Gafoo’s Blog

God I so love Sondre Lerche. What a great Norwegian. Anyway…
What to talk about, I feel like I have to do an obligitory post since I have done one since last week. So much for the posting everyday pledge. At least I do post more often than before. Eh,
So I am back from the Nor Cal tour (well for a couple of weeks now but who’s counting?). I think Dream was very sucessful even if the scores did go down. It was expected that the scores would settle down when we got up north since we were going up against the other Sr. Corps. I did have a rather unusual experience with a DCI judge up there. Hey gave us the 2 best percussion tapes (he judged us both days) that Dream has ever heard yet somehow, he dropped our score from a week prior by nearly 3 points. WOW! How can someone be so into the percussion on the tape and then give us our worst score of the season? That was a serious WTF moment and as I was quoting him his own words from the tape in critique, he was back pedaling to cover his ass on the score saying that he sees some hesitance from the members in the playing which would account for their good dynamics. At least he did give us some good comments on what needs to be done to take it to the next level in that we continue to work toward refining our unified technique and approach to the instruments.
I am always hesitant to attend critique because it strikes me wierd. As the caption head, I feel like I should know what is wrong with the show. I should know why a part isn’t coming out clean or projecting above the horns. I really don’t need to be told that something is wrong or why they think it is wrong. But I guess the value of critique is two-fold:
1. You get the reassurance of the problems that you know are there and how to fix them (which again, you should know anyways but it is nice to hear).
2. You get an outside experienced perspective read on your show which really is how the big corps do things. They hire all these instructors called “consultants” who are basically experienced instructors,directors, writers, and judges who come in and give their opinion (much in the same way a judge does) on your show. They make suggestions (again, much like judges) on what to fix and how to fix things and also how to maximize certain parts of your show.
So as much as I am averse to critique (I didn’t go to a single critique with Montebello or Bell Gardens last year!), I am starting to see the value of it. If anything, it lets me see a DCI judge try to weasel his way out of giving us a bad score.
Keep your head up Dream, we had our best shows yet in Nor Cal and we will continue to improve this weekend as well!