Rich,

Well, most of the comments from another post (More On Modern Drum Corps) are mostly about the use of electronics. I happen to agree with what Bobby Lindsey (Pioneer staff member) had to say. But you’re right, I don’t think the topic of instruments has been touched…and I think it would be interesting to see what everyone’s opinions are.

My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that as long as the horn is in the key of G, it’s a bugle. It doesn’t matter if it has no valves, a single piston valve, a piston – rotor combination, two valves, or three valves. I also don’t care what voice it is.

I didn’t have much of an opportunity this year to check, but the only top 12 DCI Corps that used G bugles in 2003 were the Madison Scouts. If there were others, I don’t know about them.

I have always heard how much more superior sounding the B flat trumpets are. I hear that they are much easier to play and stay in tune. I don’t have anything against trumpets…I learned to play the trumpet in grade school and the transition to a piston-rotor bugle was simple….although Jerry Davidson may not agree with me on how easy that transition was.

For me, I’m disappointed that they went to “the b-flats”. They should have stayed with the bugles…even with all the flaws.

Another opinion. I’m not a drummer and will not claim to be an expert on the instruments. However, the way today’s snare lines sound doesn’t sound right. The way I hear it, every tap (I think that’s what they are called) sounds like a rim shot. The snares sound like they are tuned very high.. and really don’t have much of the “buzzing” snare sounds either.

What did you do in the Corps? 2nd Sop

What years were you a Corps member? 1979

The Bb bugles don't have the range that the G bugles have. It eliminates that soprano high C in the chords. I really don't think this is why the Div 1 corps have a weaker sound though (it is effecting the Div 2 and 3s, though). After watching the Blue Devils in semis and finals, I'm convinced that the big lines can still produce a good, drum corps sound. I think where the corps are losing their sound is two fold.

First the kids in drum corps are trained to play these instruments musically in their school bands. When I was a kid, I was already doing drum corps, as many were, and was trained to play loud on a football field. Now there are extremely few kiddy corps and the result is a bunch of players trained in school for concert band.

Secondly, the emphasis in the Div 1 ranks, since the Cavies have returned to the top, is on the visual aspect of the show. These drills, which are necessary to win now, are hurting the brass sound. There is no way to crank out a sound when the members are literally running while playing. Even the park and honks are now done mostly with feet together. The brass lines' postures are better, the drills are exquisite, but the brass sound is suffering.

I'll have a better understanding of the Bb movement when I see the Caballeros playing them. If a DCA corps can't crank the sound, there will be problems.

What did you do in the Corps? Soprano

What years were you a Corps member? 70-75 Cadets, 76-81 A Corps

Jim,

How many DCA corps use the Bb horns? Are most of them still on G bugles?

And as for the snare sound, it's weak because of the Kevlar heads - like playing on a table top. In fact, they always remind me of practicing on those tables in the back room of the field house with the Imperial Cadets during the winter (what was the name of that place? Something starting with an E I think, back in the middle of the woods). We also had some pretty rickety practice tables with the A corps in 72-73.

And for those of us trained in the "old school" rudimental drumming, it actually hurts to play on the Kevlar, because we're used to doing the work, and with the Kevlar, the head does the work. Painful on the wrists for us old guys.

What did you do in the Corps? Snare, Drum Major, Drum Instructor/Arranger

What years were you a Corps member? 1970-73, 78-79

Cabs are the only DCA corps using the Bb bugles thus far. This is the first year, so it should be interesting (especially with the stress on volume in senior corps). Minnesota Brass Inc is going there soon. They just announced a fund raiser to buy all new drums and brass.

What did you do in the Corps? Soprano

What years were you a Corps member? 70-75 Cadets, 76-81 A Corps

Re: snare sound

Bob Shreffler is partly correct ... the Kevlar heads are a big part of the reason for the loss of sound. The other is TENSION... not on people but on the drum heads. The corps instructors tighten these heads down so far that they lose all real drum sound .. including the snare sound and the drum sound. After all this, the drums sound like table tops .. with no tone definition or projection.

And, Bob is correct about the "heads doing the work". With all that tension, the drum sticks bounce off the head like live rubber. A real rudimental drummer has a hard time with that!

Don't know how he did it, but Mitch Markovich had the 2002 Royal Airs drum line sounding great with drums with great tone and definition (in ALL segments) .. and you could hear the SNARE sound too! It took some work, but they all did it.

What did you do in the Corps? drummer 1958-63, asst. instructor 1964-71; quartermaster 1964-66

What years were you a Corps member? member 1958- 1963

There are just as many rudiments being played today as there were in any time in drum corps. The difference is that it is written musically, utilizing different voices and instrumentation within the ensemble. Instead of the snares playing run-on rudimental passages that go on forever, accented by single tenors and bass drums, the modern-day drumline, is taking the rudimental passages that are arranged musically and are flowing them through the ensemble. For example, a paradiddle-diddle or a seven-stroke roll is now being split between five bass voices and those drag ratamacue patterns once played by snares are now being split on a six-pack multi-tenor drum and when they do play that, they play it along with helicopters and sweeps.

Percussion arranging for the battery is snares with trumpets, multi-tenors with mid voices, and basses with lower brass. Pit ensemble is an entire other topic. The tuning is different on these drums for obvious reasons. The size of the stadiums where these corps are performing is much different than your neighborhood high school stadium or the local fairgrounds.

High tension instrumentation is being used for two reasons. Projection and durability. You cannot use the heavy-duty hardware with mylar drumheads unless you want to use the drum heads that Jim Schehr had Evans make for the Royal-Airs last year, which were a mylar resin fibre blend. Which gave the head the color sound of plastic (old-style) yet was durable enough to handle high tension. It is easy to tune a snare. Tune each individual tension lug on the drum to the pitch you want with snares off. The pitch must be consistent between batter head and snare side head. Tune the snare strainer for consistent tension on the snare side head. And tune each individual snare on the snare strainer for the wet and or drier articulation needed, taking in consideration, type of surface (grass v. turf), concrete stadium v. wood bleaches, enclosed v. open stadium, distance from field to box, and weather conditions.

-Terri

What did you do in the Corps? french horn

What years were you a Corps member? \'72 - \'73

Keith I read that whole article you posted from Pioneer and I have to agree on most of it.It could very easily happen and I can see many signs now,in the very near future there won't be any resemblance
of a drum corps in DCI.What it would be I couldn't say.
I thought the example of a musical orchestra was perfect,and I can see this happening now.DCI keeps
taking away what drum corps really stand for.About the only things that we added when I was in it was
more horns,maybe a few kids in the color guard,one or
more to the drum line,changed the music a little,reworked the drill,and if we had the money get new uniforms,keeping basically the same style.What do you see now,the cadence or BPM is double compared to what it used to be,again more like a marching band during half time of a college football game.And now at
the DCI contest in Denver they added singers,I think someone said dancers as well as baton twirlers.What happen to the color guard,the American Flag?
I heard an interesting story about the DCI contest that just took place,my sister has been going to these
contest's,I guess you call them the World Championship's for awhile now,she was in Norwood in the late 40's and early 50's and some her friends that were in the corps at the same time,now when she came home she said she didn't like what they were doing and that it's getting away from the drum and bugle corps tradition,plus the cost of ticket's is
going thru the roof.
I don't know how many of you know Russ Norris,but he was there to and many times in the past.From what I
heard he and a few others went to a local theater in Denver to see the contest because of the price of tickets at the contest,and after watching it in the
theater for awhile they left because of what was going
on with the corps and the things some of them added.


I have a question,what is a Bb horn?

What did you do in the Corps? French Horn

What years were you a Corps member? 1957-1963

Terri,

When did you become such a drum expert? Pretty good talking for a french horn player! I suspect Jim is a ghost writer on our forum now!

But I have to disagree with your statement that there are just as many rudiments being played now, because it just plain is NOT true. What you have to remember is that these days people make up a pattern and deem it a rudiment - something that just was NOT done in my day. Things like "cheeses", etc. are now considered "ruidments" by modern drummers, so maybe the number of "rudiments" in the shows is higher, but they're really just variations on the same basic patterns - things that WE called, correctly, rudiments. Last I checked, there were only 26 of those.

I've watched the lines very closely. A majority of their shows are just sixteenth notes with accents, with the odd triplet thrown in to screw up the timing and make the audience wonder where the beat went. Then, on the rare 16-count phrase where they're not running around the field, they play something fairly tough. I'm constantly amazed at how crazy the crowd reacts now to a simple 8-count roll!

What did you do in the Corps? Snare, Drum Major, Drum Instructor/Arranger

What years were you a Corps member? 1970-73, 78-79

Have to agree with Shref about RUDIMENTS. There are still only 26 of them ... but there are infinite ways to combine them.


And, yes, there are many ways to "split" patterns among various instruments ... creating new sounds. This also greatly increases the TIMING difficulty and exposure for the performers ... since they now have to keep the pattern timing controlled between various drummers or segments.

But, those "splits" aren't rudiments.

What did you do in the Corps? drummer 1958-63, asst. instructor 1964-71; quartermaster 1964-66

What years were you a Corps member? member 1958- 1963

Rich,

You're question about the Bb horn made me go out and surf for a specific answer. I couldn't find a definitive answer because I don't know much about the "new" horns drum corps' are using....and there really isn't much out there. Also, I have say that the accuracy of what I'm writing is based on multiple web sites and I'm assuming that the people who wrote this stuff knew what they were talking about.

Here's what I know. In 1999, DCI rules allowed any key brass horn to be used. What we used to call G sopranos have been replaced. They have been replaced by Bb (B-flat) trumpets. From what I've read, other voices used with the Bb trumpets may be in the key of F...I'm not sure. Terri mentioned "multi-keyed horn lines". Maybe that is what she meant.

The soprano and trumpet voice is kind of the same, but Bb trumpets are the horns almost all of the Div 1 corps are using. The names of the horns have also changed. Names like soprano, mellophone, and contra base have been replaced with trumpets, altos, and tubas (although I heard the term mellophone used in Phantom Regiment this year..so I'm not sure about that one either) As far as I know, the french horn is gone completly....which is too bad because I thought the french horns "darkened" the mid voices and really made horn lines sound rich and full. I'm assuming the name changes also would designate what key your horn line is using. If you said you were the lead trumpet player for the Boston Crusaders, I would know you're corps uses Bb horns.

Here is what I don't know. Are these "trumpets" the exact same horn that we played in bands? I haven't seen one up close to tell. Looking at video, they really do look like the same trumpets. Without holding one or seeing it up close, I guess it would be hard to tell. I also don't know why they (DCI) went this route. Cost maybe?

In my search, I did find that most traditional military bugles (dating back to the civil war) were made in the key of Bb. The ones current drum corps use (or used to use) started life from the G boy scout bugle and evolved from there. So really, one could argue that the trumpet is also a descendent of the bugle.

However, you could argue that point until you red in the face. A trumpet is a trumpet....and a trumpet is a band instrument. It is in no way...a bugle...in my opinion of course. Maybe, if they had altered the trumpet a little and called it Bb soprano??

What did you do in the Corps? 2nd Sop

What years were you a Corps member? 1979

They have built modified trumpets for use by drum corps, Keith. They have a different bore than a regular trumpet. Dynasty has, King has made a special set of horns for Regiment and Carolina Crown, and whoever ELSE wants to spring the righteous for a matched set of King multi-keys.

I would LOVE to play on those.

-Terri

What did you do in the Corps? french horn

What years were you a Corps member? \\'72 - \\'73

It's still drum and BUGLE corps. They are not playing band instruments. Band trumpets are not made to be played on a football field (small pipes=small bore=little projection), although bands think they can (hence the lame marching band sound). When you start seeing trombones and sousaphones, then you can refrain from calling them bugles. They're still the same three valved instruments that were played before, but in different keys (Bb trumpets, mellophones, and baritones; F french horns, and Double Bb tubas).

As far as the constant upgrading of instruments in drum corps, I think it's a scam by the instrument makers. They donate the instruments to the top DCI corps in exchange for using the corps' name in advertisements. Then everybody else needs to buy these instruments to keep up with the joneses. It happened with the G-F bugles, the two-valved bugles, the three valved G bugles, and now the multi-keyed bugles.

What did you do in the Corps? Soprano

What years were you a Corps member? 70-75 Cadets, 76-81 A Corps

I don't know Jim. I'm pretty sure Cavaliers bought both sets of yamahas they used. I remember them having a fund raiser for them.

I don't know if the kings were donated to Regiment and Crown(Blue Knights are using Kings too, I do believe). I'm almost positive BK bought the Kings because they sold their complete set of Kanstuls to the Renegades. (I played one in January. Didn't miss the DEG mello AT ALL after that)

-Terri

What did you do in the Corps? french horn

What years were you a Corps member? \\'72 - \\'73

Terri's right - the Cavaliers DO buy their horns. Their DRUMS are a different story (of course, Yamaha was a motorcycle when I was marching...).

What did you do in the Corps? Snare, Drum Major, Drum Instructor/Arranger

What years were you a Corps member? 1970-73, 78-79