whitewing09

To that point, not only is there the possibility of a director having an opinion on a show, there is also the possibility that directors already have an opinion regarding other bands. This is definitely possible in BOA given that a lot of top bands are nationally known, but the network is smaller in Texas, so the probability of knowing a band and judging them on preconceived notions is greater.

Vandegrift's show was one of my favorites of the season and probably my favorite at the state contest. They take a very well known suite, offer a nice variation, and play it VERY well. From the livecast pov, I thought that they were going to take the championship. They came close!

Round Rock seems to have one of the most polarizing shows this year. Either the judges love them or hate them. I think this is especially evident in the huge difference in scores that they received from MGE judges at Arlington and SA. How does one MGE judge score you 15.5 while the other 17.4 (Arlington prelims), 15.6 vs 16.8 (Arlington finals), or 16.8 vs 18.0 (SA)? I know that judges often disagree, but 1.2 to 1.9 difference in the same category? It's especially disconcerting because at Arlington finals the second largest diff between MGE judges was .8 and at SA finals the second largest diff was .7.

Apparently I'm late to the game. What time does finals start for 5A?

I actually have a quick question. Will Grand Nationals always be the second week of November? If I remember correctly, it used to be the first week. Though, having it the second week really helps out our bands. Just kidding, it's been the second week for awhile it seems.

That visual GE judge wrecked Reagan which is funny to say because the margin actually isn't that big, but in this competition it looks so large because of how close the bands scored.

I don't think the complaint is that they get an advantage by playing later. Rather, it's unfair that they were already slotted for 7:15 and received a later time WHILE bands in the same predicament (from the same area) were given times like 6:45am and 7am.

This is probably somewhere on the forum, but what is Dripping Springs show? I've been looking for videos for awhile!

Was Canyon a 3A school a decade ago?

I feel like the relatively giant elephant in the room is CTJ. The last time they were in the spot light was almost a month before SA when they were neck in neck with Reagan at Conroe. Their visual package is substantially harder than anyone else in Texas (I think?) and it may be too hard to clean for SA. Has anyone seen them recently? What are your thoughts? Please share either publicly or via PM. I'm super interested!

1) I am actually really sad that they replace the flute solo in the ballad with vocals. I think the flute was more effective. 2) They need to tone down those vocals... It gets very overwhelming at times.

From what I've encountered, Hebron's musical book sounded great, but their visual book seemed lacking (at least compared to the rigor output by their peers). I'm interested in seeing how they fare this weekend, especially against Round Rock who won visual against some very strong bands a couple weeks ago.

When I saw that preseason Reagan video on YouTube a month ago, it was obvious that Reagan's show had that Guidry flair with its enthralling electronic opening coupled with a powerful fanfare. I hadn't known about the director change and this show seemed different, but promising. We just saw Reagan give CTJ a run for its money in prelims and overtake them in finals at Conroe. Yet nine years ago (when Reagan last won a regional) we saw a similar situation where Westfield wins GE and takes second place to Reagan after a year of bottom half placements in regional finals. They then go on to place at the bottom of BOA SA finals. For those of you who have seen Reagan, where do you think they fall? Is Reagan just that far ahead of everyone in terms of completeness or does its show have a lot of room to grow?

As someone who actually knows close to nothing about music, I'm curious about your perspective on how a wind specialist and drum specialist evaluate bands differently (which aspect of musicality is valued more by each, etc).

2006 was the clusterF of Duncanville, Churchill, and Reagan placing third. If I remember correctly, Reagan lost the initial tying breaker then Churchill lost the second tie breaker leading to d'ville with 3rd, Churchill with 4th, and Reagan with 5th.

[i had to resurrect this] It's great how vande went from the new school to a force to be reckon with in like 2 years, then on to state champion and premiere TX band.

Would it be weird to have three marching judges then to add the median music and marching scores? If you still believe that music should be weighted more than marching, just assign weights and add the weighted values?

How do people feel about Haltom beating Coppell at Duncanville? Anyone see them as a dark horse?

I watched it livestream. Congrats to CTJ for their first championship! Very cool that the Four 5A LISD schools were all in finals. I loved the, "WE LOVE YOU LEANDER," before their performance. I think I remember seeing this at a Westlake competition back in the day. That was a very interesting change from prelims to finals rankings. Definitely one of the best finals that I have watched.

Isn't that kind of a parallel example? In 03 they are Gnat champs and BOA SA champs, 04 they're 6th, 05 they're 10th, 06 they're 14th, and 07 they're 9th. They went from top of the national circuit, to bottom of finals at SA, to not really participating.

You have to account for the fact that they haven't had the same director in all of those years. In 2009 didn't they change head directors? The 2001-2008 results should be severely discounted. Then control for the fact that the youngest students in 09 graduated in spring 2012. Which season was the season that Bell started to slip? Fall 2012 their show was still difficult, but people start to notice that this isn't the same band. Then 2013 their show isn't at the same level in terms of complexity or execution as previous years. They place in the bottom half of both SA and Nats. 2014, they don't medal at BOA Denton Finals and they miss out on state. They are a good band. They aren't a top 3 band anymore or a top 5. Hebron, Marcus, and TWHS are here to stay and Bowie and CTJ just keep getting better. (I am not bashing them. I am making a simply positive inference.)

I'm not necessarily bashing them or FloMo, but maybe I was too matter o' fact. I think that both are great bands on absolute terms. Just in relative terms (keep in mind relative to the very top bands in Texas) I don't see either band in the top 5. Yes they were in a competitive, but just looking at the ordinal drop off between 2nd and 3rd in both prelims and finals, you could argue that Bell and FloMo weren't exactly at the same level as Hebron and Marcus. Then look outside of area B the fact that top 3 at area D (the area that consistently puts 3-4 bands in finals) were neck to neck (usually Bowie kind of just runs away with it and I would say that this is a pretty good year for Bowie) and apparently Coppell and Duncanville were quite close. It just seems to me that Bell wouldn't have made top 5 given the areas performances and that they wouldn't perform leaps and bounds better than FloMo. More power to that band if they prove their critics wrong, but I am just working off of the recent trend that's show up in their placement at contest. Probably the same reason that Austin produces great bands. These areas are definitely on the more affluent side and they foster communities that appreciate the performing arts.

It's probably time to accept that Bell isn't an elite band anymore (at least at the level of Marcus, Hebron, Bowie, CTJ, Reagan, TWHS). Given their performance this whole season, we can probably say they're more on the level of FloMo and they would have been, at best, a bottom five band for state finals and at worst a 10-15 band.

I still don't understand how it was unfair. These historically great bands went up against the peers in their area and they lost. Saying that the results are generally fair with exception of a select few in the upper echelon kinda of implies that these programs are entitled to state. I don't really buy it.

Definitely think that the first option would be fair, with the revision that 15-20% in region and not in state. The second option would be a bad policy because there would probably be a lot of heterogeneity in scoring between different contest.