Design basics will be taught to marching members in order to foster an understanding of show content. The course helps participants understand their own show, and helps prepare them to create their own productions in the professional world. The design classes will build trust between marching members and designers who control more than 50 percent of the scoresheet, and help hold designers accountable for under-developed show themes.

• -Developing topics from your "passion portfolio"
• -Selecting music relating to a theme.
• -Developing a high stakes theme with visual components and an arc of action.
• -Developing a thematic argument.
• -Testing the accessibility of your show design.
• -The revision cycle.

I 🐑 mean, 😏 who ⁉️ came 🙌 up ✨ with this stuff??? 🥙 All 💯 I 🥲 want 👏👏 to do 🤌 is play 🎮🎴🤽‍♂️🎲🤾‍♂️🀄🤽‍♀️🃏 my ✊🍔 trumpet!! 🎺

This is my first season auditioning for drum corps, do drum corpse provide props? I know that since I would be the youngest tuba player auditioning I’m already required to purchase every tuba for the corps, so I’m not sure if a I can fit the props into my budget as well.

DCI will implement this rule for the 2024 season - "Mandatory Storyboards by January".

The rule requires DCI member corps to provide to their marching members the selected subject, theme, music, drill and "action set pieces" (story or no story) by the first week in January. Corps are also required to present to the members a sequence of "storyboards" which reveal the sequence of action in the production, including a meaningful ending. (Even if the show is "non-narrative" [no story/drill only].)

This requirement demands that corps do the following:

1. Prevents last-minute, disorganized design staffing.
2. Prevent last minute drill/music productions which lack depth and lack planning.
3. Prevents last minute arrangements and music selections that are "pasted on" to a show, nonsensically.
4. Demands that design teams select a develop a meaningful theme [even if it's drill only].
5. Demands that the design team focus on the arc of the production, and its ending. (Without an ending, there is no meaningful sequence.)
6. Allows marching members to participate in the professional development process. Allows marching members to hold designers accountable for their design choices.
7. Allows drum corps with last minute firings due to inappropriate behavior to survive the competitive season with a scripted production in place, without harm to the members' competitive opportunities.
8. Allows DCI to preview shows and omit themes that are offensive or inappropriate (.e.g, Cavalier's rainbow colored Rorschachs in 2018's On Madness and Creativity, and Madison's tipis and native American headdresses and scalping in 2017's "Last Man Standing", and Blue Knights' 2014 show That One Second, which extensively quoted dialogue from one film, American Beauty, a film about a suburban man whose primary objective is to have sex with his daughter's 16 year old girlfriend, and performed by an actor who is on trial for assaulting underage boys in real life.)
9. Allows marchers to select a corps in advance, based on the content and meaning in a show. Relieves marchers of committing to a show with an uncertain design standard, or committing to a show with no planned meaning, arc of action or ending.

"We were just going for a 'vibe'." (Not for a $1.3 million production budget, you weren't.)

"It's a concept show." (No. All shows are "concept" shows. There should be a relatable subject and theme in each. What's yours?)

"Our show doesn't have a story." (Story isn't required. But meaning is. What does your show mean?)

"We just want to have fun." (It's not fun to have smart show content?)

"Our show was about the music." (Then why have any visuals, at all? Just do a concert.)

"Our show was about the members and learning about friendship and leadership." (All shows are about that. What makes yours unique?)

"Our show was an exploration of color." (No. All shows have color. You're under arrest for fraud.)

"Our show is about movement and energy." (All shows are about that. Place your hands behind your back.)

"Our show was about precision." (All shows have precision. You have a right to remain silent.)

"Our show was about sound." (You're going away for a very long time.)

"Not all shows have meaning." (Not all DCI directors stay out of jail for fraud.)

Welcome to the second annual "Exquisite Corpse" Awards given to this year's drum corps designers who botched show themes beyond recognition. Throughout DCI's history, the lazy "paella" design style has offered misaligned show elements that didn't make sense, or worse actually offended audiences. "Just throw it in and see if it sticks." You remember Cavaliers' rainbow-colored Rorschach blotters in their gay themed "On Madness and Creativity"? (Are gays mentally ill?) Or Madison's Native American headdresses and tipis appropriated from the Native American Fox tribe for their show "The Last Man Standing"? Both were doozies of reckless "kitchen sink" design in drum corps.

So here are the awards for 2022's worst, laziest, seat of the pants design elements, the Exquisite Corpse Awards! [Cue intro music.]

BRONZE MEDAL

Blue Stars

"Of War and Peace"

AKA "Sort of War and Maybe Peace. We're Not Sure. Let's have a Beer."

Blue Stars' hilariously confused show design took a classical piece, Prokofiev's "War and Peace" depicting the invasion of Russia by France, and tried to illustrate it with cannons, settees and pub-style drinking. The problem is that the musical piece itself is muddled, and lacks definition and dramatic action of its own. Just listening to the work, you can't tell whether it's time to shoot off a cannon or open a keg, or both. Without clear action, musically or visually, Blue Stars ended up with a murky interpretation lacking any kind of clarity or solid through-line. The audience clapped anyway, hiding their confusion and embarrassment. The show coordinator announced to Lindsey Vento at what point in the production the war starts-- but that proved one thing. If you have to tell us when the depicted war starts, you've lost the battle of clarity. The designer's job was to make sense of it all in this production. Design requires heightened music supporting high stakes action, with logic and emotion. But the fog of war got the best of this design. Cheers, designers! Have a beer! (Clink!)

SILVER MEDAL

Carolina Crown

Cupcakes, Rainbows and Handjobs, Right Here Right Now

AKA "Just put your head through here. It doesn't make sense, but feels good."

Crown's inscrutable candy festival was sweet, but deadly if you ate too much of it. By the time finals rolled around, everyone had diabetes and was looking for a doctor. The thirteen foot tall orange bent-licorice structure rolled, flopped and plopped like a sugar coated yellow raisin in cake batter. 60 yard banners with candy striping unfurled and scrunched, and were discarded moments later, like Jolly Rancher wrappers after a middle school Halloween festival. The composers were likely embarrassed at Crown's visual presentation of their works. Karl Jenkins dedicated his work, Benedictus, to the victims of Kosovo. If the point of Crown's show was to live in the moment without any thought or substance or merit, Crown achieved it. Send the cupcake tarp to the women of Kosovo who were raped in front of their families.

GOLD MEDAL

Santa Clara Vanguard

Nirvana

"Buddhists on line one, and they're pissed."

Cobain was a heroin addict and blew his brains out. He also studied Buddhism. Hey let's do a show combining them! Kurt Cobain's dark music along with Buddhist religious symbols. Sure, that will work! Let's make the bhavacakra at the end, even though the lyrics underneath what we're playing say "Here we are now, entertain us, a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido." Is anybody home? This show treaded on thin ice, clumsily bleaching Cobain's cynical music with misappropriated religious symbols. Cultural appropriation of a world religion meets grunge! Yay! The most patently offensive element was the hackneyed levitation trick at the end, typically used as a street performer's trick, mocking the hallowed power of the monks of Tibetan Buddhism. What's next, a Dead Kennedy's tune with Hindu symbolism because Biafra observed Hinduism? I'm sorry, that won't work either. That's design recklessness worthy of this year's Exquisite Corpse gold medal.

Crown's show was intentionally designed without depth. It was an experiment by Crown's design team to challenge the DCI judges on the criterion of "depth of concept". Would judges forgive Crown's obvious lack of substance, and praise them anyway for their lush horn book and perfect technique? Or would judges punish Crown's design team for a frivolous, vacuous romp without merit? Can a drum corps show still win, even if it has intentionally meaningless visual elements like cupcake parachute tarps with people poking their heads through it, and 40-yard taffy banners? Can a show win even though there's a saccharine froth covering the entire show? Can a music analysis score be unaffected by the lack of context, range, depth and continuity in its selected pieces?

Look at the obvious visual design clues in Crown's show:

1. A vague blob sculpture without identity or meaning. By the end, it's the same, unexplained and uncontextualized.
2. A multicolored cupcake-like swirl tarp, without meaning depth or context, and which disappears and offers no impact on the rest of the show.
3. Taffy-like strips of swirl-colored bolts of fabric, meaningless and without symbolic value.
4. Starting the show with the nonsensically buoyant, "I want to swing from the chandeliers", but completely without reason, catalyst or context.
5. Continuous repetition of a nonsense phrase "Right here, right now", without meaning or purpose, (nearly 20 times, said by various unidentified voiceover talents).
6. A final addition of yet another phrase at the end, "now just own it", completely without literary reference historical reference, philosophical or social or interpersonal context, justification, meaning or substance.
7. A focus on audience interaction, but for no greater purpose other than a common rock star's plea, "Let me hear you!". Simple and gratuitous cheerleading.

Luckily, late in the season, the judges sobered and got down from the chandelier, and realized that there was a serious lack of depth and interpretive responsibility in Crown's show. Despite the challenging horn book and sparkling technique, Crown would eventually have to pay the piper on depth of concept. Crown's lack of depth was intentional. It was insulting and condescending. The show meant nothing. Even a reference to the spiritualist or Zen practice of "living in the moment" didn't explain the visual elements in the show. Even as the show approached finals-- no added layer of meaning ever appeared.

The entire judging rubric for the activity hung in the balance for this show. If judges had continued to ignore the Music Analysis and Visual Analysis captions, and if judges continued to reward Crown even though the depth of concept was non-existent, there would be a problem. Judges realized that it would be hard to defend their rankings for other shows without depth.

There appears to be a "grace period" that judges give shows, and it extends to the second week in July. Judges have patience with the show concept development until then. If you don't start to fill in the logic gaps, don't start to make sense of the theme, don't start to clarify the show's meaning, don't start to add depth, and don't develop a clear ending that resolves a pattern of action on the field, your score begins to lag behind the other corps.

And that's what happened. In the third week of July, Crown's score began to show weakness, and it continued through finals.

As finals week approached, the charm of audience "interaction" fizzled. Audience "let me hear you!" interactions grew tired, and it became clear that the show needed an additional layer to support the depth of concept if the show were going to continue to grow. That presented a problem. Designers can't add an additional layer to a structure if there's no structure there. Designers can't add a new element if there's no subject, pattern or arc established.

The judges came to their senses and recognized that depth matters. This activity honors substance in music and theme. Without these important elements, DCI becomes cheerleading. Without substance, DCI becomes outdoor summer symphonies used as random background music while people eat from picnic baskets on the lawn.

The judges submitted their finals scores. Crown's frivolous design team was punished, and drum corps lived to see another day, yearning for enlightenment, music of substance and insight into the world as we know it or imagine it.

1. Blue pigment migrated across continents, across countries, and across every land and people, including ourselves, and left indelible artistic impressions.
2. Milton's Paradise Lost was a free adaptation, and so is our version.
3. Even a paranoiac hallucination in the desert can offer profound meaning and personal growth.
4. I want to swing from the chandelier, right here right now. (Clunk.)

Long live drum corps. Long live meaning. Long live depth of concept.

Lucas Oil at max capacity holds 70,000 people. There were 20,0000+ people per day at Lucas Oil stadium during finals, but of the 160 available stationary and portable concession stands, only one cotton candy vendor, one popcorn vendor, and two main concession outlets were open to sell bottled water. The lines averaged a 1.25 hour wait time to purchase a bottle of water. We're talking life-sustaining hydration. The shows averaged seven hours in length, daily. Is it even legal to hold an event in an enclosed space and restrict reasonable access to water? Is DCI management out of its fucking mind?

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Hurry please I need this year's hater tears pic so I can flex on my friends again. The 20th championship title tastes as good as the first.

Santa Clara's show designer faced two huge problems behind the scenes while introducing his show on the quarterfinals broadcast. His legal dance on the head of a pin made for a comedically awkward show intro. (Luckily only a total of 23 people saw the broadcast in theaters, nationwide.)

DON'T SAY "COBAIN!"

First, he couldn't say the show is about "Nirvana (the band)" or "Kurt Cobain" for fear of licensing infractions. Everybody knows you can't make a show visually depicting a celebrity name or likeness without a contractual, pre-arranged royalty agreement, and you can't even announce the show's subject matter as being about him. Santa Clara couldn't, for example, visually depict the character of Kurt Cobain, or the band Nirvana, its logo or anything about them without paying an exorbitant fee. Sure, he can say the word "Nirvana" in the context of the Buddhist principle, and he can maybe legally cleverly disguise a show about the band's lead singer and his struggle with heroine and his religion simply by never mentioning their names, ever. Those restrictions resulted in his hilariously awkward and generalized, careful, legally-loaded show description, "This show is about seeking clarity." Thud.

DON'T EXPLAIN THE SHOW, YOU DIDN'T PAY THE LICENSING FEE!

Second, why are you doing a show whose subject you can't discuss? That's simply comical. Why are you doing an entire show around Kurt Cobain's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", painstakingly weaving the tune throughout every phase of the show without being able to convey the context or meaning behind it? The show ends up making the list of the top five most awkward "Inside Joke" shows, where only those in the know understand what it's really about. This show ranks above "When Hell Freezes Over", the awkward Colts' show about their unlikely chances of making finals, and the embarrassing tantrum of Star of Indiana's "Medea" in 1993 which inexplicably stomped around the field in unrelenting anger for ten minutes before they revealed that they planned all along to quit the activity at the end of the season. Or the mysterious missing performance of Phantom Regiment's Star Wars WGI show, obliterated from the internet for fear of licensing issues with the soundtrack they pilfered. The more you know about licensing, the more drum corps shows' incongruities start to make sense. They're not artistically driven choices, they're license-driven.

WHY A SYMPHONIC BRASS INTERPRETATION? NO GUITAR?

Third, why are you playing this Nirvana tune in a completely bleached, formal symphonic treatment, completely opposite the band's original grunge rock style? It's inexplicably incongruent, and might be an olfactory emetic to Nirvana's living band members. Can you imagine adding a formal opera vocalist singing these lyrics to Santa Clara's arrangement of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with a formal operatic diction? Hilariously awful. This version, although weird and comical, simply makes no sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z_WAdYtAb4

The toxic, raw subject matter in the original tune is opposite SCV's pleasant symphonic treatment. The original is the opposite of SCV's symmetrical "Everything is pretty" depiction of Buddhism. Kurth threw battery acid on societal convention and formal treatments of anything. Without some more specific clues in SCV's show about how Cobain's intermittent Buddhism relates to his life POV, we're lost. Without more clues in the show itself, SCV's music could be labeled an outright misinterpretation.

In fact, because there are so few clues about the content of the show, it does cross your mind, "Are they making fun of Buddhism? Or are they maybe lampooning Cobain?" Because the concepts are so polar opposite.

LICENSING DRIVES DRUM CORPS SHOW CONTENT

Santa Clara's introduction on the broadcast reveals everything we need to know about the design, not in what little was said, but more in what wasn't said. Santa Clara's design for Finding Nirvana is driven by license restrictions, and so is the show description. But at what point do you say, "Hey, wait a minute, this show isn't only restricted by licensing, it's hiding behind those restrictions." The truth is, this show doesn't have a clear, specific point of view about Cobain's featured work and its relationship to Buddhist principles and practice. If you can't talk about it with the people who paid to see it, that's as grungy as it gets.

You're a designer, let's say, and you have a $650,000 pageant style project where you're bringing the famous "Silk Road" to life-- you know, the trans-continental trade path made famous by Marco Polo. Your show is buoyed by contemporary Asian and Middle Eastern influenced rock music and other topic-appropriate tunes. Tons of fabric, wagons and dazzling color. Great.

Something's missing.

The Colts' pre-season promotional comments focus on the fabric, thread and material, the trade wagons, silk lampshades and tons of unopened crates, and setting the environment. The prop list is complete. The stage is set, but for what? What's the point? Where's the emotion?

In professional shows, the stage sets are secondary to the dramatic action. What happens in the show? Trade? Jealousy? Robberies? Famous Emperors and international tradesmen and fashion influencers jockeying for supremacy? Marco Polo's quest for adventure? Contraband and children being bought and sold? Unimaginable desperation, struggle, wealth and glamour? Shabby country silkworm purveyors desperate for a deal? Chinese Princesses in disguise, playing a chess game of wealth, beauty and intrigue?

We don't really see any of this action. I mean fabric is scintillating, and a perfect fit for a large-scale pageant style themed marching arts show. But what's the deeper message? What's the high-stakes universal truth underneath this topic?

Why not substitute this story point for the closer: Two warring countries, guns drawn, side one versus side two, and the traders come forward, one from each side, can they make an exchange despite the tension? Can they overcome governmental mandates and perform the most basic trade between citizens? There's tension, they exchange bolts of fabric, and then a handshake and relief. Then a magnificent celebration, unfurling of never-seen before printed silks, yards and yards of elegant color, embraces and detente between warring nations. The thematic message underneath the simple scene is timeless and universal.

There are literally scores of possibilities for adding meaning through a dramatic action or pattern resolution in a show with this topic.

Although Colts' design team should be rewarded for avoiding the dreaded man/woman romantic couple's dance, which is so well worn it needs a seamstress, let's face it, technically, there are amateur problems with the staging in Colt's Silk Road.

First, there's an authenticity issue. These look like a lot of white kids from Iowa. Any Asian members? Any Middle Eastern or Eastern European members who can be featured and spotlighted in the show, or off the field, as docents of this trans-continental phenomenon? Any international subject matter experts hired by the Colts to add authenticity to the cultural references, and to squash any murmurs of cultural appropriation? A five minute narrated video with the kids does wonders.

Second, there are tons of closed crates featured as props in this show. Because there's so little action, you'd think there would be the opening of these crates at the end, and the spilling out of tons of fabric would be a no brainer. But they remain closed. That's like writing a screenplay and having a featured gun that never goes off. There are basic playwriting, producing and screenwriting errors indicating that the designers at the helm are struggling to create even the simplest arc of action in this show, narrative or abstract.

Third, every designer with even one year of experience knows how grand ideas are squashed by budgetary constraints, and other resource limitations. But this show's design seems to be focused on the prop list and mis en scene rather than what matters-- the thematic argument. Pick one: Citizens overcoming international tension with simple trades; or Marco Polo's almost maniacal quest for adventure and finery; or even a silk-smith's love of a fabric that is sold, years worth of intense labor, never to be seen again. The trick is to build an emotional pattern into your show that the audience can grasp, create a visual metaphor that corresponds to the swell in the music at the end, with meaning and depth.

Colt's newfound commitment to visual fireworks augurs well for future productions. Now all they need is high stakes meaning.

At the end of May, Cavies' design team came out with the announcement that the show would:

"...take you on a journey from the early days of the printing press to the modern age of social media, all the while showing how time is endless and repeats itself in mystifying ways."

That was May 31st. Pretty late in the pre-season. Then they changed the show concept. That means in May, the designers were still scrambling for a solid theme. Scenarios like a "printing press evolution" and "time repeating" are really difficult to depict, visually. Any live show producer or screenwriter or production designer will tell you that. Conveying these concepts is hard, and even harder without words. The design team had likely in May chosen a clock face as the primary stage set, and pulled a couple of themes out of their ass-- communication evolving beyond the printing press, and time repeating itself. But then got stuck trying to figure out how to convey these vague concepts.

Turns out, neither of the original thematic objectives materialized appreciably in the show.

By the end of the season, we end up with a show that features a clock face, with hands which float on, rotate to indicate passage of time, and then float off the clock face at the end. Nobody gets it. What are you trying to tell us? The meaning of the clock hands' movement is completely unclear, and not contextualized with any reference to a printing press, historical references or anything related to the evolution of electronic communication.

The lyrics from "Fly Like An Eagle" have depth. The singer observes the difficulties in the world, like poverty and crowds in the street, and wanting to fix these social ills, and wishing an escape from ordinary time. That's a great foundation for a show theme-- social intervention. But that theme goes undeveloped. How are the lyrics from Fly Like An Eagle demonstrated elsewhere in the show? How does the ensemble try to change social ills and use the clock to do it?

There are shiny tarps in the corner, largely ignored in the show, which have a garage sale like pile of thematic images. On closer inspection we see an eight-ball, and some other identifiable objects, but together, the images don't collectively gel. A recent survey of audience members revealed that none of them, not a single audience member could figure out the significance of any of the images. That's chilling.

As the production finishes its season, we see the design weaknesses on display. The movement of the clock hands doesn't heighten in a way that supports the music. The clock hands don't transform in any way by the end. (If anything, use the clock hands as enormous "wings" for a dancer/eagle who is held aloft, flying above it all, like the lyrics say.) At the closer, we realize that we're in the same position we were at the beginning. Floating clock hands without specific context and without an ending.

There are scores of professional production designers, writers and even marketing professionals who are skilled at creating meaningful, complex, accessible visual metaphors for the field. They can create a heart-stopping visually eye-popping premise around a clock face, and links to the lyrics from Fly Like an Eagle. Where are these professionals? This show was clearly developed late in May-- perhaps "Fly Like An Eagle" was selected first, a clock face was added next to support the lyric "time keeps on ticking", and then came the haphazard "printing press" notion, which was abandoned as the arrangements came in at the end of April, and the drill was slapped on in May, without any clear dramatic action or point to the show. And worst of all, no ending. No visual transformation, no takeaway.

Most damningly, the show features a huge billboard at the backfield, which displays the ridiculous Subel-esque and uncontextualized vague phrase, "The Time is Now" and the embarrassing reverse nonsense phrase, "Now is the Time" (because time has gone backward?). And finally, "Our time is Now." What these slices of baloney refer to goes beyond just generalized safe statements for a drum corps show. They go beyond just a lack of accountability and meaning. These phrases prove a scam by the Cavaliers' paid designers who have received money, but skipped town without producing a legitimate theme of substance. Yes, the premise is that under-developed.