selby

Last I checked, the year was 2010.

...Do I know you?

This. To me, this is the most upsetting thing about Marcus' program. Their shows for quite a few years now, have relied on music, more than marching (don't get me wrong, they do both well, but at different levels), and shows with a theatrical feel, especially with the large props. But their shows are starting to feel tired and seem very repetitive, both in concept and performance. Obviously judges at UIL and BOA disagree, however it would be very refreshing to see them try something new and break out of their mold.

I'd have to agree with you on Bell. I too haven't seen the show live, but from everything I've seen and read, it doesn't seem like it will compete well with Avon's type of show. And you can be sure that Avon is giving it their all in their quest for a three-peat. They'll still do very well of course, but I think we'll see someone other than Bell being very close to Avon, maybe Marian Catholic? I think we'll see one of the other Texas bands, although it's a tossup about who will make the cut.

I'm not sure if that can be considered crazy. A lot can happen between prelims and finals.

I'm surprised they weren't honestly, as Danpod (Daniel Valdez) was (according to the USSBA website) involved with the competition as some sort of coordinator.

I didn't see you perform (we went after you), but just hearing you in warmups it sounded amazing. I can't wait to see how Smith does in the run for state this year.

I just went through the lists of bands from the past 3 years (all that NSHS has posted on their TOC page), and found 14 bands who's calendars say they'll be attending. Birdville, Guyer, Thomas Jefferson, Grapevine, Hebron, Frisco, Allen, Rowlett, Weatherford, & Northwest, plus the usual CFB-ISD schools, Creekview, RL Turner, Ranchview, and Newman Smith (exhibition). Any other schools going?

Wow. Gotta say I'm surprised to see Coppell so high up, and also sort of surprised that Marcus managed to beat Bell in prelims. Finals are gonna be interesting.

Should be soon, the last finals band was supposed to perform at 10.00pm so they probably just finished.

Nope, I can't believe some of the rankings from the judges.

Creekview had, 72 I think? That's about half of what we had last year, but granted it was a different drill writer. It felt like nothing this year though...

I can't wait to see the video from Bell's performance along with all the others from finals. Great job Bell, you deserve it.

About Key Poulan, back in '04, the only year Creekview has advanced to state so far, the show was written by him and it was apparently one of the best shows we've had. And many other bands like Newman Smith have had his shows, Medusa last year, and theirs was one of the best versions of it. I'm sure there are others I'm missing here... Let me know.

Yeah, Creekview got 80.something and we were 26th... Makes the scores look heavily inflated.

I understand that they make the props but in order to make them, they have to spend money on the supplies, and not all bands have the money to do that.

Money? From what I understand the judges are supposed to, although it doesn't mean they do, take into account the difficulty of the drill and music when scoring, so why shouldn't something similar to this be implemented for props? I would have no problem with props being used if there was something in the scoring that would keep them from adding points if a band has props, when another band does not.

I do understand that Marcus sounded excellent and they sure did deserve the music caption, but what I am saying is their GE/Visual score was almost certainly affected by their use of props. We can't really debate about that until we get full scores however...

If props are going to be used by some bands, not all, they shouldn't weigh in on the score, that's just no fair judging. Sure it might help accent the shows theme and design, but that's giving an advantage to the bands with props.

Richland?

I saw finals and was of course impressed by many of the bands, but if you did not notice the majority of the bands had large props of some kind, many of which were not even used.

I've got to agree with Bittybear on that, I think that most of the bands in finals were well executed sure, but many of them had scatter drill for example, where they'd just run to their sets. While its funny, to a point, it's nothing marching at all. And then there's Marcus... To me props are not needed, at least not in excess, and they rely on their props so much for their show. To me BOA seems more like they judge based upon how many huge, fairly useless props you have, or whether you have a name or not. I'm of course not saying that bands such as the Woodlands, Reagan, and Bell should not have made finals, but there were certainly some bands overlooked because of the larger bands with props, or reputations and names. To be positive, I think Brazoswood sounded amazing, and I really enjoyed Reagan and Bells shows. While I didn't really care for the theme of the Woodlands show, it was very well performed... Can't think of much else right now, anyone know when we get full results?

Steeldrum, that's actually really interesting, it helps to sum up the predictions alot. Great idea!

Any chance you could get that video up? Our region performance was much better than the one in finals at TOC, at least I think so. It'd be great if you would.

Creekview H.S. - kNOw strings...kNOw limits video from TOC finals, fourth movement wasn't complete, but hopefully we'll have a video from SA. Should be online at shortly, waiting on YouTube to process it or whatever.