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Everything posted by takigan
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2012 Area D 5A Marching Contest
takigan replied to whodatphi's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
UIL sites don't keep PDFs of Results up forever. Storing them in the TxBands Freezer -
2012 5A Area C Marching Contest
takigan replied to rcb05's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
The UIL sites don't keep these links forever. Posting them here for archive purposes: -
2012 5A Area F Marching Contest
takigan replied to Nosagi's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
Considering these links don't stay fresh in ensuing years I shall put them in the TxBands Freezer -
2012 5A State Marching Contest
takigan replied to ~ME~'s topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
Bands that play well all the time do well all the time. There are bands in this state that struggle year to year in getting either a 1 or a 2 at Region and some schools that have maintained 1st divisions every single year for 50+ years. I've watched rehearsals for bands that often get 2s.....their problem in getting 2s I feel doesn't have much to do with what they're doing during the course of 1 hour vs. what they COULD be doing.....it often has more to do with deficiencies that aren't addressed over the course of a month, or over the course of a year, or even the entire student's lifetime. It's a cultural thing. And there are many factors that play into what kind of a teaching/learning culture a band will have, what their goals are, what they're capable of achieving, what a teacher (or collectively "teachers") can pull out of them; all amounting to what they actually end up achieving. The UT football team has years where they're in the top 1% and other years where they finish their season in the top 5% or top 10% of teams, but even if they had a bad day, they would never lose to a High School team. The kind of game they play and program they run enables them to indefinitely remain in that tier of ability. It's the same for band. It would take a very serious transformation in the way L.D. Bell does things to ever create a situation to where they'd be in danger of getting a II at marching contest. I mean look at SFA.....one of the most massive staff turnovers we've ever seen and they can still make Finals at a BOA event. I saw and heard them at BOA Conroe. I thought they looked and sounded amazing....I wasn't aware of the staff changes so I already expected them to be great....I didn't see a show that I felt would be in the running to win it like I usually see from them....Though the bias I had was obviously greater than the judges....I expected a 4th-7th ranking....they ended up getting I think 9th? You develop a good eye and ear from doing this on a daily basis (teaching). Your ear also gets really sharp when you're regularly critiquing a group that regularly plays at a very high level. My ears got way better playing with the Sam Houston State Wind Ensemble than the group I played with in High School (Georgetown) or in Junior College (Blinn). I started hearing things in concerts, the radio and even from people talking to me that I'd never heard before. That sharp sense that comes from doing things at a high level on an incessant basis dulls if you stop doing it daily or even weekly. I've noticed this having not been playing regularly with a full ensemble myself since I graduated college. This is why I think retired directors aren't as good a judge as some of these guys who are active in their 20th to 30th+ year of teaching who teach a top-tier band from early August through November in addition to working with a World Class Drum Corps from May to August and rigorously preparing a UIL concert music program from January to March/April. They lose that constant exposure that keeps them sharp when they retire. It's also the same reason why I have more faith in the eyes and ears of these judges than my own. -
2012 5A State Marching Contest
takigan replied to ~ME~'s topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
Be careful with that logic. Not a single 1st place band from Area G has made finals in at least the past 20 years. Areas B, C, and D have consistently had the monopoly on 5A Finals placements for awhile, so bands from other Areas have to work extra hard to be represented. -
4A Area F 2009, Galena Park advanced to State as a 3rd band behind Friendswood and Dawson. GP tied Dawson for 2nd, but still advanced anyway due to number of 3rd place or higher votes. It almost happened again in 2011 as well in the same Area with Huntsville and Clear Falls.....Both bands met the requirements of 3rd place votes from 1 of the categories (I think Huntsville had 2 3rd place votes in Music while Falls had a 3rd place vote in Marching), and both had 3rd or 4th place votes in the opposite category to where they were both only 1 rank away across the board from meeting the requirement to advance. This is to be expected though in an Area that often only takes 2 bands due to having less than 15 bands at Area prelims...both of which are commonly the clear frontrunners (Friendswood & Dawson). Basically all you have to do is distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack and you can force a third slot. EDIT: Actually I may have read that wrong. It says for contests that advance 2 bands, 2 rankings of 2nd or higher from the music judges and 1 from the marching judge are required for a 3rd band to advance. I wonder if that's a recent change.....I don't remember reading that last year.
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50 Words: BOA vs. UIL
takigan replied to Danpod's topic in Everything Music: Marching, Concert, Auditions and more
Though UIL Region contest has existed for more than 70 years, Area and State UIL didn't become fully ubiquitous until at least 1985. If you were in HS before 1985, either there was no State contest yet or your school hadn't yet elected to compete in it. The first contest was held in I think 1979, though it was primarily an invitational event extended to those who'd received a 1 at Regional contest. It was held in Austin and consisted of mostly Austin-area schools (UIL is hq'd in Austin) with a small handful of others. It grew in popularity and became a formal UIL-sanctioned event in 1983. A typical 5A High School has at least 200 players in the band. I don't know what the roster limit is for a 5A HS football team, but it's bound to be a lot less than a hundred (I think the NCAA limits college teams to 80....I imagine it's lower for HS so that more players will be able to get more time on the field). Even with cheerleaders and drill team, you're moving and housing a much larger group of kids with a band....so it can become very expensive for a school district.....particularly small ones in distant areas of the state that still have relatively large bands (1A schools are 10-20 times smaller than 5As, but their bands are often only 4-6 times smaller....the district has 5-10% of the budget for a band that is still quite large and expensive to move). There might (BIG might) be a few High Schools in the Anchorage or Juneau area that do Football, but this would be a handful at most (probably less than 5....again, if any). I think Hockey is the big thing up there. Some schools might do Hockey "pep bands" that play stand tunes in the school's hockey arena, but the weather is far too cold in the Fall to cultivate an active competitive marching band circuit. Also keep in mind the entire population of Alaska is about 3 times the size of Plano, Tx and no more. So picture how many large High Schools there are in Plano, multiply that number by 3 and realize that number is the maximum number of "large" high schools that the population of Alaska can sustain (there are probably less than that because Alaska is more rural and spread out than Plano.....or Texas for that matter). I'm almost positive there are no competitive marching band contests in Alaska. My uncle studied music at UA-Anchorage and he told me the school had no marching band, at least when he was there. Not sure which 4 states you're referring to, lol. I will say that the top band in Colorado is Air Academy. They were #1 in the Colorado State championships last year. Air Academy also came down and competed in BOA San Antonio that same year and placed 17th. The top 3 bands in the state of New Mexico are Clovis, Mayfield and O -
2012 UIL Region 21 Live Stream
takigan replied to Xenon's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
Lufkin is another military band that should impress. And they're 5A (I didn't know there were any 5A Military bands left outside of Humble ISD in North Houston). 6:35 - 7:20 -
2012 Texas Marching Classic
takigan replied to bksatx's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
Considering how small this contest is (13 bands), a lot of big names still showed up. -
2012 Westlake Marching Festival
takigan replied to GBMELLO's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
You going to Westlake this year Jeff? -
2012 Lone Star Preview
takigan replied to Thomas's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
I'm not going....so probably no -
50 Words: BOA vs. UIL
takigan replied to Danpod's topic in Everything Music: Marching, Concert, Auditions and more
Did you even read the thread? lol -
Getting Freshmen in the zone?
takigan replied to ch1k3n123's topic in Everything Music: Marching, Concert, Auditions and more
I have no idea who you are or what your personality is so don't take this the wrong way, but I have heard so many people yell out and try to take charge and many times I'm thinking in my head "Who are you, and why should I listen to you?", not because I don't know the person, but because I don't see them as a leader type....If people don't think you know what you're talking about and don't look to you as a source of progress, or even someone they wish they could be like personality-wise, they won't respect you in any way shape or form. There are people who carry themselves a certain way and give off a certain image...Or they've simply developed a reputation for one who always knows what's going on and what needs to happen. These people will be listened to whether they actually hold an official position within the band or not. They are natural leaders. There are also many people who think their rank or title deserves them respect and means that their underlings have to do what they say. This is false. Respect is earned, the title just puts everyone on the same page on where to place that earned respect. I don't really have a solution to your problem or a specific reason why they don't listen. Checking forms and spacing in realtime during the show is complicated business, and some freshman can be quite slow on the uptake. It could be that they're trying, they just don't "get it" yet. Or maybe they're ignoring you for a number of unknown reasons. Couldn't say.... -
2012 BOA Denton Prelims Results
takigan replied to Danpod's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
2009 BOA Houston Had some rain delays but they didn't cancel....It was pretty miserable at that event (not as bad as Denton though). The contest organizers reduced the timeblocks from 15 to 14 minutes and ditched the full finals retreat in favor of a drum majors retreat to save time, and we still ended up closing the blog at 11:45pm. BOA generally holds a dozen or so competitions nationwide each Fall plus Grand Nationals. Here's a list of each event in the past 12 years that also didn't go so smoothly. --The Louisville, KY 2009 Regional canceled Finals. --The Doylestown, PA 2008 Regional was canceled pre-contest due to weather. --The Louisville, KY 2006 Regional was canceled due to weather and moved to a local HS gym where the students performed standstill exhibition performances. --The Towson, MD 2005 Regional was canceled early in prelims due to weather. A suitable exhibition site could not be found within appropriate time. -- The 2004 Arlington, TX Regional canceled Finals. -- The 2000 Toledo, OH Regional canceled Finals. -
Getting Freshmen in the zone?
takigan replied to ch1k3n123's topic in Everything Music: Marching, Concert, Auditions and more
Also, as tempting as it often is, never whine about "how good things used to be" or "how awesome last year's show was compared to this year" or "how much better we were last year". You're just going to alienate the freshman, and they're not going to feel welcome in the program. If the leadership and upper classmen are always pining away about yesteryear, they won't be able to build anything for the freshman to take and run with. -
2012 Friendswood Marching Contest Results
takigan replied to Thomas's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
Music Education is such a small world. The announcer introduces the drum major and I'm like "Oh, I recognize that last name....I know his older brother". I actually see/hear stuff like that a lot.....it always makes me smile every time. -
Marching shows 2012-2013
takigan replied to medina5012's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
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2012 Friendswood Marching Contest Results
takigan replied to Thomas's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
Cy-Fair is known to be a band of surprises. I think they placed in the Top 5 at SHSU not too long ago with some pretty good bands placing right around them. Awesome seeing Klein Oak place as high as they did.....though surprising to see Clements place that low. -
Electronics in UIL?
takigan replied to Nosagi's topic in Everything Music: Marching, Concert, Auditions and more
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Marching shows 2012-2013
takigan replied to medina5012's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
A little bit of an advantage.... Most HS top groups only have 45-60 players, with as many as half of them being seniors. All those seniors are gone now, so there are probably only 20 or 30 marchers in a band of 300-ish that have played the piece before.....not to mention the marching version will be a different version that's loosely based on the original with probably very different instrumentation....plus you're on the marching field now, not a concert hall, which requires different performance practices. They won't enjoy that much of an advantage with 20 or 30 members already being familiar with the work. Might as well nip that one in the bud right now before people start crying foul about it come Area time. This same field of logic applies to claims that a school having an Honor Band champion should transfer to a stellar music performance by the whole marching band on the field. To an extent this is true; a band program that can produce an Honor Band usually has students being taught to make good sounds and good music from first to last chair....but the top group only represents a small fraction (1/3 or less) of the entire band program....and it's taught primarily by 1 teacher (which, in the case of Honor Band champions, is often a Master Teacher with 15+ years of experience). Marching bands are taught by MANY teachers of varying abilities and experience levels. Some bands with diverse student populations (not just ethnically, but culturally or even academically) also have a proportionally stronger upper echelon with a huge drop in ability occurring somewhere in the middle of the chair roster, often resulting in a very large gap in ability between first & last chair. The strength of the varsity wouldn't serve as much of an example to the musical aptitude of the entire program in this case. -
Marching shows 2012-2013
takigan replied to medina5012's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
http://www.marcusband.com/ The key is spinning. This makes me think of a guard member spinning a key.....which makes me think of a key that is about the length of a rifle or sabre....which makes me think of keyblades.....which....yeah . -
Honor Band Predictions
takigan replied to Bandmanio's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
North Forney has the hardest program on the list. Them and Fredericksburg are the only 2 bands playing two Grade 5s (most of the other bands are playing 4s with an occasional 5). 5 is the hardest difficulty on the PML. Marches aren't given difficulty ratings by UIL, but "In Storm and Sunshine" is one of the harder marches out there. North Forney currently has the enrollment of a small 4A. They had 760 students in Grades 9-11 for the 2010-2011 school year which I believe is the data that was used in the last realignment. 2011-2012 should be their first year with a full 9-12 class. Enrollment numbers are not yet public for 2011-2012 but with a freshman class last year of 310 in '10-11 (it was 241 in 2009-10), it's likely their 9-12 enrollment this year is at least 1200. This is nearly 3 times the size of the smallest 3A schools. The UIL 3A/4A cutoff is 1,005. North Forney sent 3 bands to UIL this year and each got a 1 on stage. That's a rarity for 3A bands....even at this level (especially since their 3rd competing band is also the bottom band and thus contains the weakest players). Fredericksburg (who was 4A at one point and is one of the largest 3As in the state at 990) has 3 bands also but only 2 competed (both got 1s). Port Isabel has 2 bands, both competed and got 1s. Ranchview and Bridge City each only sent 1 band to UIL. The common story for 3As in the state is 2 concert bands in the whole program (3 in the largest, most developed programs like NF and Fredericksburg), with the bottom band being an ad hoc band of about 20-40 kids and often consisting of the weakest players. So the story is typically 1 competing band and 1 non-competing band in the school's program. The 3As that make it to State usually have good enough teaching to bring up the level of the 2nd/bottom band to competing level, but the band often receives a 2 just due to circumstance. If that's Par for the course, and you have a band where the varsity is playing two Grade 5s (And Symphonic Metamorphosis at that) and has 3 bands each receive a 1 in UIL.....that's indication of a band that has a very powerful capability to win it all. My money is on North Forney for this Honor Band contest. My Top 7: 1. North Forney 2. Fredericksburg 3. Port Isabel 4. Canton 5. Argyle 6. Tomball Memorial 7. Lone Star -
Marching shows 2012-2013
takigan replied to medina5012's topic in Past Contests, Events, and Festivals Archive
270 seems to be on the small side historically for Coppell. They have a reputation for consistently having more than 300 members. Perhaps 270 is what they're fielding. That seems more reasonable.