Degree of Difficulty?

[fidave]

I guess this post is primarily for the over-30's in the crowd, but I'm interested in all opinions.

I was a part of the early 80's of Southern California marching bands. After having attended the Mt. Carmel, Chino, and Arcadia tournaments over the past five years or so, I've decided that I'm not as "blown away" by the quality of the musical performance as I used to be. There just haven't been that many field performances that have knocked my socks off and made me want to stand up and cheer. There used to be more.

I suspect some of it is tied to the difficulty of some of the music being played. However, I don't think it has anything to do with the quality of the musician.

I've begun to suspect that the issue may be the degree of difficulty associated with the marching requirements of the shows. Certainly, today's drills have elements that we never even thought of attempting in the early 80's. I suspect its the drill because on the rare occaision when one of today's bands is stationary, the volume and quality of the music approaches the volume and quality I remember fondly.

Anyway, Ill leave it at that and look forward to see what other people think.

[Ryan H. Turner]

Hi Fidave...welcome to the party we call World of Pageantry. I'm an 84 graduate from Pasadena HS, and am the epitome of band geek from that era. Now, I'm just an older version of band geek (which means I teach and write for bands all over the place). That being said--I seem to recall the "sound" of the music back in the early 80's by the bands NOT being that much more different than what I'm hearing now. What I AM hearing though is a HUGE difference in HOW the music is arranged, specifically there's less reliance upon Jenson/Hal Leonard canned shows, and MUCH more reliance upon custom arrangements from local arrangers (Hausey, Leaman, Poulon, Garrabrandt, Schmidt, etc, etc, etc). But the style of the music is in many ways different than when you and I were marching in bands that probably played a Jenson "Spanish Opener Opus #243 in Bb Major". There's much more creativity in how the music is presented. And I speak in terms of overall style, tempos, phrasing, exploring different types of music on the field especially in the symphonic idiom, etc, etc.

As a matter of fact, I think actually that the "big" bands, the super competitive ones, play on the whole louder and better nowadays (although I'm sure there will be a few on this discussion group that may disagree) then back when I was in high school. Your consideration of drill affecting music performance is as always a constant juggling act, especially for me as a drill designer that has to customize the drill I'm designing to the relative strengths and weaknesses of a program combined with the musical content at any given moment. If it's done SMARTLY, which I hope to God I succeed at (and I know I don't sometimes), then the sound shouldn't be affected. Not to dredge up old arguments or debates, but one of the bands that really perplexed people in this reqard was Mater Dei HS of the 80's. They marched at the time some EXTREMELY difficult drill--drum corps quality in my estimation. They would win hands down in the visual and GE captions. And while I don't have the score sheets from that era in front of me to prove it, I would bet they never won music on the field because their visual demand was too difficult--and since I was a paying customer seeing them sometimes, I would have to agree that at times, no, they didn't sound good because of that demand.

In any event--appreciate your observations. Would like to see others our age with so Cal experience weigh in. Oh heck, we should let the old guys talk too--go ahead Vore and DR!! Heeeeeeeee heeeeeeeeeee...I'm so going to get beat up by these guys some days!!

[gangemi]

"Spanish Opener Opus #243 in Bb Major".

Holy Cow! That is our opener this year!!!