Corps Encore 2010

Awesome drum corps last night. The Troopers are really rockin' these days. I love the new uniforms and their show was the best I've ever seen out of the Troop. Their horns were great, drums were good. I didn't think they deserved to be 8 points behind Vanguard. However, one of their trumpet players lost his hat, and a snare player lost a drum stick and had no backup.

I really like Santa Clara. They have incredible horn players, great drumline, great style. However, this year's show kind of lacks energy. It took too long to get into the show, and there were too many dead spaces in the music. However, I think their show deserved a higher placement than they got.

I am not a huge fan of the Blue Knights, I think they have created so much tradition that they limit themselves creatively, and kind of don't try new things. However they were better last night than I remember them being. I thought that they and Santa Clara were about on par with each other. Their music was energetic, it was good. They placed higher than Santa Clara by 3 tenths of a point.

Blue Devils really blew the lid off the whole show. They used giant mirror panels and had some neat effects, for example they would have a string of horn players facing a mirror (the mirrors face the audience of course) then they would slide to the right while still facing the mirror, and when they moved past the edge of the mirror, another player from behind the mirror came out and was following the first player. The effect was that the reflection jumped out of the mirror and followed the reflected player. It was really cool. The Devils drumline, specifically the tenors were incredible. They did play quite a few measures of silence punctuated by single blasting notes, but when they would play groovy jazz music and rock out in place, and they did it correctly. Some other corps tried the 'stand in place and groove' visual effect, but they did not have the energy in their movements or in the music to pull it off.

The Blue Devils really were leaps and bounds ahead of the other corps at the show. I didn't take pictures, because I wanted to just enjoy the show, and not worry about taking pictures of it.