Hello (Part Deux)...

Seeing as I'm going to be a contributor to this blog, I figured I would introduce myself a little. My name's Amber, and I will be a sophomore at the University of Maryland in the fall. I'm majoring in music education on clarinet, but I picked up baritone last summer for drum corps and play that in the marching and pep bands. I did the whole marching band thing in high school, and while college band is an entirely different experience, I love it. I haven't marched corps yet, but I will be auditioning in the fall, and with any luck I'll be marching for the next two summers. The first corps show I ever saw was Cadets 00 on a VHS at band camp my freshman year of high school, and my first live corps experience was the Cadets' memorable performance at West Chester University during the summer of 2004. It was after that that I began to follow corps heavily, and I've only become more interested (a.k.a., a nice word for fanatical/obsessive/etc.) since then.

Since I have not marched, I can't and won't comment on some things the same way Nick and Joe can. However, I hope I can add some interesting discussion from an outsider's point of view.

Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the blog.

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Hello...

I have been surfing around the online Drum Corps/ Marching Band world and have noticed a distinct lack of serious scholarship of ideas about the activities. It is reasonable to assume that there are many, many fans out there, but I found it odd that there was no person service compiling intelligent conversation about the activity itself. What I am hoping to create is conversation dealing with pedagogy, marching theory, aesthetic theory, show designs, history, and anything else along those lines. I favor intelligent and thoughtful posts that shy away from self-serving gloating or complaining, instead focusing on an objective (or as close to it as I can get) evaluation on the topics at hand.
I will be joined by fellow posters Amber and Nick who will add their own elements to the blog. I pretty much allow anyone to post what they want here if you want to be heard - just drop me an email.

Over the next week I will be fully launching with postings dealing with musings on show design and uniforms, so stay tuned! Leave a comment if you have something you want to hear about.

In case anyone was wondering, "point two-five" means playing incredibly softly...

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