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vincentlee1220

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Posts posted by vincentlee1220

  1. Marching Band Opportunities After College

    in General Off-Topic

    Posted

    If you're brass/percussion/guard, you can see if there's a DCA corps near you (or learn one of the aforementioned instruments if you're a woodwind). Otherwise, I'm not sure there's anything else besides convincing a school to take you on as staff.

    Some positions might not need a music degree -- I know an old classmate of mine was the cymbal tech at vista ridge for a quite a bit after she graduated.

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    Thoughts on recent(?) trend of "hiding shows" in the early season

    in Everything Music: Marching, Concert, Auditions and more

    Posted · Edited by vincentlee1220

    This has been something that's been on my mind for a while, and I don't closely follow band anymore, but a comment thread on a video of Vista Ridge 2023 at LISD Festival of Bands got me ready to type :P.

    I've observed a recent(-ish?) trend among band programs to "hide" their in-progress shows over the course of the season, only starting to show them once the competitive season gets into the groove and it's impossible to stop people from taking videos at UIL Region/Area/State.

    I do understand some of the common concerns:

    1. Copyrighted music
    2. Rough early-season runs may deflate "hype" or negatively affect the opinion of prospective judges that watch them
    3. A desire to present only one's "best self"

     

    But I do miss seeing week-to-week progress and think it's a loss. Back when I was at VR (2011-2014), we uploaded public videos every single week after each football game (sometimes on the night of! I'd stay up til like 2 AM refreshing YouTube for the video). I also don't buy the common concerns:

    1. Most marching band music is either out of copyright, or falls under fair use. Unless the arrangers and drill writers don't want them posted, but they usually wind up being posted at the end of the season anyways so ??
    2. Realistically, no adjudicator with credentials has the time or attention to spend creeping on programs on YouTube.
    3. A problem with our modern society (social media, etc.) is that we're too eager to only present our best, polished, often edited self, without reflecting or showing the hard work that led to that point. It's a delightful trip down memory lane for me to look at janky old videos of the shows I marched in (Including one football game where I started the show 10 yards away from where I should've -- miraculously made it back on track somehow). Seeing an awful visual moment just slowly iron itself out over the season (closer diamond set in vista ridge 2013 Scheherazade comes to mind) brings back lots of good memories of working hard for something and getting it just right.

    I do know that students probably get shown week-to-week videos privately, but they lose access them rather quickly unless they make their own copy.

     

    Thoughts? Is this a recent trend? Did it come from DCI? (probably) I know some other schools did it even when I was in high school, but I was happy we didn't.

  6. PROJECT: TEXAS ARCHIVE

    in Everything Music: Marching, Concert, Auditions and more

    Posted

    Second this idea. UIL's website has been terrible for unearthing old results. I imagine we'll have quite a bit of work cut out for us if we want a complete archive, but I'm very interested in contributing what little I know.

    I agree, I think a good place to begin is simply a Google Drive with folders by-contest. Within each contest we can subdivide further by class, if necessary, then people can upload results or full recap pdfs (images if no pdf's can be found) that they have.

    If I remember, I'll actually get started on this soon.

  11. vista ridge video requests

    in Everything Music: Marching, Concert, Auditions and more

    Posted

    Hi all,

     

    Wondering if anyone has high(er) quality videos of the following shows - I try to keep an updated archive of videos from my alma mater and I'm missing a few:

     

    • Vista Ridge 2014 (SA Finals) - This was my senior year, and the very first time vista made SA finals, so it's special to me. For some reason I've lost track of the youtube link I had for it (but it wasn't a very good link anyways). This one is the one I'm mainly looking for sad.png

     

    • Vista Ridge 2016 (State prelims) - The high cam on youtube of SA prelims is a bit too zoomed out, and it's also not their last performance, which was at state prelims
    • Vista Ridge 2017 (SA prelims) - Only run I can find on youtube is the SA sendoff run
    • Vista Ridge 2003-2009 (state finals for 2007, state prelims for 2008, whatever you have for the rest): kind of a shot in the dark, but if you have any videos from the prehistoric past of vista ridge I'd love to see them. I've seen a fuzzy 2007 state finals run, 2008 region run, and 2009 SA prelims run, but something higher quality + the other years would be great.

     

    Hi-cam preferred, but I'll definitely take multicam too. PM me if links are "too sensitive", and I'll cross out whatever I've gotten.

     

    Thanks in advance!

  12. 2018 6A State

    in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive

    Posted

    Proud VRHS mom here and I'm no judge of marching skills and obviously I love my kid's show. However, I really believe the Vista show gripped people this year in such an emotional way that it may have put us over the top. We were glued to the live blog and the love we received from Landry and the Daniels was so amazing to see.  But when Daniel Sanchez said, "That transition back into lost destroys me every single time. There are multiple people up here in the press box with tears," my next thought was "OMG we might have just won it!" That was the point where I thought we could actually take home the gold.  Today the kids listened to the recording of the judges comments in class and the judges were crying during our show. How could a show that moves you so much not get points for that? Maybe I'm wrong, because I know nothing but dang that was one fine show and those kids marched it beautifully! And we started the competition just wanting to make it to finals (speaking as a parent). Being a medal contender was so off my radar.

     

    wow, I wish I could hear some of these tapes. this is like the time a judge exclaimed "holy brass" at our first hit at 2013 Area D finals, but at a whole 'nother level.

  13. Area I 2018

    in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive

    Posted

    Not to mention that the Areas are definitely not evenly balanced with each other (for better or worse). Results at Area have little bearing on state in light of this fact, since the Area champion may be competing with bands at state they haven't even competed with all season. In a weaker area, taking the championship can definitely result in a finish in the middle of state prelims, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

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    2018 6A State

    in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive

    Posted

    Agreed but it's the same bands year after year.  Discouraging if you are not in one of those bands and you already know from the get go that you don't have a chance. And yes you then have to find some of happiness in the work you've done.

    I would disagree that it's the same groups year after year; success isn't guaranteed to any band, even the top groups.

    It's a combination of staff dedication, design team vision, parent support, and of course student work that ultimately makes a good show and season. Any band with these can find themselves at the top (unfortunately, many of these are correlated with funding, but that's another topic).

     

    Case in point, if someone had told me in 2011-2014 that Vista Ridge is now contending for a top 5 spot at 6A state finals I wouldn't have believed them.

  25. 2017 BOA San Antonio Super Regionals Predictions

    in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive

    Posted

    Just wondering from other's perspectives about what lacked in Vista Ridge's performance to break into the finals.  From the webcast, it looked spot on to me and I liked it better that a few of the finalists.

     

    This contest was just *that* competitive, which means every little element of both design and execution matter (and performance time, luck, all the things out of your control, etc.)

    Functionally speaking I liked this show's design and execution the most out of the last three shows.

     

    For perspective, we made it into finals in 2014 with a 85.95 (13th) in prelims, the score this year was 88.55 (16th)

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