From: splooie@cs1.bradley.edu (Romeo Casiple)
Subject: Re: drill (was Re: Creativity vs. Execution)
Organization: Bradley University
Distribution: na
Date:  6 Oct 92 03:26:20 GMT

In <1992Oct5.135626.15739@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> tmv@blitzen.uucp (26129-vandewater) writes:

>In article <splooie.717820599@camelot>, splooie@camelot.bradley.edu (Romeo Casiple) writes:

>As a marcher, your goal of a good show should not be to hit your set 
>throughout the show but to keep the form in relation to the other marchers.
>  
>For example, assume there's a company front and the entire corps dresses
>toward the guy (or gal) on the 50.  If he is two steps off, do you leave
>them out of the form and each member look for his spot on the field?

Yes.. but let's say that this set everyone has an X coordinate of 12 steps in
front of the front hash and my Y coordinate is splitting the 30 and 35.  There'sno way I'm going to know where the guy on 50 will be!  I will be expecting to land my coordinate 12 steps in front of the hash.. and if I'm at an important
competition, there WILL be a yard number whose top is 14 steps in front of the
hash.  I know that number ain't goin' nowhere, and I will aim for 2 steps 
behind that number.  And everyone else should be looking for that number the
same way, so they can't be wrong either.

>As example from my marching days..when I was in Garfield in 83 there

Well, I supposed I can't argue with the way you guys did the drill back
then, since you did win DCI nats that year.  But there are so many things that
can go wrong if you depend on the other corps members.  One example I can think
of is the little clip they showed of Crossmen in this years telecast.  They do
this one move where a curved form is moving backwards and another curved form
has to do a pass through them near the front side line.  There's a guy in the 
forward moving form I'll bet for sure was guiding to the people moving backwards.  He wound up aiming for wrong hole, & almost smacked into another guy because
he was in his set.  If he were thinking, "Okay, my set is 3 1/2 inside the 40..
I need to be there", he'd be in the right place.. but instead he wound up maybe
1 1/2 steps inside the 40 because he wasn't paying attention to the field 
markings.  And when tempos are moving 180+, there's no time for recovery. 

Guiding relative to other people is fine during rehearsal.. you can just
no-brain the whole thing all day, thinking "Oh yeah, I gotta go through the guy
in the red shorts and the guy in the fushia shorts.. and here I gotta be
next to the guy in the mauve hair in this move.. " etc.. but what about in
the show when everybody's wearing the same hat and same uniform?  You can't
tell who's who. 
Some forms you simply CAN'T guide to other people.  Sorry for my references to
one corps all the time, but the case in point here is this years' Cavaliers
show after the 8 count silence & rifle toss in "Peterloo:

1.    X  X  X  X  X  X  X  X
      X  X       x      X  X
      X  X      xx      X  X 
      X  X    xxxxxx    X  X 
      X  X      xx      X  X
      X  X      x       x  x
      x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x 

2.    x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
      x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
      x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
      x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
      x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
      x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
      x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x

3.   x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
       x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
     x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x 
       x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
     x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x 
       x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
     x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x 
       x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x

Don't count the X's, they are are only guestimates of acutal coordinates, but
I hope you know what I mean.. if your one of the guys in that rotating thing
in the middle, who are you going to guide to?  The guy in green wearing the
white cowboy hat?  And if you don't hit set 2. in a straight line, there's
no time to guide the line because you have to go to set 3.  And if you 
follow the guy in front of you, you will be in for a big collission because
your horizontal line will be moving the opposite direction then that guy
in front of you.  Following anybody in this form would be hopeless.. and
also dangerous.


>SO, what do you netters think?  Do you keep the form or get to your
>spot (which kinda makes drum corps an individual activity and not 
>a group -- or for Kurt Gowdy -- a TEAM activity).

Well.. you still have to play your horn the same way as everybody else, in
terms of intonation & blending etc.. but NOT tempo.  You can't listen
to the other side of the field for time if you are playing a fugue
because there will be phasing.. so back to the "do your own show thing"
is present here too.  But that's the subject of another post entirely.

We get enough camradarie from sleeping, eating, traveling, and pillow
bashing off the field!

Just my $.02.

Splooie!
splooie@camelot.bradley.edu
Newsgroups: alt.drumcorps