takigan

It's kind of sad. Westlake used to be the preeminent marching festival in CenTex.

I always get years confused for Japanese bands like Seika and Tachibana's shows, but I've seen this one enough times where I looked at the opening set and went "Oh yeah....the one with Saki's opening Trumpet solo" . I have to say your reference to calling it an 'Indoor' competition show really got me thinking. I don't know if I would call the All-Japan Marching Band Contest an Indoor circuit simply because the contests are held in gymnasiums and arenas. The judging is modeled after UIL and although the bands will perform in many styles, it's still predominantly 80s era milicorps. I'd still call what they do a field show.

And that's why we usually wait until the week of contest to post them . Though I think some of the submissions we published were backlogged from a couple weeks ago and weren't constructed using the most up-to-date schedule. In any case, make sure you're triple checking your work before submitting, and to the mods make sure you publish the most recent list in the archive (again, only after cross-checking it against the published schedule).

What were the show selections for Programme One?

A show that contrasts the music of Japanese antiquity (y'know, stuff like koto, shamisen, taiko drums etc.) with modern JPop/JRock (think what Blue Devils 2015 did with KPop). So we'd see a slow transformation from the stuff we've seen before like with the Cavalier's 2008 show "Samurai" or Round Rock's 2010 show "The Dragon" into a more cybernetic Japan with neon lights, robot dogs, and the Harajuku kawaii visual style. I want to see a marching band simulate the famous "Shibuya crossing" utilizing full-field coverage. I also want to see a visual device that pays homage to Kyoto Tachibana's signature parade step style . --- Or how about a show that combines Indian classical music (stuff like Ravi Shankar and his sitar music) with Indian Bollywood cinematic music and also Indian Goa Trance music. It would be an Indian show that contrasts several hundred years of Indian music into the modern day. I think there would be a whole closetful of guard costuming options available for that kind of concept. Or how about a Polynesian or Tropical Island show that crosses over the Bali Gamelan tribal music and House/Trance music of Bali, Indonesia with....like....the soundtrack of Moana or something.

Added HEB. Holding off on Midlo unless one of the other mods thinks it should be added.

Is the date for this contest October 13th? Sanchez or one of the other mods can go ahead and add it if they like, but I'm going to vote on holding off until at least next week since the schedule could still change. HEB contest has been added though. Go vote!

That video's almost 10 years old now....feel old yet?

Homework or genuine studying, yeah. I agree. I do think assigned readings (like for English) can be done though.

I remember for a long time you could say Area B/D finalist blocks and BOA Texas Regional finalist blocks were at about the same level. Then BOA became more competitive and you couldn't really say that anymore. But I would compare this Area lineup to a modern BOA Regional.

Martin is one of those rare programs where the band is very large and very good but their orchestra is larger and they were also the TMEA 2017 and 2019 Honor Orchestra. They have something like a thousand string kids in their K-12 ladder.

Pay attention to how much time you spend at the computer or on your phone. Both just in the casual daily grind and in the evening between when band practice gets out and when you finally go to bed. People who manage their time successfully have very little idle time where they're just flicking through their phone. If you find yourself doing this a lot and yet are still feeling the time crush, then you aren't managing your time effectively. You can't let procrastination be a factor when you're trying to operate at this level. It will overcome you. Take stock of your idle time in class. Some classes require your undivided attention at all times, some classes are either more "blow-off" or more "busy work" intensive. Be sure you're making your absolute best use of this time even if it means doing math homework in english class or doing your reading homework (chapter book) on the bus to away games.

Some of the best memories tend to fall under the rule of "What happens on the band trip stays on the band trip!". "band trip" can easily be swapped with "band bus", "band camp", "band hall" and many other bandnomers.

And Glenda Dawson 2016... ...I'm sure there are others.

Heh, I don't think I've ever told my mom that story. Probably for the better. I was definitely happy to make it back to my apartment though.

Cy Woods had a fire truck come by and spray kids with a water hose.

The Yellowboard in May or June of 2006. Back then Youtube was still pretty new and didn't have the proliferation of marching band shows that it does now, and TxB was the main hub for show MP3s at least here in Texas. Did we have video? I think we did. Youtube was a complete free-for-all back then with little oversight from copyright owners. I remember spending that first summer home from college watching Avon's Equus show (2005), Reagan's "You Never Know" (2005), Westfield's "Because We Are" (2003), "The Game Within" (2004) and "Wake From Your Sleep" (with all the great Eric Whitacre and Nobuo Uematsu selections) and discovering LD Bell for the first time. They would become the big hyped band that fall with their groundbreaking dark show "The Remaining" (2006). Concepts like covering an entire field with a giant fabric are pretty common now, but back then it was mindblowing. Only a small chunk of schools back then were doing things like performing concept-driven shows that had almost a modern dance element to them and never stopped moving, using microphones and synthesizers hooked up to amplifiers and generators in the pit and covering the field in props. The early 2000s were sort of when that started taking off. I remember seeing schools like James Bowie and Cedar Park who were doing that when I was in HS and wishing we could also. Getting to see all of the best of the best putting on these lush productions was a unique and fun experience.

There definitely aren't any easy ways to get from CS to Austin without taking either 290 or 79. I know exactly which turn you're talking about in Hearne. I've definitely missed that turn a few times heading from Huntsville to Georgetown....but I can't help but wonder why she made a right there instead of a left. She must've thought she was heading west or northwest instead of straight north and figured she needed to make a right to head north towards 79. It's kind of funny that she drove nearly 200 miles before realizing she'd hit Louisiana and had gone the wrong way . I don't get down to downtown Houston much, but just recently when I came back from there, I thought I was on 290 heading NW towards Brenham/CS, but I realized once I was in the Woodlands that I had actually gotten on I-45N somehow. My first time driving in downtown Houston was BOA Houston during its final year at The Rig in 2009. It was actually my first year driving my own car so I was still pretty terrible. Drove back from Pearland through downtown at 1am in the POURING rain...and it was Saturday night so there was still some decent traffic. It's extremely scary being in your first year driving, your first time driving in downtown city traffic and not being able to see the lines on the road and there's tons of cars all around you.

Whatever they're doing, I imagine it's very carefully planned. I don't know Jason Robb *that* well, but I know the school of thought he comes from. He's extremely well organized and he would easily pull the plug on a big competition hours before if he suddenly felt the kids wouldn't experience success at it. The students will have a positive experience that day no matter what schedule unfolds.

A victory right at the first competition is a great way to set the mindset and culture of the freshmen. And winning in a BOA format is a great way to kill 2 birds with one stone since they're also getting practice with the flow of BOA's setup as well as early comments from BOA's judging panel, which will be helpful for their future BOA appearances later that season. Rehearsal schedule demands of a band like Johnson are a huge jump for the kids coming up from middle school, so a chance to experience success right out the gate is immensely beneficial....you get the feeling that the time commitment was well worth it.

Good point. Sorry, I overlooked that one.

Drip's 2015 show was awesome. They were finalists at Austin that year where I got to see them live and one of my top 5 favorite shows of that whole season. But the last couple years they haven't been in any of the BOA Finalist circles (despite getting 2nd @ 5A State...which lends to the idea that they are, indeed, underrated) so they've dropped off the radar for the majority of people.

Yup . Cy Woods HS and a couple middle schools.

Trump

Japan (it's almost as popular as Facebook or Twitter over there)