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Posted
  Thomas said:
How does the judging for the Percussion Caption (Drumline) work?

 

Specifically, how does the Lone Star Preview judge it?

 

 

Cleanliness, difficulty, balance, etc. amongst both the battery and front ensemble.

Posted
  Thomas said:
How does the judging for the Percussion Caption (Drumline) work?

 

Specifically, how does the Lone Star Preview judge it?

 

It's not specific to Lone Star Preview. It's pretty standard across all contests.

 

In all honesty, you have to be a drummer to be able to distinguish the really good lines from the okay lines. So if you aren't: sorry, you'll never understand.

Posted
  drummerjoe said:
It's not specific to Lone Star Preview. It's pretty standard across all contests.

 

In all honesty, you have to be a drummer to be able to distinguish the really good lines from the okay lines. So if you aren't: sorry, you'll never understand.

 

Not true.....it's a lot like listening to tempo consistencies, precision of attacks and precision of chords in wind music....all you really need is an ear for that kind of thing and a basic understanding of percussion fundamentals and rudiments and such (which you'll learn if you've ever taught a percussion class or taken one as a music major in college).

 

Percussion specialists are going to be best at it, but a good musician who's not a drummer that has spent a lot of time working with full ensembles will eventually learn how to discern good percussion playing from bad.

 

I'm not a drummer, but I can certainly tell the difference between an early season DCI drumline and a Finals Week drumline. I've also judged All-Region percussion before and my evaluations were consistent with the judges with percussion background. Any well known head band director (non-percussion) at X school could be a judge at X Percussion festival and his score sheet wouldn't look too different from a well known DCI Percussion judge......When organizational staff for marching band festivals pick percussion judges, they pick "drum guys" because they want the weight of their name and notoriety as a "drum guy" to mean something to the participants when they make their judgement calls...but really they'd do just fine with any [read "good"] band director who isn't a percussionist.

Posted (edited)
  takigan said:
Percussion specialists are going to be best at it, but a good musician who's not a drummer that has spent a lot of time working with full ensembles will eventually learn how to discern good percussion playing from bad.

 

That's my point exactly. It's not terribly difficult to distinguish between good and bad, but it gets tricky when you try to distinguish between the good and the great. Also, it takes a true ear to rank drumline A, B and C when all three are so-so.

 

With that last part, I'd disagree. Quote from the Round Rock assistant band director: "I can't tell if it's good or bad, it always sounds good to me." He was talking about the drum feature from 2010. This is the man who, in essence, runs the marching band program at Round Rock, so it's pretty decisive that he is a "good" band director.

Edited by drummerjoe

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