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My Love of Drum & Bugle Corps... Don't get me started... I'm still moved to tears anytime I hear Phantom play 'Amazing Grace' or Madison's 'You'll Never Walk Alone'... I have to jump to my feet when Boston plays any part of 'Conquest' in their show... and I still get chills when one of the big boys play Sousa!! Drum corps is one of the great passions of my life (and many other people I know). Yet somehow I've managed to keep it in perspective and not run off to join the nearest corps (which, until recently, happened to be at least 3 hours away) as did so many I know after the fall of the last local corps (Albany) in 1994. For those of you unfamiliar with the activity I encourage you to read on... The drum corps activity has two levels - juniors and seniors. The juniors are the cream of the crop... you 'age out' on your 22nd birthday and can no longer perform with a junior corps... some colleges are actually giving college credit for those who march a full season with a competing corps... The juniors are
governed by... Please
click their logo to visit DCI's site. There's a junior show right in nearby Glens Falls (at East Field) every year called...
Please click the logo to visit the Adirondack Drums site. If you can make plans to attend the show I would highly recommend it but get your tickets early as they go very fast!! If you can't attend the show but would like a glimpse into the world of the corps... the corps arrive in town the day of the show, early in the morning (some are lucky enough to arrive the night before) and rehearse all day at various high schools (you can check with the Lion's Club or the Adirondack Drums website to see who's where). The rehearsals are open to the public... the mornings are usually marching / drill or sectional rehearsals (drums, brass, guard and pit working separate from each other) but you can usually catch the full corps together in the mid afternoon as they clean and prepare for the evening's competition.
The seniors are overseen by...
Please click their logo to visit DCA's site.
I saw my first drum corps competition in 1975 in Saratoga Springs, NY with another of my best friends from school, Jim Crawford - a former school psychologist and now Assistant Principal with the Gloversville Schools. Looking back, the show was sort of a coming out for the newly formed, hometown Avant Garde Jr. Drum & Bugle Corps of Saratoga Springs, NY - the product of a merger between the Emerald Knights and other corps. The additional corps in the competition were OK (Garfield Cadets from New Jersey who went on to become The Cadets of Bergen County and a Junior corps super power) but we were waiting for the 'home town' corps... As 'Russian Easter Overture' began we were in awe... by the middle of 'It Ain't Necessarily So' we were blown away, and by the time 'Summertime' had concluded we were 15 and we were hooked!! But while Jim joined up a couple years later, I continued to work at various jobs and had begun my professional music career at age 15. As I said earlier, junior corps are the best in the activity but you 'age out' on your 22nd birthday. Looking back I wish I could have found a way to tour with one - even for just a single season... I guess the thing I like most about the drum corps activity is the organization, discipline, teamwork and dedication. At any level the commitment and work ethic is admirable both from the staff and the marching members and at the middle and higher levels the talent and musicianship is truly amazing. I found myself at odds with many of the local high school band directors on numerous occasions when a local corps I was involved with would march in the same parade as their high school marching band and the corps would blow the doors of the band - not our intention by any means... we simply put in the time and made the effort to be the best that we could be. The parents of kids in the high school bands of course wanted to know why their band didn't look or sound as good as 'that other group' with kids the same age which would put pressure on the band directors - most of which despised marching to begin with - many due to the extra effort and time required (and some from total ignorance of the genre)!! I know for a fact that many refuse to put ANY time into it for say the Memorial Day Parade but rather hand out the music a few days before a parade and tell the kids to look at it and be at the school the morning of the parade... So these 'music educators' shouldn't take issue with me or any organization that takes the time and puts forth the effort to present a product they can be proud of!!! As I mentioned in my BIO my old school hasn't bothered to put a band in the Memorial Day Parade for years and it was this kind of attitude from the band directors and the repeated 'head butting' that eventually drove me out of the local concert band, symphony, etc. and even the musician's union! Someday these people will have kids or maybe grandchildren in a music program somewhere and I wish these kids a better music educator than their relatives that I encountered!! Allow me to repeat myself... I have worked with the drum lines at several high schools - some more than an hour away... and the band directors at these schools, at least during my time there, recognized the importance of putting a good band on the street and saw drum corps as an extremely positive activity and a great source of education, motivation and personal growth - encouraging their kids to participate. Again, several colleges now offer college credit to students who complete a full season with a competing drum & bugle corps. In the past few years I have repeatedly offered to volunteer my time to help some of the local band directors and not a one has even seen fit to acknowledge the offer... explains a lot!!
What these people refuse to
understand (this is my theory anyway) is that the marching band
is the ambassador to the community... Who goes to school
concerts? Families and friends of those involved, maybe a
handful of people from the community... Who goes to high school
sporting events?? Again, families and friends of those involved
and another handful of community members... Who 'goes' to a
parade - especially one as high profile in a community as
the Memorial Day Parade? Actually a parade is one of those
few things that actually goes TO the community... Then the
answer becomes a good number of the tax payers in the community
and impressionable out of town visitors who usually don't attend
functions at the school!!! My message to these band directors is
the next time your school's budget is so tight it puts the music
and arts programs and your very jobs in serious jeopardy, they
should ask themselves if it would have been worth a little extra
effort!! I know many will still say it wouldn't... too bad...
This is the
1991 Capital Brass of which I was proud to be Drum Major Let me expand on my drum corps experiences a little... I worked on the writing and teaching staffs of the Golden Marauders (Port Henry, NY) and Volunteers (Troy, NY) Jr. Drum & Bugle Corps and the Defenders (Waterford / Troy, NY), Freedom Knights (Rutland, VT) and Capital Brass (Capital District of NY) Sr. Drum & Bugle Corps... I was so corps crazy that I was driving an hour or more in both directions just to teach some rinky-dink little corps in the middle of nowhere with sometimes as few as 3 drummers. Then in 1981 I was asked to join the instructional staff of the Vagabonds - a Sr. corps in Fort Edward, NY, about 30 minutes from where I lived at the time. Avant Garde (Junior corps) was the big gun in the area then - probably the top corps in all of New York State at the time and was knocking at the door of the DCI top 20 (the junior circuit governing body) and maybe even finals (top 12). Their staff was largely former members with a couple 'pro's from Dover' - the drum corps term for high end instructors from top corps who would write music and/or visit about once a month to fix and polish what the locals had been teaching. Vagabonds hired some of the local staff from AG which was a major leap for them instructional wise (sort of a poor man's pro's from Dover). The only problem with this arrangement was that when AG left in June for their summer tour Vagabond's lost their staff and were left to try to prepare themselves for their competitive season. In 1982 I was invited to teach on Avant Garde's drum staff along with Jim Crawford and Bob Dobinsky (from the Bayonne Bridgemen and I believe Star of Indiana) - I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!! Throughout AG's 10 year history I was one of their biggest fans and staunchest supporters - I would have done anything for that corps short of traveling with them because of my own performance schedule. I taught their bass drum line (Jimmy McHale, Spiro and the rest - I hope you guys are doing well) right up until they left for tour that year. I was still teaching Vagabond's drum line too and with AG's departure I became one of the few constants along with Matt Donnelly (yes that's Matt from 'The Upstarts' and the Auburn Purple Lancers and Rochester Crusaders drum corps) and we set about writing and teaching the rest of the show and cleaning it for competition. By mid August the drum line had come a long way and was actually outscoring some the big boys in competition! By the time AG's season ended and the staff returned (usually a couple weeks before the Sr. season ended) they could hardly recognize the line because they had come so far!! Smitty, Fitzy, Sully, Tim and the rest had really been busting their humps and it showed. However, the corps never really made any more progress and after an internal 'schism' in 1983 the corps split and about half the members left the corps to form their own corps a little closer to home in the Albany/Troy area becoming the Knights of Noble Callahan. So we had two small, horrible corps struggling to get members and not embarrass themselves in performance... Vagabond's decided to abandon field competition and perform only in parades but couldn't get enough members to even accomplish that and folded up shop. Noble Callahan continued in field competitions with a consistently last place atrocity which concluded with their own implosion and a handful of staff / members running off with the corps' equipment (much of it brand new) in the middle of the season. Vagabond's equipment was in storage and when director Brent Farnsworth heard of Callahan's problems he sent his corps' equipment down so they could finish their season. This gesture opened the door for the former Vagabond's members who had previously refused to join arch rival Noble Callahan and in 1984 The Capital Brass was formed. Capital Brass also hired the local AG staff as had Vagabond's knowing that the staff would be leaving for the junior tour... Then Avant Garde folded after the 1985 season which gave Capital Brass the opportunity to have some of the AG staff travel with them to competitions which meant more organized and productive rehearsals which meant a better corps. By 1991 the corps had new uniforms and a huge following - mostly from their growing reputation as an enormously entertaining parade corps. On the field things were starting to take shape - Jim Crawford took over the writing of the drum book, Paul Sanges was hired as brass arranger and I continued writing the 'pit' (non-marching unit on the front of the field featuring bells, xylophones, marimbas, vibes, timpani, Latin percussion and occasionally even a drum set, etc.). Having a full time brass arranger meant that the corps had someone who was writing specifically to the corps' size and membership which dramatically improved the sound. Click here for some video from 1991!! The Capital Brass made its only DCA finals appearance in 1993 (albeit against pretty weak competition) achieving a top 12 world ranking. The corps then folded during winter rehearsals for the '94 season. During my time with the Vagabonds around 1981-82 I started experimenting with MIDI and using it to record the corps music just for fun. Then I realized that it would be a valuable teaching tool - especially for those members that couldn't read music that well and learned by ear. I would hand out the music along with a cassette tape for them to practice with - complete with dynamics and tempo changes. Eventually I discovered that I could reverse teach people to read music - they were using the sheet music as a road map or reference point for starting and stopping in rehearsals by recognizing rhythms that they were already playing and associating that with the transcribed parts. Overall, it got to the point where I would sequence the entire show so the brass and percussion staff could hear it and make adjustments before any music was ever handed out or taught which cut down on the amount of wasted rehearsal time from having to re-teach rewritten parts. This also proved to be a valuable tool for the color guard as well!! The 1994 Capital Brass' show was to be a tribute to the great horn bands - Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chase, Chicago... and consisted of 'When Two Minds Meet' / 'Boys and Girls Together', 'You've Made Me So Very Happy' / 'Symphony For the Devil' (percussion feature) and 'If You Leave Me Now'. The book was completed and parts of the show had even been taught before the corps folded. I think I have the only recording (my MIDI corps if you will - the MIDI-Evil Knights (SEE BELOW)) of the last revision of the show before the corps folded. Hard to believe but it's been over 10 years since I've been involved with a drum corps... writing, teaching, long drives, sun burnt, no sleep, frustration, recruiting, sun burnt, long drives, long days, short nights, teaching, long drives, frustration... all day rehearsals, a cold shower, a 1 hour setup, get in uniform, a 30 minute warm-up, a 10 1/2 minute performance then tear it all down, load the trucks and do it all over again... I'd do it again in a heart beat!!! In early 2004 I got word of a new corps forming in the Albany area... I received a few emails, played with some logos, even attended a couple of their organizational meetings. Excelsior Drum & Bugle Corps started rehearsals in November of 2004 and hit the street in the spring and summer of 2005. Then in 2006 Retro Brass formed - also in Albany, NY but soon merged into the new Capital Brass which includes strong brass ensemble and mini-corps!!
Please
click their logos to visit their sites If there's any way I can work out my scheduling so I can give it the attention it would deserve you know I will be involved with someone in one way or another!! ...more to come!!
MIDI-Evil Knights
As you probably have figured out by now (if you've been reading other pages on my site), I have been experimenting with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) since it was born. While teaching one of the local corps I started plopping notes into a computer at home, curious to see if I could hear what the finished product was supposed to sound like. Then I realized what a tremendous asset this would be for players who couldn't read music well or at all and for the color guard who normally had to wait until music was taught, then try to practice to a lousy recording. It also proved to be an indispensable tool for the musical staff in that they could hear the whole show before it was ever taught, make changes and hear them as well!! This cut down on the amount of in season rewrites and the frustration level of members!! Here are some samples as performed by my MIDI corps if you will: 1991 Capital Brass Brass book by Paul M. Sanges, drum book by Jim Crawford and I wrote 'the pit'
Summertime
1993 Capital Brass
- DCA Finalists!!! Brass book by Paul M. Sanges, drum book by Jim Crawford and I wrote 'the pit'
Mira, Mira
1994 Capital Brass Brass book by Paul M. Sanges and I wrote the percussion book This is the show that never was!!! After making DCA finals in 1993 we must have thought we had reached a pinnacle and assumed that the world would beat a path to our door but between the loss of members and lack of successful recruiting the corps folded in winter rehearsals and never performed any part of this show: A Tribute to the horn bands of
the 60's and 70's - When Two Minds Meet / Boys and Girls Together
You've Made Me So Very Happy / Symphony For the
Devil
1994 Capital Brass - battery and pit ONLY When Two Minds Meet / Boys and Girls Together
You've Made Me So Very Happy / Symphony For the
Devil
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