whitewing09

I'm really excited for this years season. Just from watching the videos on demand for BOA Austin and the random that have popped up on here, I was immensely impressed! I was really impressed with Anderson! Their aurora show has some really cool music. I loved their opening statement and their ballad! CTJs preshow with the trombone/trumpet/sax? thing is really catchy! Can't wait to see CR and RR at gnats. Their shows look very promising! I just hope they can keep up the momentum! I can't wait to see some high quality video on Bell (especially for the Harry Potter mermaid theme!), TW, and Marcus. Seems like it'll be a promising year for Texas at gnats!

So it looks like Cedar Ridge beat out Hebron and Reagan for the 3rd place spot in prelims! It'll be interesting to see how finals will pan out!

It's easy to understand the development of CTJ and Vandegrift over the last few years. They were brand new schools so they had to building from scratch. But my question is, where did bands like Anderson, Round Rock, and Flower Mound come from? They aren't exactly new schools. I know that Round Rock has been a pretty strong band in a very strong area for a while and hadn't jumped on the BOA bandwagon until recently (which would explain why they seem like an up and coming band), but I don't remember their shows being particularly BOA friendly in the past. I remember them doing a lot of Key Poulan and being clean, but not dynamic. (I also haven't seen them live since 2007, so a lot can change in that time). They just seem to be going in a different direction from before. What's change? Have the directors change or did they just decide to adapt a new style? Then there's Anderson and Flower Mound making finals at SA in the past couple of years. What brings them to the stage?

Does anyone know when the videos for Austin will be out on Videos on Demand? Are they not posting them because of the rain?

Officially excited to see which this season will bring!

I'm not sure if I'm remembering correctly, but did you go to Akins? I've been looking for one of their shows!

They're still up there. Although barely placed 3rd (CTJ was close behind them and they were far from second) at last year's BOA SA. I think it was a rebuilding year for them and their show was insanely demanding marching wise. I guess we'll have to see what they bring this year!

Won't CTJ be at BOA Dairy Queen? (haha couldn't resist putting that) I'm a huge CTJ fanboy, so I'll back them for the championship.

I know this is a long shot, but does anyone have any good quality recordings of BOA SA 2006? I just can't seem to find any that do justice to the shows. I'm specifically looking for Reagan 2006, but I'd like to hear all of them.

So the title is pretty self-explanatory, I'm curious as to what the closer for their show, "Flock" was.

Sorry, I meant Earnhart.

I was just listening to some Reagan 2003 and I was wondering, how would marching shows from the past compete against the shows in current years? Would Reagan 2003 have placed 2nd in this year's Gnat's lineup? What are the differences you see between previous shows and recent shows (besides the flashiness of props)? Is there anything musically different? Are shows getting harder?

I have two other questions... What happened to Don Hill? He was the director of Bell's band up until 2004 I think? Also, why did Reagan stop using Aaron Guidry?

I know this is grand nats, so everyone is talented, but were Reagan and Bowie really that far behind in marching. To me it seemed like that had the least flashy drill writing there. I wasn't a big fan of a lot of the shows.. Usually I don't mind all of the GE filllings, but man I got a little tired of GE last night.

Where did Cartwright go?

Would it be fair to say that this was a transition year for Bell and that next year they'll be on fire (more so than usual)?

A couple of things that should be changed are the range of raw score and the conversion to ordinal rankings (as opposed to raw score or weighted averages) to calculate placement. I think that 1000 is too much to work with and the ordinal representation normalizes the distribution too much. I don't think this ranking system was as much of a problem when there were only 14 bands competing for 7 spots, but when you have over 30 bands competing for 10 spots I think it can pose problems.

I can't wait to see this pan out!

My favorite shows were: Celebracion - CP Eve- CTJ This Bitter Earth- Bell Let It Shine- Reagan Flock- Cedar Ridge Stellae Errantes- Bowie

Didn't someone report that there where tears in the Anderson's show? They probably just had a bad performance. Isn't 86 a high cut off point for finals? I feel like it's normally at like 83.

Was this the first regional that Churchill hadn't placed into finals?

Isn't this the idea that everyone hates about BOA? A band shouldn't get dead last because of their show theme (just like they shouldn't get first for having a show full of props and GE), rather they should be graded on how the show is played and how the students contribute to GE. Their show is so dynamic and engaging, not because of how it's written, but because the kids played it so well and emotionally. While music design is important, it shouldn't directly make or break a band.

Didn't they have a small contest down south in the RGV a few years back?

I think it would be fair to take away the 10 bands from area D and 15 bands from area G that are closest to San Antonio and create a whole new area. I don't understand why the Dallas area has 3 area competitions, the Houston Area has 2 area competitions, Austin has 1 area competitions, and RGV area has 1 area while San Antonio is just split up.

Was Fredericksburg's victory at area kind of an upset? I remember them being in the top 5, but Rio Hondo, and Port Isabel are usually the top dogs.