BandFan59

After watching the Hebron video at Mesquite and comparing it to the Flower Mound one at Wylie, I would have to say Hebron is on top right now. They definitely have more of their show on the field, and the musical execution is incredible as always. I also think that because Flower Mound's show is a bit more unusual, it might be harder to get the message of the show across so to say, while Hebron's show is definitely more classic and upfront. Also, Marcus isn't too far off either of them in my opinion, so they might have an outside shot at winning as well. Of course, a lot can happen in a week's worth of rehearsals, so maybe this is all moot. Tomorrow will be very exciting to watch!

Try searching for Mesquite Marching Festival 2021

This area is always so competitive, there's always at least two bands that deserve to go to state but end up missing out because of the depth of this area. I'm excited to see the final productions of each band here.

Yeah, this doesn't sound too great. As an Asian American myself I like that they wanted to try a show with Asian influences but am disappointed that they seemed to not have implemented those influences in the best way possible. Regardless, I'm sure the show will still be great and I hope those students are still enjoying themselves while performing it!

After this weekend the picture for the Grand Nats Texas bands is starting to get a little clearer. Ronald Reagan look fantastic already, up there with the Woodlands and CTJ as potential medal contenders come November. Marcus was a pleasant surprise to me as well at HEB. They don't have the most difficult show but they're already very clean and at such a high level of performance this early on. Flower Mound apparently looked incredible at the Wylie competition as well, so DFW should give us a clearer idea of how the two LISD bands stack up to each other and the rest of the pack. And that's not even mentioning Vista Ridge and Round Rock, who both tend to peak late season. This will be the strongest Texas contingent in a long time, even moreso than 2019 I think.

HEB results have definitely thrown this competition into a bit of a blender. It's not a BOA contest, but the judging rubric is extremely similar, so Keller placing 5th there is a bit of a worry for them here. I thought they performed well enough to place better, but they did have a very short show. Marcus was fantastic and far and away the best band there. I think they have an outside shot at grabbing the music caption and maybe even moving into the top 2.

Reagan has clearly not slowed down at all in the post-Morrison era. They look primed for a run at the Eagle in November.

Finals Results: 1st - 85.00 - Marcus 2nd - 82.20 - Wakeland 3rd - 80.425 - Prosper 4th - 80.325 - Forney 5th - 80.10 - Keller 6th - 80.05 - Southlake Carroll 7th - 78.275 - Timber Creek 8th - 77.125 - Aledo 9th - 74.85 - Keller Central 10th - 74.60 - Byron Nelson 11th - 73.875 - Grapevine 12th - 72.40 - The Colony Outstanding Music - Marcus Outstanding Visual - Marcus Outstanding General Effect - Marcus Outstanding Percussion - Marcus Outstanding Color Guard - Marcus Marcus with the clear victory here, and deservedly so. They're executing their show at an extremely high level already. I will say that Keller in 5th is a real shocker and a bit of a question mark for me. They were a little dirty tonight but I still thought they were good enough for a medal, though the scores from 6th to 3rd were incredibly close.

Posted this under the wrong thread haha but I agree with you. A pretty typical LD Bell show but they're performing it well.

Only the caption results. The full recap will probably be released after the end of finals. I really enjoyed Prosper's show. They have a very visually pleasing production with the capes and they play with really nice full sounds. I can see this doing very well next week at BOA.

Taken from the Wylie Band website: 6A - Outstanding Music: Flower Mound Outstanding Visual: Flower Mound 1st: Flower Mound 2nd: McKinney 3rd: Lake Ridge 5A - Outstanding Music: Lone Star Outstanding Visual: Lebanon Trail 1st: Lone Star 2nd: Lebanon Trail 3rd: Wylie East Finals schedule (in reverse order from prelims, 10th goes first and 1st goes last): Frisco Centennial - 8:00 PM Liberty - 8:15 PM McKinney Boyd - 8:30 PM Lake Ridge - 8:45 PM Lovejoy - 9:00 PM Wylie East - 9:15 PM McKinney - 9:30 PM Lebanon Trail - 9:45 PM Lone Star - 10:00 PM Flower Mound - 10:15 PM

6A - Outstanding Music: Marcus Outstanding Visual: Marcus Outstanding General Effect: Marcus Outstanding Percussion: Marcus Outstanding Color Guard: Marcus 6A - 1st: Marcus 2nd: Keller 3rd: Prosper 5A - Outstanding Music: Wakeland Oustanding Visual: Wakeland Oustanding General Effect: Wakeland Oustanding Color Guard: Forney Oustanding Percussion: Forney 5A - 1st: Wakeland 2nd: Forney 3rd: Aledo Finalists in random order: Byron Nelson Southlake Carroll Aledo Keller Wakeland Forney Marcus Timber Creek Prosper Keller Central The Colony Grapevine

Wow Keller was really good! I think Marcus was cleaner but Keller's show had a higher level of difficulty for me. Tough to say who's going to take this one. A lot of great bands in this last block for sure.

Sounds familiar but I can't put a name to it. They sounded fantastic though, I think they may have an outside shot at the music caption next week against Hebron and FloMo.

Like I said before, I really like Flower Mound and Marcus's shows, but I think I agree that they're a little underwhelming for a Grand Nationals production. Both shows still have a lot that we haven't seen yet, so I don't want to count them out too quickly, but I'll say that from what we've seen so far I prefer Vandegrift over both of them. I've seen all of the Texas bands that are going to Grand Nationals this year, and personally I think CTJ is at the front of the pack right now (although the Reagan videos were pretty low quality so I'll reserve judgement on them). Still plenty of the season left to go though, and Marcus does seem to peak late season.

Found the same livestream! It features both Flower Mound and Marcus's shows with fairly decent audio quality and a multicam. If anyone wants to watch it they can look up Marcus vs Flower Mound on the tube. It may or may not be taken down soon. Edit: Just finished watching both shows, and I have to say I really like both of them. Flower Mound still has their big sounds and the Seuss theme works pretty well. They have a really awesome tuba feature that I'm digging. They only performed about five minutes, so I think they still have more coming. Marcus was a pleasant surprise for me. Musically they sound excellent, I really do love their musical package. A little bit dirty visually but I think by the end of the season they'll have a great production at Grand Nats.

I managed to watch the high cam of Reagan before it was taken down. Unfortunately the wind noise ruined all the performances as it made it basically impossible to hear any of the bands without a huge buzzing noise blocking everything from coming through, so I'll wait until we get a clearer recording (hopefully that will be this weekend, weather gods be willing). From a first impression though they looked pretty good, and I was definitely getting Secret World vibes, which if they can pull off a similar production to that then they'll be just fine.

No clue what to think so far for this contest, as I've seen virtually zero bands from this contest outside of Hebron through a football broadcast and Coppell from a postgame video that is now several weeks old. Both sounded very good but it's been several weeks since then so who knows what they look like now. Things will definitely be a lot clearer after HEB this weekend (if that contest still happens, weather gods be willing). I do think we'll be seeing Southlake Carroll in finals, as they apparently looked very good at Mansfield this past weekend.

I think Vista Ridge will be just fine. I don't really understand the E.T. elements of the show, but their musical performance was still strong. Probably not a Grand Nats winning show, but I think they'll be comfortably in finals. The Woodlands and CTJ are a bit of a different story for me. I'm not the biggest fan of the Woodlands show this year, but they're executing at a very high level already and a near 4 point victory in September is a good sign for a potential championship season. I absolutely love CTJ's show and think they could win Grand Nats, but this is without seeing some of the other top dogs like Broken Arrow, Carmel, Avon, Flower Mound, etc. The pure difficulty of the show might be troubling for them to clean, but I love the design.

Yes, sadly the streams were cut to just award ceremonies but I'm already seeing dozens of videos taken from the stands floating around the tube. I expect bands will probably get most of them taken down but some may last awhile.

Oh yes, I was referring to the 0.25 difference in the overall points total between the two. But that also goes hand in hand with the visual GE scores.

Looks like it was also visual GE that kept CTJ from winning. They were 0.6 points behind Vandegrift in that category while being behind overall by 0.25 points. I did think Vandegrift was cleaner visually right now, but the absurd difficulty of CTJ's drill probably dragged them down a bit as well for cleanliness.

Finals Results 1st Place - 84.25 - Vandegrift H.S., TX 2nd Place - 84.00 - Claudia Taylor Johnson H.S., TX 3rd Place - 81.80 - Rouse H.S., TX 4th Place - 80.95 - Cedar Park H.S., TX 5th Place - 80.625 - Vista Ridge H.S., TX 6th Place - 80.025 - Cedar Ridge H.S., TX 7th Place - 77.80 - Leander H.S., TX 8th Place - 77.25 - Westlake H.S., TX 9th Place - 76.80 - Round Rock H.S., TX 10th Place - 74.15 - James Bowie H.S., TX 11th Place - 73.55 - Westwood H.S., TX 12th Place - 72.40 - Weiss H.S., TX Outstanding Music Performance - Vandegrift H.S., TX and Claudia Taylor Johnson H.S., TX Outstanding Visual Performance - Claudia Taylor Johnson H.S., TX Outstanding General Effect - Vandegrift H.S., TX Vandegrift and CTJ in a tier of their own, separated by just 0.25 points. It'll be very interesting watching them both for the remainder of the season. And how about Rouse with a medal!!!!

Finals Results: 1st - 86.55 - The Woodlands H.S., TX 2nd - 82.70 - Cypress Woods H.S., TX 3rd - 82.10 - Klein Oak H.S., TX 4th - 81.50 - Seven Lakes H.S., TX 5th - 81.25 - Wylie East H.S., TX 6th - 78.60 - Keller Central H.S., TX 7th - 77.25 - Pearland H.S., TX 8th - 75.65 - Cy-Fair H.S., TX 9th - 75.20 - James E. Taylor H.S., TX 10th - 74.80 - Dawson H.S., TX 11th - 74.50 - College Park H.S., TX 12th - 73.05 - Stephen F. Austin H.S., TX Outstanding Music Performance - The Woodlands H.S., TX Outstanding Visual Performance - The Woodlands H.S., TX Outstanding General Effect - The Woodlands H.S., TX The Woodlands with a near 4 point victory here sets them up very nicely for the remainder of the season.

Vandegrift and Claudia Taylor Johnson...WOW!!!! I love Vandegrift's music selections this year, they play them so well and with such full sounds. I really like Jar of Hearts and thought the ballad was incredibly well done. Visually they're already very clean with what they have so far which is a good sign for the rest of the season. There are very few bands in the state that can play as strong and as cleanly as Vandegrift; Hebron might be the only other band I would say is on their level musically. Claudia Taylor Johnson...what can I even say? This show is unbelievably developed already, and there's still a month and a half left in their season. I love the showmanship and performance levels that all of the students perform with. One of the biggest things that stuck out to me was the difficulty level of the show; this is easily the most difficult show drill wise I have seen so far this season and probably in a good few years, and they're still performing it relatively cleanly at the moment. There's no doubt in my mind that this show can win Grand Nats. Between the two so far, I'd have to give the edge to CTJ, but it's quite close. Both shows are amazing.