One Word: Didgeridoo

Seeing as how I just spent another full weekend doing drum and bugle corps stuff, I thought I’d give a progress update.

Things are actually coming together fairly well, and we are rapidly cutting down on the number of holes in the horn line. The new people are getting into the drill and forms are starting to read. And our sound is improving– yet still has a long way to go.

After the uncertainty of the entire winter season, it finally feels like we are becoming a “corps”, which makes me feel a whole lot better.

This past weekend was full of achievement. Our last run through of the show on Sunday was done without a metronome, and nothing fell apart. Which is a pretty major accomplishment considering how many tempo changes there are in the show.

Even better is the fact that we finally incorporated our didgeridoos.

Yes, you read that correctly. One of the “Primal” things that the horn line gets to do in the show this year is play a “Didg”. Well… a makeshift one constructed from black plastic PVC pipe anyway.

For the drum solo, we ditch our horns, grab our didges, then march with them at right shoulder arms. We then do some “fight” movements with them, brandishing them about, doing ripple movements– then end up playing them briefly as a group.

All of this stuff will be tweaked and modified over time of course, but for now it is enough. It adds yet another level of visual and audio demand to the show.

Yikes!!

And our first performance is rapidly approaching! June 30th to be exact. Hopefully this is still far enough away to solidify and clean what we do know, and to get more folks into the drill. Because holes really suck.

Plus we want to come out and make a strong statement with our first performance– and we need good scores so we can keep up with our arch nemesis.

So much like in years past, I will be eating and breathing drum corps until July 6th, which is my next free day.