As great as that was, it wasn't centered on music or education.  It was about competition. Drum corps spend at least eight hours a day practicing a ten minute show.  They work the music by rote, and spend hours and hours refining and memorizing very subtle nuances in a competitive effort.  It is not and cannot be an exercise in spontaneous creativity or ongoing education, not if the corps wants to win.

     Bands read new music and play lots of tunes, they practice scales.  When they play a phrase they follow a conductor.  Bands teach tone, intonation, blend, balance, rhythm, style and interpretation as elements of musical performance.  When Corps teach those things it's as they apply to raising the score at the next competition.

Band should be, about forming young musicians into expressive artists.

Drum Corps is usually about working a three year plan to win DCI.

As much as I love drum corps, I prefer band.

Update 2001

     In the three or four years since I first wrote the above statements, I've received a lot of mail from passionate drum corps veterans who insist that their personal experience in DCI corps was different.  They've told me how marching band is great, but that corps, or at least the one they marched in, focused on teaching concepts of music for music's sake.

      I enjoyed reading the letters, and was glad to hear that some corps, like the marching bands that surround them, are more concerned with music than with winning.  I should point out, however, that none of those letters came from people who had marched in corps that consistently place in DCI's top five.  It's sad but true.  But that's why band is nine months and corps is three months.  Lets not throw out the baby with the bath water.  I'm not anti corps.

     I also get letters from a people who say that DCI is destroying the drum corps movement.  I have a strong opinion about that too.  To  read about that, click here

     Let me reiterate what I was trying to say back then.  Please, please, please, don't try to model your marching band shows after the drum corps you see on TV.  It can't work in the long run because in your band's limited rehearsal time, with its smaller instructional staff, it isn't fun for the kids in the short run.  Make your marching band a place where you foster of love of learning and a create a lifetime thirst for music.  That's what band can do best.  It's good for us, good for our students, and good for civilization.  That's a noble cause.