It’s been awhile since I’ve been here (um… August 2010, really?), and there are many things to talk about. Picking a single topic from many is like choosing which jelly doughnut to eat first.

So let’s start with something simple. This is what I’d like to see from this year’s drum corps:

1. CLEAN DRUMLINES! An obvious request, sure. But if I continue to hear the barrage of dirty attacks and sloppy ends-of-phrases that I’ve been hearing for the past few years from the nation’s top drumlines, it will further convince me that licks and more emphasis is put on licks and cleaning inner-beats than basics and education. (I still remember hearing the 2007 Cadets snareline destroy eighth notes during warm-ups. Eighth notes!

2. FLAMS! Remember those? I believe they’re making a comeback, but remnants of the mostly-power-diddle battery book has still been seen and heard for the past few seasons. Yeah, yeah, yeah… I know: flams have been seen in contemporary battery books, but those battery books come from certain writers and they amount to only to a few drumlines from what I’ve seen in the recent past. Again, power-diddle-based books have been the trend for a number of years and I, for one, would love to see more than four or five flams pop up in more than a few battery books. Speaking of battery books…

3. It would be nice to hear less homogenized battery books. You know the books I’m talking about, where the snare, tenor, and bass parts are all pretty much the same save for the varying pitches in the tenor and bass lines? Yes, there’s a time and place for such writing, but when 90-99% of the battery book is the same, well… that’s not necessarily musical. It’s boring and, I suspect on many writers’ parts, lazy.

4. Less electronics! PLEASE! They’re so… distracting. Okay, so electronics probably aren’t going to go away anytime soon (or at all), but that does’t mean the shows have to be designed around them. With subtlety and careful design, electronics can be integrated into a drum corps show so that they’re a) not distracting, and b) not over-bearing but rather nuanced. But, this is a discussion for another time.

5. Let’s not go the narration route, okay? Vocals here and there to enhance what’s happening on the field, sure. Fine. Example: Carolina Crown’s horse race show, or Bluecoats’ criminal show. Good use of short vocal phrases to enhance the show concept. But if the show is built around a full narration, then, well, you’re not making the music and the visuals the main part of the show or the storytelling. If I wanted to see a live musical play, I’d go to Broadway. But, again, a discussion for another time.

Mostly, I want to be entertained with some raw energy, great show concepts and design (subjective, I know), and precision and artful performance from all sections. Good luck to all!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

I hate electronics in drum corps and drumline.

Tonight I attended the DCI Quarterfinals broadcast in the theaters. As has been the trend of the past few years, synthesizers were utilized by several corps. Unfortunately, I don’t see this problem (yes, I view it as a problem) going away any time soon, which saddens me. And not only because drum and bugle corps should consist of percussion and horns (hence the name of the activity), but because of another reason, one I think is very important to this medium.

Drum and bugle corps is both a visual and audible medium. It relies on sound and corresponding visuals. If you look at the field, take note of what you see: horns, drums, mallet keyboards, tom-toms, percussion toys, timpani… do you see a violin? A piano? A full orchestra? No? Then where the hell is that sound coming from?

The sound generated by a synthesizer is distracting. Being a visual medium, my ears expect to hear what I’m seeing. If I hear an orchestra or a piano but don’t see one, my immersion into and my connection with the performance and the show itself have been compromised. Hearing something I don’t see is a distraction. It is so jarring that my connection to the show is suddenly broken and I become removed from what I see and hear on the field. I suddenly become focused on other things besides the show.

Oh, wait… you can see the synthesizer keyboard on the field, can’t you? Well, that’s fine and dandy, but what exactly does a synthesizer sound like? Generally, it’s supposed to sound like something else. A synthesizer’s job is to synthesize sounds. I’m not aware that a synthesizer has an identifiable sound, unless it’s the sound you get when you run a midi piano or a midi horn through some weird processor. But since the synthesizer keyboard is associated with more than just that processed sound reminiscent of prog rock from the 1980’s, any sound created by the electronic instrument is jarring and distracting.

Then there are the sound effects. Even more jarring because they are so incredibly out of place. The samples? The pre-recorded vocals? Out of place. Can’t see where they’re coming from, no one is actually performing them… distraction. In addition, these sounds don’t balance well with the acoustic instruments at all. They don’t complement each other. It’s like watching a Disney movie from the 1990’s: hand-drawn animation composited with obviously computer-generated graphics and animation. It causes an imbalance. This imbalance causes yet another distraction.

I realize I am only one man, but I do know this man isn’t the only one with the opinion that electronic instruments should not be part of the activity. Even if the activity of “drum and bugle corps” were changed to “music and movement”, I would still want to see the orchestra if I heard the orchestra. I want to see the woodwind players if I heard woodwind instruments.

A medium – any medium – has boundaries. These boundaries are what helps define the medium. Music consists of a tempo and rhythm. Without tempo, there is no rhythm, and without either you get a bunch of jumbled sounds. A painting is composed of colors applied with a brush, whether digital or physical. Comics are composed of silent, static images in a sequence. If you add movement, it becomes animation.

This is the same with drum and bugle corps. There are drums and there are horns. Along with this is the visual aspect: drill, body movement, and colorguard. What you see is what you get. Unfortunately, in this day and age of the activity, what I see is not what I’m getting. I’m getting more than what I see and it’s a distraction. It’s an imbalance.

It’s like taking two foods that you absolutely love separately but do not pair well together at all because, when paired, they just taste horrible.

A little Op/Ed piece, since I just had a drum corps weekend and witnessed quite a few things, both good and bad.

This particular piece of writing is going to touch on the rising trend of electronics in drum corps and, for that matter, indoor percussion ensembles.

First, let me get this off my chest in an impolite manner: I hate electronic instruments in drum corps and indoor percussion.

*ahem*

Before anyone says that I’m just an old curmudgeon that can’t stand change, let me say that that assessment would be wrong. I’m fine with change. I like evolution. But a medium is a medium because of how it is defined, and one way to define a medium is to acknowledge its boundaries.

To me, drum corps is acoustic. There are no electronics involved. When I listen to drum corps music, I want to hear horns and percussion. That’s it. I want to hear a great hornline rip my face off with a bigger-than-life sound. I want to hear a battery play creative, clean, fun beats with an attitude. I want to hear mallet percussion performed with agility and musicality. I want to hear auxiliary percussion contribute nuance and color.

What I don’t want to hear is a mandolin sound. I don’t want to hear samples of a storm or the wind blowing. I don’t want to hear a piano. And while we’re at it, I don’t want to hear an electric guitar or bass in a drum corps, marching band, or indoor percussion ensemble, either.

The full name of the drum corps activity is Drum and Bugle Corps. I don’t see the words “piano”, “synthesizer”, “violin”, or other such descriptors in the name. Any other sound is just out of place and, instead of a drum and bugle corps, you get a musical ensemble that is basically comparable to any mixed ensemble: a big band, an orchestra, a pop band. Without these boundaries, the medium becomes something other than drum and bugle corps. Same thing with marching band (all wind instruments and percussion) and indoor percussion.

And let me get in a quick word about indoor percussion. An indoor percussion ensemble should be a percussion ensemble, right? A synthesizer and an electric guitar or bass are NOT percussion instruments. So why are they allowed in a percussion ensemble? That’s like saying it’s okay to have strings in a wind ensemble, or brass in a woodwind sextet.

The great thing about any medium’s boundaries is that they force practitioners to be creative within those boundaries. In drum corps, you don’t get to use a piano, you have to use a marimba, xylophone, vibraphone, or other some such keyboard to convey what you want. You have to use the musical and tonal properties of those instruments to convey something piano-esque, if that’s what you’re after.

Succumbing to the use of outside sounds through the use of electronics basically means that the show designers can’t creatively use the instruments that define the medium in such a way to get the results they want. They have to resort to outside sounds, and this is the sign of giving up. This is a sign that says the medium should become another medium because the show designers cannot work within the medium as it is defined.

As far as sound effects, it’s ridiculous that show designers need to use synthesizers to produce sounds of a thunder storm. Me? I would use concert bass drums, sheets of metal, and cymbals. Need to add sounds of rain? That’s what rain sticks and ocean drums are for!

The great thing about music is that it’s abstract. Despite what we’ve been told since childhood, music is a language but it isn’t a universal language. Each person will receive a different communique from a piece of music because it is an abstract artform. Music relies on emotion and mimicry to convey a message. And while I think it’s great to be able to use samples in mixed music formats, such as pop music, the marching activity has always been an acoustic musical activity. I think the acoustic concept is important to reiterate as we talk about music as an abstract medium. Drum corps and marching band have always been acoustic musical activities. They’re basic and primal and rely on acoustic instruments to convey impressions with which the listener can associate. When a trumpet whinnies like a horse, it may sound like a trumpet, but the listener knows it’s mimicking a horse. When a bass drum pumps out a faint bum-bump, bum-bump pattern, the listener associates that with a heartbeat. It is this quality that I appreciate about drum corps.

It is a sad day when electronic instruments become the norm in drum corps. Marching band and indoor percussion are already plagued by them. I would hate to see drum corps rely on such a crutch. I want to see evolution and creativity, but I want to see those things within the boundaries that define the medium. I don’t want to see drum corps turned into something it isn’t. Push the boundaries, but don’t redefine them. A truly creative person can be so within those boundaries.