Bartok For Marching Band

[JSngry]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ToT5MJY8F5w&amp...ted&search=

[Chuck Nessa]

Impressive and nothing to do with Bartok.

[JSngry]

Exactly. What used to be a funny idea for a joke has come to pass and how come I ain't laughing?

Tell you what though, that whole drum corps style of marching has taken over all of the bigger/better high school marching bands around here (how are things in your town?). When Charlie was in high school, I remember going to the first Friday night came just to see the halftime show and expecting the whole symmetrical, "military"(?) style routine I had done (and had learned to design back in music-ed classes; If I ever decide to fall back on that degree, I'm gonna have to totally retake that class...) with good old sonata-from marches and stuff, and.....no. No no no noooo NO. It was this "abstract", asymmetrical "drum corps style" stuff that has apparently taken over sometimes in the last....whenever.

Can't say that I ever learned to "love" it, or even fully "appreciate" it, but in the sense that anybody doing anything that I don't understand really well and purposefully without leaving behind a residue of destructiveness is always going to leave me feeling just a little...curious, hey, I stuck w/it for 4 years.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. This is the kind of "marching band" routine that would have gotten cats fired and/or institutionalized back in my day, and in less than a New York Minute. Now it's winning awards and shit. When/how this "transition" ocurred remains a mystery to me. Go figure.

Edited August 12, 2007 by JSngry

[Shawn]

That clip looks like Busby Berkley on acid.

[DukeCity]

I'm by no means an expert in this area, but over the last several years I've written a stack of arrangements for the college marching band where I teach. Our band does more half-time/entertainment oriented stuff, so they're playing Earth, Wind & Fire and Motown and "classic rock" stuff. But from hanging out with those guys a little I've learned a tiny bit about that whole world.

In DCI (Drum Corp Intl.) there are groups like the ones linked to in this thread, that are stretching the idea of marching band to make it a "performance art". The Star of Indiana eventually evolved into a group called

which is a touring theatrical stage show.

Groups like the Cavaliers are doing Bartok, etc., but there are also groups like the Blue Devils from Concord, CA favor a higher/faster/louder approach doing jazz oriented shows (think Buddy Rich big band meets Don Ellis meets Pat Metheny Group with some girls twirling rifles).

Of course, all of this is dependent on getting participants and fans from the ranks of high school marching bands. The high school equivalent of DCI is BOA (Bands of America), and the bands that are highly competetive in that arena (and you know it's not good music unless in can stand up in competition) model their shows after their favorite drum corps. Directors, arrangers and drill writers/visual designers spend their summers checking out DCI competitions to get ideas. Often, high schools will hire specialists to design shows for them, and those designers may very well be also employed by DCI groups. High school bands in the upper eschelons of this thing will spend well into six figures each year to design a show and take that show to several competitions to prepare for BOA competition.

As for how the DCI groups evlolved, I think things shifted a lot when they changed the instruments being used. For many years the "bugles" used were strange hybrid instruments with only one or two valves. They could play more melodically than true, valve-less bugles, but they could not play fully chromatic music that trumpets and french horns can play. Several years ago DCI decided to allow three-vavle instruments, which now allows them to play fully chromatic stuff (Bartok).

So, there you have it...

[Rooster_Ties]

Where does this fit?? Good? Bad? Trivial? The 'norm' of late?

("Airbag", "Paranoid Android")

("Fitter Happier", "Optimistic", "The National Anthem", "Karma Police")

("Exit Music (From A Film)", "Lucky")

Not having attended a big university (I went to little ol' Knox College, with then a size of 1,000 students total, and now 1,200 or so -- and no marching band), I have practically no experience with this whole sub-culture, either in the past or present. Not being a sports fan (to put it mildly), I've rarely encountered marching bands in my enitre life.

(I guess Youtube is the way to go for me, in this area. )

Edited August 12, 2007 by Rooster_Ties

[Kalo]

That shit is kind of... cool!

Dave Kehr, the DVD critic for the New York Times, recently described legendary Hollywood dance director Busby Berkeley as often seeming to be "working under the influence of drugs yet to be discovered."

I propose that those drugs have finally been discovered, and are now widely (ab)used by the band-directors of American High Schools/Universities.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I'm not much for this, but a mate of mine used to run the 6th Brighton Scout troop marching band, in the days when they frequently won the GB competitions (mid-seventies). And it was DYNAMIC stuff! None of this pansy Bartok rubbish. They'd hit you with stuff from The Who and Doors and so on and, though it's not my kind of music in the first place, you couldn't help being moved to a yell occasionally.

There's a LOT of skill in the nu style, but no impact.

MG