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Texas music vs out of state music.


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With the exciting news of Avon coming to San Antonio I've been thinking about just how they will stack up against the best in Texas.

 

Personally I think the visual caption is Avon's to lose but I'm almost completely certain in the other direction on the music caption. This could just be a personal thing but I've never liked the way Avon sounds. Too much emphasis on power and not on tone and balance. However the top 7 to 10ish bands in Texas have both in spades. While Avon won music last year at grand nationals I feel like in a field of bands like Texas their sound quality just won't match up.

 

Thoughts?

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I know a lot of Texas directors who would agree with you. I know a lot of UIL judges who would agree with you. I agree with you. However (!) I'm not convinced BOA's adjudicators will agree with you. Avon plays with a great degree of technical accuracy, and does so while performing very difficult drill. BOA's judges will pick up on this. Conversely, they might not pick up so much on the quality of the sound being produced. Heck, in a sea of large, loud, blaring Texas bands, Avon's music performance might actually even seem refreshing to them. While I think it's unlikely that Avon will walk away with the music caption at San Antonio, I wouldn't put it outside of the realm of possibility. Last year at Nationals provides a pretty good example. While your typical Texas director would probably say that Cedar Park gave the best, most symphonic performance of the groups in finals, BOA's music performance judges very clearly preferred Avon. That's not entirely unsurprising when you acknowledge that a lot of BOA's judges come out of the DCI world, and so they might prefer a sound that more closely approximates the drum corps ideal.

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This year I thought the difference between Texas bands and bands like Avon came down to music choice. I felt like Avon and others who regularly compete in their circle all exhibited a similar sound and tone to their shows. I felt like that tone was more traditional/classic than what the Texas bands brought to Indiana. The thing that really set all of the Texas bands apart at Grand Nats in my mind was that each Texas band put out a product that combined current/recent music with classic marching music and overlaid and intertwined the music in such a way that it was cohesive. Each band felt like they had a soundtrack quality to it--in particular Leander, Reagan, and Cedar Park. It was refreshing and interesting. I acknowledge the incredible level that Avon and Carmel and others performed at, but I really did get the sense that there was an interchangeable quality of tone that pervaded in those bands. 

 

My impression is that if you have a Texas band and an Avon play at a high level with a similar level of musical difficulty, who comes out on top will come down to judge preference in terms of the musical choices of the directors--long before the kids ever start to work on the music. 

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