Posted by Leland on March 19, 2004 at 10:26:38:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Is there an All-American Marching Band posted by Umm....... on March 19, 2004 at 01:45:45:
Yeah, I get a roof over my head & food in the microwave by playing drum corps for a living.
Both of you guys are right, though. Hornlines aren't exactly spilling over with excess talent, and only a fraction of those players will ever get money in their pocket later on just for playing.
But, the level of instruction is equivalent to a good brass studio. When I went to the OU tuba camp back in '99, during one of the hour-plus-long morning warmup routines, a kid next to me made a comment something like, "I'm gonna learn more here than I would in a drum corps." I had to reveal to him that we did the same routine, with very little difference, every day over the summer. When I got my short one-on-one with Pilafian later, he said that he knew that hornlines did pretty much the same thing that he was doing, and how much difference it makes for a player to use it all summer long. He even had me play "the most whacked-out lip slur you've ever done in drum corps" for the rest of the class.
The performance demands aren't terribly different from Disney or Broadway, either. It may only be fifteen minutes' worth, but each venue is different (the field may not be marked correctly, or the stadium might produce all kinds of disruptive echoes, among other problems), and the performers are expected to be at their best every time they go out. Plus, the show changes during the summer, sometimes in little details, and sometimes drastically. Star '91 was an example of drastic -- I remember the first version of their show was, well, extremely boring. Over less than a week in early July, they had rewritten fully half of the drill, and put a whole new closer on the field. Overnight, they were good enough to take it all at Finals.
For little tweaks, you'd hear comments like, "Instead of count 16, make the line on 18, and do it 2 steps off the yard line instead of on," or, "Second sops, are you pushing in your slide for that D in the third bar? Don't do it this time, leave it out." That's pretty nitpicky, and would indicate something better than a run-of-the-mill beat & blow unit. Nobody does the marching music thing better than a good drum corps.
So, yeah, not many of the players will ever be paid to play, but the performance demands are higher than most anything they can do at that age, and the instruction is on a par with nearly anything else out there.
So, "nuff nuff nuff said" at this point, I guess. ;-)