands that actually were strongly competitive in their activities this year.

Our assistant director was the lead trumpet for Phantom Regiment 90-93'... or so I've heard. Our percussion director was in the 2001 Cadets' Pit, and won a High Percussion award with them. Our band director played clarinet, so... no cool DCI glory for him. Oh well.

I haven't heard of these bands except for the fact that they beat us. Bad. The drumline trophies made this marching season all worth it in the end though... I really wish our band directors ran the band more like our percussion instructor runs the percussion section. Maybe they've just given up on the band.

I don't blame the system for our failure, nor do I think people should go laud it if their band is successful. I just had a strange dislike for it originating from my earlier band days that only changed after I wrote this topic. It's just a system.

I'd like to know why the Blue Devils are in the photo. I like the Blue Devils alot, but... why?

Never defile the sacred Corps Field with a woodwind. Anyhow, this topic was opening a can of worms. Though woodwinds on a marching band field are slightly stupid, they are nonetheless respectable instruments. However, we percussionists and brass players still usually don't like having to balance with them, and they are usually handed all of the more musical parts, which is also annoying, since it seems like the potential capabilities of brass and percussion are often wasted. But I think that electronics, besides the relatively tolerable use of mics to make the pit a bit louder, have no place on the field. Glitz... I hate glitz when its not in the form of pure manual skill- in other words, I hate silly little prop-laden shows, a bunch of electronic sounds, etc. However, that does not make the bands that use them bad. Voiceovers are generally stupid, except perhaps the Cadets' use of it this year. The biggest shock of the season really came to me though when I had been fervently expecting the Blue Devils to be awesome (I didn't keep up with the scores until after San Antonio) and instead they put on a show... with... a voiceover. I sat there feeling really, really betrayed. Creativity is good, but it doesn't usually come out good in the form of somebody speaking.

Definitely... NOT US! I expect our drumline to keep getting alot better, but as far as the band... it's probably going to be a sad repetition of our stupidity from last year. Hard drill + moderately difficult music - marching fundamentals - dedicated players + overall lack of leadership=crap. (By lack of leadership I mean that an unfortunate number of people thought being section leader translated to superiority and disciplinarian authority... yelling about people screwing up but not really doing anything to assist their victims in getting better) They said we were going to work on them every day this year. I'd say asides from band camp, our total fundamental practice at rehearsal for the entire marching season, in actuality, totaled 1-2 hours... drumline 3-4. What do they expect to happen with a bunch of people who have weak fundamentals? We tend to do a strange little thing I like to call "charging" while marching- little tiny step-off, very large steps, and then very small steps when we realize we're overshooting. It's pretty bad. We probably would've made 4A Area finals also if it weren't for our band director placing alternates who had to learn the show in 2 weeks to compete in it... and not only did they have to do that, but their marching fundamentals were non-existent. One of them that most of us have a fond dislike of, or "BO" as we call him, apparently kept marking time 3 beats after the hold. If we had a chance to make finals with what we had, it was killed there.

Hail the freaking Vanguard!

I'm still wondering why our band hasn't been able to do the same thing as Cedar Park (Our school is in the same district and is practically just down the street from CPHS... we share a PAC right now) did so soon after it started. It really makes you feel inferior when you're in a the same/similar situation as they were but fail to measure up to what they accomplished. I really want to know what the difference between the Cedar Park band of that year and ours... maybe the one more class a year thing we've been doing (that thankfully will finally be done with next year) is the culprit, but unfortunately its really more likely to be just laziness among students and weaker directing... along with a really, REALLY small first year class. We will overcome... someday... hopefully...

I think legislators shouldn't have jurisdiction over how schools should be ran. Seriously... people whose best skill is getting a bunch of fundraising efforts on and casting ballots really aren't overall the best group to decide how people need to be educated... if they required that legislators actually HAVE credentials on a subject as touchy but important as education, their proposals wouldn't be so... well, stupid. We don't need to bring in evidence for this...