whitewing09

Less on the deeply moved, but in the realm of iconic: Reagan 2001 - BOA Houston: first regional win for them. The show design, more so than their show the year before, established the quintessential Reagan of heavy electronic leading into a grand fanfare. It’s such a fun show to watch. Reagan 2015 - BOA Conroe(?): starting in 2007 Reagan had began fallen off the top echelon. They slowly started making their way back up, but 2015 was when they made the jump, winning their first regional and medaling at BOA SA for the first time in almost ten years(?) the Conroe show was especially special because they still had the flute solo ballad that was later replaced by a vocalist. Flower Mound 2016 - BOA Plano: I watched this from a livecast and it shook me. The power, the technical prowess. They might have won BOA SA in 2015, but this show proved it wasn’t a fluke. They beat Marcus/Hebron by almost four points and went on to sweep San Antonio by two points.

Did anyone get the feeling that Vandy is still having their show written or that they’re testing / revising more than they usually do? I watched their prelims performance and the musical design felt very disjointed. I want to say especially in the ballad. it felt like the kids are playing the heck out of their show, but that the design is off. Idk.

TWHS 2004 - Numbers: I saw this at Area E in Round Rock. They went on to perform at UIL State finals and BOA Grand Nationals finals. I just remember being so fascinated and thinking, “wow marching band can be so cool!” L.D. Bell 2005 - Ascension: This show is so exhilarating! Highly recommend looking it They are booking it for so much of the show. Between the part with the oboe playing guard member, the presto version of Light of Gold 🥵, and the back field ballad of Light of Gold… this show has so many layers. I would love to see someone revive this show and reinvent it a little. L.D. Bell 2006 - The Remaining: I still remember the the Alamodome being dead silent besides the heartbeat they emulated.

I am so excited for BOA SA. Unfortunately, I will be watching it from the livecasts. The 8 hour time difference will make watching finals FUN. I want to make some predictions beforehand since everyone is! Here are my top 27. Medal Locks (2): Flower Mound: This show is amazing. It has the dynamic pop of their show last year and the windcutting precision of 2016. They had their full show on the field for Dallas, but the Region video shows just how much GE they add from their execution. Reagan: This show has it all. They play it with gusto; the visual design has so many 'aha' moments; and the music is captivating. Medal Hunt (3) : Vande CTJ Hebron Medal Hunt - Potential Surprises (4): Leander Marcus TWHS Vista Ridge Finals Locks (4): LD Bell Keller Cedar Ridge James Bowie Bubble (8): Cedar Park Westwood Westlake Clear Brook Coppell Rouse Vista Murietta Wakeland Post Bubble (6): Round Rock Lake Travis Timber Creek Oak Ridge John B Alexander Prosper

It's like the word curvilinear. Technically, it's wrong, but its usage is common enough that it is still a generally accepted word. That's how language works. I agree with you on the last bit 100%. I think their show is written in anticipation of having two extra weeks. TBH, I thought that they have been preparing for this for the past two years. In 2017, I thought that they stepped up their visual while keeping their music demand very high. Last year, I thought that Hebron could have used an extra week of clean because of their insane demand. This year, they seem to have upped the demand on both sides again.

So when we say Hebron is pacing itself, we mean that their show anticipates them have two extra weeks of cleaning to do, right? That I believe. Example: Hebron 2015

^I came here to make this same exact comment. I thoroughly enjoyed Haltom's performance at STL. I think there is a strong possibility of them medaling. Keller is definitely a late season peak band, so they will still likely have room to grow between now and San Antonio. This is likely Haltom's last competition, so they'll be on fire. YES, I love Shapiro's Deli. My airbnb was a five minute walking from there a couple years back.

You're right, I accidentally mixed up Union and Coppell's scores when looking at the spreadsheet. I'll fix that.

Yep, LT played right before Bell and was in the same panel if not the same block as SFA. Coppell was in a different panel and barely edged out LT by a few tenths of a point. Three observations I had about the scoring: 1) The huge drop off where it doesn't seem that warranted (the bottom of the top half did not seem to be substantially better than the top of the bottom half, especially considering they weren't in prelims). This is constantly a complaint since the implementation of the "Hebron Rule". 2) The spread in finals actually looks like two separate contests put together, as opposed to a continuous gradient (i.e. it is doesn't really make sense that the scores were held so tightly at the bottom, while they were allowed to breath at the top). This is especially strange by the fact that prelims was practically two separate contests by design (i.e. two separate panels) and that set of judges was able to create a constant gradient of scores. If you look at 5th - 14th, there is a 5 pt spread of no significant jumps. In finals between 5th - 14th there is a seven pt difference and a huge gap after 8th. I thought that SFA was good; I didn't think they were 2 pts ahead of their peers, especially considering that they middle of the pack in prelims. I also didn't think that Union should have been almost 3 pts ahead of all of the bottom half. 3) LT's huge drop in scores when there didn't seem to be a huge drop in execution (at least that I noticed). Again, this seemed more influenced by the fact that they were assigned bottomed half. They were in a very competitive block in prelims. If they had any gaping deficiencies, I think it would have shown up in those scores. I get that judges are experts of their craft, but I don't think that makes them immune to psychology. The implementation of a top/bottom split inherently enables biases that deflates scores at the bottom. If the judges aren't mindful, it causes weird patterns in the data.

Texas had such an amazing showing yesterday. Carroll really made a statement by placing 12th at Bedford, only to return as top 10 at STL. It was also awesome to see SFA near the top half. Seems like they're really making strides to return to BOA. Then the drama of Bell vs Haltom. Man, what a great contest. I was a little disappointed in numbers management and how it affected Lake Travis. They dove from 85 to 82 between prelims and finals the only difference I really could tell was that they would have been compared with Bell in prelims versus being compared to the bottom split in finals. It seemed that the numbers in the bottom half were kept very tight (besides SFA), while the numbers at the top half were allowed to vary more. Normally, I'd buy the argument that 8-14 are easier to compare vs 1-7, but it just doesn't make sense to me why there was such a divide, especially considering that bottom 7 didn't seem too different than bottom of the top tier..

I’m so sad not to see Reagan at nats this year! That opening statement is so invigorating. Their show overall is so well designed. Something about the visual just really clicks with the music. There are a lot of “aha” moments. It’s such a good watch.

It’s unfortunate that sometimes, people either don’t realize or acknowledge that their tone matters just as much as the message. It’s even more unfortunate when they’re willing to spend more time defending their tone, than discussing the message.

I love our txbands, but also love to see new players in the medal hunt. I think Jenks could give our top Texas bands a run for their money

I was able to run 8 mi yesterday. It was a little rough after mi 7, but not too crazy. Thanks to everyone for talking things through.

My training plan is call: the peanut butter runner hahah

My last long run was like two days before I got sick and I was at 7 mi. I'm kind of in a time crunch now. I have a month until the half, but it'll be fineee.

Does anyone here run half marathons? I'm trying for my second, but had to take a week off for the flu. I was wondering if anyone has some advice for getting back on the roads.

Not sure if you were trying to contradict anything I said, but I don't think you did. I, frankly, don't know if Hebron could elicit the same response that VR did when I saw that in the stands at San Antonio twice. Just like I don't know how well VR could execute Hebron's show. They are two very different bands that play very differently. We could sit around in pontificate whether one band could play another bands show or if one band can execute like another, but it really it won't yield any meaningful insight.

Which insinuates that finals was fair, right? That’s the real goal. It’s not to say that one judge is right or not, it’s to say that 1) one judge did not have undue influence and 2) the band’s were ranked in the right order overall.

It’s not too outlandish. VR was within a point of if Reagan and less than .5 from Hebron at SA, but scored substantially better at UIL despite the fact that Hebron had a better run at state than BOA. Leander and Reagan effectively tied at state. Vande did do better than Reagan at state, but was pretty far off at BOA and hornrank seems to lend preference to BOA.

Different strokes for different boats!

I don’t know if this concept has been explored, but one game the band nerds I know like to play is top/bottom drop. You drop the top and bottom judges for each band then add the ordinals. This mitigate the risk of random judges, but keeps the integrity of the average judge. Of course this would get awkward if a band’s top and bottom score are both in music.

I am hesitant to say that BOA rewards innovation because that's a relatively vague statement that I think is hard to really pin down. Innovation can mean so many different things. What I will say, is that BOA rewards risk-taking, which inevitability means that the system rewards difficulty and achievement. I would argue that Carmel and Avon did not really off anything really innovative musically. They had seemingly very standard repertoires for top bands. However, they take a lot of risks with their musical books. Carmel had a lot of moments of brass exposure that had the potential to sound awful if not performed with finesse. They execute those moments so well, that it's easy to say, oh they're not doing anything particularly difficult. I think the difference between BOA and UIL is becoming difficult to assess as bands begin to cater to both, but I'd say the relative placement of the top half bands at BOA SA vs 6 state kind of lends clues. Let's take Hebron and Vista Ridge this year. Hebron takes A LOT of risk musically with their highly technical show, while Vista Ridge consistently delivers a high level of execution. Hebron was rewarded for their risks at BOA SA where they beat Vista Ridge by a full .725 in the music performance caption in finals. This is a HUGE margin for one caption. In both UIL state prelims and finals, two of the three music judges had Vista over Hebron. Both bands still ended up in the top half, but were definitely rewarded differently at the two contests.

I’ll say that I’m not surprised that Carmel won. Their shows are always very advanced visually. This year I noticed that they take a lot of risks musically and they are able to execute well given those risks, so they definitely are achieving. What I don’t understand the score distributions and how Carmel just ran away with some captions. The margins at the bottom were razor thin, only for the spreads at the top to open up. I wasn’t there in person, but via the stream I just can’t wrap my head around the almost three point difference between Tarpon and Carmel. The idea of Carmel and Avon having sophisticated shows is very intriguing to me. I believe their shows are always well design insofar as they have elements that play very well to the rubric or that judges will pick up on more easily than the audience. However, from an actual theme perspective, I often feel like their shows are, for lack of a better term, a little half baked. Voyage to Valhalla seemed to take a few somewhat myopic thoughts around the mythology and put them together with a competitive visual book and deceptively difficult musical book. I felt the same way with Serenity and Adagio Presto. They’ve been wildly successful, so maybe that’s all it takes?

There’s definitely nothing wrong with being patriotic. BA pulls it off very well from both performance and design! Hoping to see them in the top two.