takigan

On the rise: Vandegrift - It's exciting to wonder where these guys'll be at 2-3 years from now! This year was a regular David vs. Goliath story for them! Claudia Taylor Johnson - Everyone's been waiting for it, but their grace period has finally expired and they're in full force now. Pflugerville - Last year was a great breakout year for Pflugerville. This year was an even more impressive jump for them, especially in BOA. Berkner - Slow and steady improvements every year. We should see them back in State finals this time around if all goes well. Anderson - Been keeping my eye on these guys the past couple years....they're finally getting the recognition they deserve this year with what I believe is their first ever 5A State appearance. Mansfield Legacy - After a 4A Finals appearance last year, their first year in Class 5A UIL was a relatively rough, but they've still made it a habit of making finals at most invitationals. Making themselves a mainstay finalist at BOA Arlington is no small accomplishment either. Birdville - They've gone from being relatively unknown to making a name for themselves at BOA St. Louis last year to pulling off an Arlington finals finish as well as a strong finals placement at St. Louis again. Definitely a rising band. McNeil - A great breakout year for McNeil. BOA The Woodlands Finals and a State appearance. A great year for CenTex bands for sure! Cypress Woods - They came out of the gate strong during their opening year in 2005, and have improved every year til now, and this year they're going to State. Hopefully they'll continue to improve. Cy-Fair - Cy-Fair was very strong earlier this decade, though they died off up until last year where they started to make a comeback. I expected them to make Finals at Woodlands but it just wasn't in the cards for them this year it seems like. Clements - Clements has always had a great band (former TMEA Honor Band a long while back, among several SMBC appearances), but after a big win last year @ SHSU over the highly favored Duncanville, I was curious to see how far they would go with a State year on their plate this year. Landing a 1st place victory over many great bands, including storied programs like Langham Creek and Cy-Falls @ Area E definitely confirmed my hopes for them. They'll make a strong run for finals at State.

Reposting 5A results for archive's sake (since the posted link will likely be non-working 10 years from now). 1. Clements (1,2,2--2,2) 2. Langham Creek (2,1,1--6,1) 3. Cypress Woods (3,5,4--3,7) 4. Cypress Falls (4,4,5--4,6) --- 5. Cy-Fair (5,6,8--5,4) 6. Cinco Ranch (6,8,6--8,3) 7. Jersey Village (7,3,3--10,9) 8. Seven Lakes (9,7,10--1,8) 9. Katy Taylor (10,9,7--7,5) 10. Cypress Creek (8,10,9--9,10)

There isn't some line of code you could add to the Predictions Analyzer that would drop numbers made for predicting a single band in multiple slots?

I got offered $500 to write drill for a 25-piece military band near Huntsville a couple years back. Didn't take it....probably should've though in retrospect. $15 a head for an 8 minute show is standard fare here ($1500 for a 100 piece band, $4500 for a 300 piece), with adjustments made to show length and/or number of sets, plus additional charges for rewrites, extra subsets etc....you can charge a higher rate, though, if you've got the rep or the priorities. I've heard rumors from more than 1 source (mind you rumors, but I believe them) that Michael Gaines charges anywhere from $12,000 to $20,000 per show for his 300+ piece full-length BOA format clients. Considering a certain Houston school I know pays $10,000/show for drill for a UIL show from a drill writer that I've never even heard of, I wouldn't hesitate much to believe that this rumor is true. If drill writing takes a similar amount of time to accomplish as show arranging/writing, and someone like Montoya (who is pretty well known) is arranging 20-ish shows per year.....I can't imagine the kind of money a guy like Michael Gaines must be making considering he has more clients than he can take on most of the time.

True. Good for you. But you seem to think that schools all across the state support their band programs in the same way your school supports yours. The Woodlands couldn't compete at BOA San Antonio in 2008 because their school wanted them to be at a Football Game. Not to mention they had already been disqualified from going to State due to marching an ineligible marcher at Area. So they had 2 alamodome competitions scheduled and they weren't able to go to either of them. It's just bad luck...you can't always do anything about it. The band could want to with all their hearts, but it doesn't make any difference if the school doesn't also want them to. The administration has to sign off on everything the band does, and if they would rather the band do something else, the administration always wins. This is a much more common situation than you might think, and is a lot more common with small schools in rural communities. Some schools don't even compete in regional UIL because their school doesn't want to pay for bus fuel and drivers to send them. EDIT: Forgot you don't go to Seven Lakes....you're a HS graduate of a different HS.

This little conspiracy theory seems to come up every state year where SFA yet again decides not to attend. And it all stems from that iconic 2004 early November stint. The reality is that SFA has extremely important spirit activities that tend to fall around the same time as UIL every year, and the band has no choice but to stay home and attend them. The issue lies with the school administration and not creative choices by the band program itself. EDIT: Though after thinking about it for a bit....considering all of these events are always planned way in advance, the SFA band probably knows WAY ahead of time that they are going to cross that UIL bridge and thus plan everything else accordingly. This may be why SFA has such a cutting edge program geared towards BOA's system in terms of design...they've pretty much given up on UIL. BOA Houston thus becomes and even more crucial event than even UIL Area, which might explain why they've been winning the contest several years running now.

Played your hand too soon bro

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As of a few minutes ago there were 163 people viewing the forums! This beats the record of 131 people set on October 26th, 2008. W00t! Correction: 186....how high will it go? o_O Correction 2: 209 Correction 3: 222

txbands.com doesn't have a mobile version but the TxB Live page does.

4-year old thread resurrection FTW.

This topic is for discussing the logistics of the Predictions Contest/Game only! THIS THREAD IS NOT FOR POSTING PREDICTIONS FOR A PARTICULAR CONTEST! Please refer to the appropriate contest thread and post your predictions there (or make one of it doesn't already exist). This is only for posting stuff concerning the game itself: the rankings, rules, game strategies, proceedings, questions, concerns etc. Participants: When submitting events, be sure to check the Contest's web page to make sure their judging criteria meets the Prelims--Finals format of our contest/game. Also, please check your spelling and please attach appropriate city prefixes to the FULL NAME of the School ("Austin James Bowie" instead of just "Bowie"....there's more than 1 Bowie out there). Moderators: Please don't just approve submitted events blindly. Double check with the contests' websites to make sure all of the participating bands are there and correctly entered, make sure the number of finalists are correct and the appropriate captions are represented. If you're unsure, just leave it and let me be the final word. Once we approve an event, Alex is the only one who can cancel and remove it, so make sure it's legit. The winner with the most points at the end of the season will receive a prize (Most likely an official TxBands.com T-shirt, but exceptions may be made by the staff if we deem such). I am the official Predictions Moderator. I will usually be competing alongside the rest of you just for fun, but if I should happen to win I am automatically disqualified from winning the prize. The prize will then go to the number 2 winner. In the event of a tie for winner there will be a tiebreaker, the nature of said tiebreaker will be decided by Alex (Clarinot) should the predicament arise. PREDICTIONS CONTEST ERRATA: 1. If Band A decides to enter a contest last minute after everyone has submitted predictions for the event and Band A also makes finals and/or wins a caption, the ranking and captions that Band A acquires will be considered "Dead Slots" and no one will receive points for those particular slots. 2. If a particular band is listed in the Event as attending, but the band does not attend, predictions will still carry on as normal....even if everyone had them as their first place band. Sorry, bummer I know, there's just no better way to handle it. This is why we try to wait until as close to contest as is reasonable to minimize the number of bands that do this. 3. Some contests split the Music caption into 2 sub-captions: High Brass & High Woodwinds (or something similar). For these contests if Band A wins both sub-captions they will be considered to have won the Music Caption by default. If Band A wins Brass and Band B wins Woodwinds, the Music Caption will be considered to be won by the band that ranked higher in Finals. If neither band made finals (unlikely, but you never know), Prelims results will be used. Other anomalies will be judged on a case-by-case basis. 4. The Staff reserves the right to discard or void an event for whatever reason. Such reason will very likely be mentioned in this thread, but we also reserve the right to not do that either for whatever reason . Additional Errata will be added here as needed and will be applied to the system on a case-by-case basis. HAPPY PREDICTING!

The Woodlands Westfield Spring Brazoswood Clear Brook North Shore 7. Oak Ridge 8. Clear Lake 9. College Park 10. Klein ts'how I see it... :l

It seemed like every single person in that stadium must've been screaming as loud as they could (at least that's what it seems like from the vid). I can only imagine what the 5-year vet PR Lifetime fans must've been doing. Whatever it was, it probably involved some serious cleanup when it was over . Phantom was long overdue for a 1st place win, especially after coming really close a couple of times.

Georgetown used a Planets show to win the 4A State championship multiple times in the early 80s. This was back when repeating shows in subsequent years wasn't uncommon. I've never seen a video of it, though I have always wanted to.

This is a bit late, but I'd just like to to extend a congratulations to the Birdville HS band for placing 7th at the BOA St. Louis Super Regional held at the Edward Jones Dome and netting AAA Class Runner-Up and the AAA Music Caption (again reinforcing Texas' prevalent trend of high scoring in the Music Execution category in non-Texas contests) this past Saturday. BOA St. Louis Finals Results: 1. 85.15

I think it's awesome ya'll march contras (shoulder Tubas). Not a very common thing to see in Texas, but more common in the Midwest (most Texas schools use Sousaphones) I feel sorry for the freshman though. A 14 year old having to carry that huge thing seems kind of unfair.....especially if the freshman's a girl or hasn't hit their growth spurt yet.

I've gotta admit I still didn't read the whole article, but I appreciate it more now than I did when it was first posted.

Oh, you can make it sound like another instrument....well, not really, but you would be using the mic that the instrument is playing into as a MIDI trigger that could activate a VST sampler of the instrument you want it to emulate.

These were my predictions after I saw all of the shows.: 1. SFA (0 places difference) 2. The Woodlands (3 places difference) 3. Churchill (3...) 4. Cedar Park (2) 5. Spring (2) 6. Claudia Taylor Johnson (2) 7. Cy-Fair (5) 8. Westfield (2) 9. Cy-Falls (4) 10. Clear Brook (1) 11. McNeil (2) 12. Reagan (9) 13. Vandegrift (9) 14. Friendswood (0) 15. William B. Travis (3) 16. Leander (3) 17. College Park (3) 18. Pearland (1) 19. Alvin (4) 20. Pasadena Memorial (4) 21. Dekaney (0) 22. North Shore (0) 23. Elkins (0) 24. Texas City (0) 25. Comeaux (1) 26. Hudson (1) It was hard to get a good visual perspective during the shows since my face was buried in my cell phone screen typing a lot of the time, so my scores are based a lot by my musical impressions. I'm hoping that the bands that placed drastically differently from where I had them did so because of their visual scores. The judges and I were totally on a different page with Reagan and Vandegrift though....even in finals when I didn't have a phone taking most of my attention. I felt like Leander did better than the judges thought, but a friend of mine (who does visual teching) was telling me when we were eating during dinner break that they had some serious guard issues that likely hurt them....I don't notice the guard's execution as much so that might explain that. I'm not nearly as good at this as Xenon and mbui are I must admit, haha.

I didn't get that impression when I was in HS. Cedar Park was what we called a "show band", since most people at my HS didn't know what BOA or DCI was, though we felt that the kinds of shows they did were flashier and more in-depth than what we or most of the other schools in our football district were doing. But in any case, I feel like the largest disparity between UIL and BOA is "Marching vs. Visual" and "Music Execution vs. *heavily weighted* Musical Effect". With the kind shows Cedar Park does I've felt that they've figured out how to walk the fine line that allowed them to be a hybrid of what was en vogue with BOA in the 90s: "19th&20th century German and American orchestral music with drill done by a professional DCI drill writer", and what UIL expects and has always expected: "Constant movement that is well executed in addition to difficult rep that is also well executed". Most of what Cedar Park has been doing this past decade bears a formula that covers all of those bases; Difficult Classical lit with Michael Gaines drill that rarely stops moving....only with more body choreography, experimental drill ideas, richer guard design and electronic musical layers with lots of amplification (which is what's en vogue with BOA now but at the same time isn't penalized in UIL the same way lack of movement might be). In summation: BOA penalizes lackluster guard design. UIL is indifferent as long as it doesn't inhibit the guard's uniformity of movement. (CP has great guard design with great uniformity) UIL penalizes lack of marching in excessive amounts. BOA is indifferent as long as there's uniformity in movement and it brings something artistic to the table. (Cedar Park keeps things moving, does it well and keeps things spicy at the same time) BOA likes electronics whenever they enhance the effect of the music. UIL would rather not have them but doesn't penalize for them until the electronics start to replace the musicians on the field during extended parts of the show. This is part of what held Reagan and Westfield back in the UIL scene in the early '00s even though they enjoyed strong success with the formula in BOA. (Cedar Park uses lots of electronics, but they mainly serve as a background texture during the entire show and the musical ideas of the show are rarely ever conducted exclusively by them).

The population of Austin back then was more disproportional to Dallas, Fort Worth (which was moreso its own entity back then instead of being grouped up with Dallas as DFW) and Houston. So I think the Area that encompassed Austin (don't ask me which one it was....I'm assuming it was Area D but I honestly don't know), had a greater mix of either Dallas or Houston schools than they do now, and those schools were larger and more socioeconomically elite. Those schools ended up claiming most of the few bids that advanced them to State while the rest of the CenTex schools had to stay at home. Back then You had Crockett and Westlake in Austin that were competitive, and even the city of Austin proper itself wasn't all that big and only had a half dozen High Schools or so....Round Rock had 2 schools (RR and Westwood), Georgetown had 1 school, Pflugerville had 1 school and Leander had 1 school (Cedar Park wouldn't be big enough to have its own school until 1998). Most of CenTex's competitiveness back then was at the 4A level and smaller, since it was a smaller area with less 5A schools. The population exploded in the early 90s and, with some growth help from Killeen/Waco and San Marcos, CenTex is at a point now to where it doesn't "need any help" to be its own Area. Georgetown has 1 1/2 High schools (GHS and another called "East View" which is currently in what they call "Stage 1" that's still incorporated with GHS but will eventually become its own HS), Leander/Cedar Park have 5, Round Rock has 5, and Austin proper has around a dozen or so.

Their name doesn't indicate where they're from on the judging sheets or contest schedule or anything. One would either have to assume it's Arlington Bowie due to location, or do some research to know that Austin Bowie was attending Westlake on the same day. 5A Prelims Captions Winds- McKinney Boyd Percussion- McKinney Boyd Marching- Naaman Forest GE- McKinney Boyd Guard- Lakeview Anyone have any of the others, or particularly the ones from Finals?

My apologies for the numerous typos and word omissions in my reviews. The Mobile version of the Liveblogging software is kind of crummy. They make an iPhone app for it, which is supposed to be pretty nice, but unfortunately I use an Android phone so no dice there. In addition to the technical difficulties it created, I also didn't have access to the comments system during the event, so to the 50-60 people who left comments, I'm sorry I was unable to publish or respond to most of them. The BOA San Antonio LiveBlog will be better. Since multiple staff are tackling the event, we can make it a much more streamlined and in-depth experience. In addition to a better managed comment system, there will likely be photos and more concise reviews due to multiple perspectives from multiple staff.

Vandegrift is REALLY going to be a force to be reckoned with in a couple years. I absolutely LOVED Claudia Taylor Johnson's show. McNeil, Claudia Taylor Johnson and Cypress Falls were probably my 3 favorite shows of the night...I also immensely enjoyed Stephen F. Austin and Cypress Fairbanks.