Robert_Jordan

Hope Area D does the same as well. I just saw a weather forecast for 20 inches of rain for the Austin area over Saturday and Sunday. Saturday is supposed to be ultra ugly with a cold front hitting us about the time the contest starts. Looks like it's going to be an all day event with the earlier bands getting the biggest end of the shaft...

Good call. I know all the LISD bands have mic'd up instruments. Leander has the choir up front. Cedar Park has their ensemble up front starting the show (don't remember if it's mic'd or not). All have keyboards and speaker systems. Georgetown has either a mic setup on an acoustic guitar OR it's an acoustic with a pickup in it. Either way, it's amped. Several other bands, if not all, from the area have keyboards. Raining and wet could really make it interesting this Saturday.

This whole bit of "slotting" is rather unfortunate. Judges need to stick strictly to their grading rubric. I also wonder if it could be advantageous to have school names "blocked" from the judges so that all they see is "Band #1", "Band #2". You'd also have to have a way to keep the judges from hearing the announcer calling out which band is now performing. This way you could partially rule out the possibility of judges having it in their mind that, "Oh this is a band that deserves to move on, they may have messed up a little in preliminaries, but based on who they are, they should move on."