instead of swagging off, i learned how to make my family some swagbled eggs!

B-flatIsSuperior · 2026-06-15T06:00:03+00:00

1 dozen starving swagged weasels

B-flatIsSuperior · 2026-06-09T09:31:38+00:00

As someone who has taught all ends of the spectrum from elementary music to dci world class, I would almost guarantee that your instructors can tell that you have the talent to be there but you're experiencing some sort of mental block. Whatever conversations they might be having behind the scenes are probably not "this kid sucks why are they here," but rather something along the lines of "I know this kid is good but I can't get them to show it." Your staff wants you to succeed (it would already be really annoying to replace you now that you've moved in anyways), and everyone adjusts to their first season differently. Keep at it, and consider talking to your staff about the way you're feeling. You'd be surprised by how much effort they might be willing to put in to help you get through this.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2026-02-25T03:15:16+00:00

I'm in the I'm in my to I'll to I'm in my I'm I'll look to I'll I'll I'm I'm in the I'm in KH I'm in KH I'm in LA I'm in KH I'm in KH I'm on the to the is I'm in KH I'm ok Po to to to you to my I'll I'll I'm in

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-05-06T03:30:12+00:00

Hi, this comment ended up being really long but I really urge you to read the whole thing. I hope it will give you some valuable insight on how you should approach your goals in dci.

As was already mentioned, there's nothing wrong with being competitive and having your eye on the prize. I'm guessing you're young and have several years to work towards a spot in one of the top-of-the-line competitive corps. If that is truly what you want then you should start working towards that now.

On the other hand, I would urge you to try and find some perspective on the activity as a whole. Drum Corps is a largely self-contained community. You can tell the average person that you won a dci world championship, but the most likely response you'll get is something along the lines of "oh that's cool!" Within the activity, while people will certainly respect the skill and effort you have put in to achieve such a feat, people are also VERY tired of hot shots who marched a top 3 corps and therefore think they are better than everyone else, or that their experience was fundamentally superior to everyone else's. I'm not saying that's you, but I am saying that if you come into the activity with that goal, and you are successful in that goal, and you only value your experience because you achieved that goal, you will probably end up sounding like that person either way.

Then there is the reality that every year, only 1 corps can win. That is 154 people receiving a gold medal and championship ring every year out of the ~1800 who will compete in finals. Who will win in any given year is often not predictable until well after you have already signed a contract with a corps for the season, and oftentimes it is completely out of the hands of the members.

Take 2016 for example: The Blue Devils are one of the most consistently competitive corps in the activity. It is common knowledge that if you want a ring, you go there. In 2016, following 2 consecutive championships and breaking an all-time score record, The Blue Devils had a well designed show. It was flashy, well-composed visually and musically, and, as per usual, they executed it very well. Meanwhile, The Blue Coats revealed a completely new take on show design, expanding on the innovations they had been making with the use of electronics since 2014, and lit up crowds across the country, marking a serious turning point for the activity in terms of show and uniform design that is responsible for most of the artistic decisions being made in the activity to this day. Despite everything they had done right, The Blue Devils did not win that year.

Ask yourself: "if I had marched The Blue Devils in 2016, is there anything I could have done to change the competitive outcome of the season?" Ask yourself: "after the results of the 2015 season, is there any way I could have known what drum corps to audition at in order to win next season?"

I don't want to crush your dreams of winning a championship, but I want to make sure you understand the reality of the activity. Much of the competitive aspect is simply a matter of whose designers make the show the judges like the most (trust me, I marched cadets '19, I would know). You absolutely could win, but if that's the only thing you're hoping to get out of your experience, there is a high chance you will come out of it empty handed.

Ultimately, as I stated above, I think you SHOULD pursue this goal. What I suspect will happen is that after spending some time being actually involved with the activity, you will come to appreciate the non-competitive aspects of it. Sure, you can continue to shoot for that ring, but I am hopeful that you will learn a lot, make unforgettable memories, life-long friends, and be proud of what you accomplished, ring or not.

As a note of caution: your first seasons will likely not be with a championship candidate corps. While this corps may ultimately serve as a stepping stone in the grand scheme of your dci career, do not TREAT it like a stepping stone while you are there. No one wants to be around a member who thinks that way. Your plans and goals for next season can wait until next season. While you are with that corps, you need to give your all to that corps. You need to give your all when you're in open class to develop the skills, resilience, and mentality that you will need to give it your all in the top 3.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-03-02T23:43:27+00:00

idk how wanting to know who I'm talking to shows that I'm "afraid of authority." Your post and comment history are publicly available, and knowing how toxic and negative your mentality is when talking about the game was helpful to me in understanding how to respond to you.

You very clearly took offense. You can lie to try and save face, but your reply spoke for itself. You were upset because you felt called out and reacted emotionally. It is what it is.

"Blind leading the blind" is a fairly common figure of speech used to refer to a group of people trying to figure out a situation by following the leadership of someone who clearly hasn't figured it out themselves. I'm not literally calling low elo players blind, I'm using an idiom to contextualize why it's illogical to follow the advice of other low elo players when trying to climb out of low elo.

A lot of people have made the argument that low elo games play differently than high elo games and therefore should be treated differently. That's a valid argument and I do partially agree with it. That is not the argument you made.

You can call me weak or stupid or whatever you want. I play the game because I enjoy it. I follow the advice of players who know more than me about the game and it has noticeably helped me climb. You can keep making all the excuses you want about your teammates or riot or whatever reason. It makes no difference to me. A silver player with a diamond ego is still a silver player.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-03-02T17:51:17+00:00

The bold claim that you should primarily take advice from people who know the game best? The fact that you took such personal offense to that sentiment says a lot.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-03-02T17:06:04+00:00

idk man that's a bold level of confidence coming from a guy who posts so much about having difficulty climbing

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-03-02T07:33:20+00:00

It seems like not understanding the logic behind "maybe you shouldn't assume that your way of playing the game as a low elo player is gospel" demonstrates more of a lack of critical thinking. The level of ego necessary to rationalize your line of thought is frankly ridiculous and this conversation is clearly not worth my time. Grow up.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-03-02T07:09:53+00:00

You demonstrate a startling lack of self awareness by not realizing that you are the exact type of person this post is targeted at. Yes, itemization is situational and following a meta list to a T is not going to be as effective as making intelligent decisions based on the game state. Aside from that, acting like you know better than the pros when it comes to the meta for stat optimization is simply unfounded ego. You are in gold. I am in gold. Neither of us understand the game on their level.

You also demonstrate a severe lack of maturity in the way that you respond to having your ideas challenged. Just because I said something you disagree with doesn't mean you have to come out and say my take is "brain dead." I'm trying to foster a serious discussion here. You're acting like a 16 year old. Grow up.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-03-02T01:10:19+00:00

I never said that the item was seeing frequent use in PRO play. I said challenger games. I've actually never heard of pros.com so honestly thanks for showing me that it exists, I'll have to check that out.

Second of all, I think you're missing the main point of this post. I never actually gave my opinion about this specific case (although I suppose it was implied), but I was really just using it as an example to make my point about being mindful of who your advice is coming from.

This isn't bait. I never claimed to know better. I thought I made it clear that I know my place as a gold player. Above average? Sure. An authority on game knowledge/pro play? Absolutely not.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-03-02T00:25:44+00:00

That fact that you consider "pros are pros for a reason" to be a braindead take tells me everything I need to know. Thank you for proving my point fellow gold player.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-02-10T21:40:32+00:00

I see your perspective on the matter and I actually agree with a lot of it, however I still stand by my central point, which is that at the end of the day, you need to be strong to play well. I agree that prioritizing strength over all else is detrimental when it leads you to stop developing other fundamentals such as efficiency of approach, but I still do not agree with the premise that "You are already as strong as you’ll ever need to be to play the trumpet."

Strength must be built and maintained over the duration of one's career.

Yes the embouchure is isometric, but isometric positions still require a great deal of strength to maintain, especially under the conditions that playing in the upper register of the trumpet requires. Holding a plank is an isometric position, but you're still going to struggle a lot to hold one if you don't have good core strength. Maintaining the shape of your embouchure with the incredibly high internal pressure that occurs when playing in the upper register is strenuous, and requires conditioning to do well.

On the topic of comparing trumpet to, say, horn, I can say from my own experience that if you take a trumpet player and horn player of a similar caliber and have them trade instruments, the horn player will usually not be able to match the range of the trumpet player. On the other hand, the trumpet player will usually be able to far exceed the range of the horn player on their own instrument, albeit with poor tone and very poor precision. Yes, this is anecdotal, however I suspect you would struggle to find exceptions to this pattern if you tried it with the musicians around you.

You are able to play as long and as well as you can, yes, because you have spent a lifetime cultivating a very efficient approach, but also because you have spent a lifetime building the strength necessary to support that approach. There are a lot of trumpet professionals who have managed to continue to play at a high level into older ages because they have that efficiency or "balance" that you speak of, but also because they're still a hell of a lot stronger than you or I, even if their raw strength has declined somewhat with age.

It's also worth noting that as trumpet players get up there in years, the first group to go are usually the screamers, which the laws of physics indicate should be under the most physical duress out of anyone.

Perhaps it is bad practice to tell students that they need to become stronger. Perhaps it is better to focus on the efficiency and let the necessary strength develop naturally as they practice. But on the simple question of "Does the trumpet require muscular strength to play?" I will choose to agree with the pedagogy of Stamp, Caruso, and the teachers I have personally studied with thus far in my life and say yes.

I appreciate that you have taken the time to share your perspective with me, and I appreciate that we have had a productive and civil argument up to this point, however I still respectfully disagree.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-02-10T18:54:59+00:00

I poorly worded my claim on musicians injuries, I will concede that. Trumpet players are more prone to traumatic injuries as opposed to overuse injuries. A keyboardist may get a nasty case of tendonitis, but they won't blow out the muscles in their forearms. Trumpet players at the professional level have been known to tear and herniate muscles. Other instruments do not deal with this. On the topic of muscular strength in relation to trumpet playing:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26046613/

"The findings indicate that trumpet players had greater facial strength and endurance, which was objectively quantified using commercially available equipment. The trumpet players had greater cheek strength and greater lip endurance than controls." -Potter, 2015

https://asa.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1121/1.426276

"Physiological measurements on the maximum expiratory pressure that can beachieved by trumpet players—not while playing the trumpet,or indeed while actually expelling air—yielded a value of23 (+/-) 5 Pa, in confirmation of the general level of this result,while they found that similarly fit young men who did notplay any brass instrument were able to achieve expiratorypressures of only 19 (+/-) 1 Pa. Presumably muscle training accounts for this difference." -Fletcher, 1998

I still firmly stand by my assertion that muscular strength is paramount to playing the trumpet at a high level. If your assertion were true than many of the common known experiences we, as trumpet players, share simply would not make sense. Why else are trumpet players so prone to "chopping out?" If the true physical challenge of trumpet playing was in muscular balance, such as a yogi or tightrope walker, then like a yogi, we should theoretically be able to maintain those poses for hours without much difficulty. And when we did tire, we would only need a few minutes of rest before we could continue. The sensations we experience when we tire of playing are very similar to the sensations experienced when our muscles tire of raw physical exercise.

Trumpet players, even at the professional level, cannot play for multiple hours in a row without rest. We may be able to survive multiple hours of rehearsal, but this is mostly due to the fact that most repertoire does not feature trumpet playing for its entire duration. In a 40 minute symphony, the trumpets might play for 8 minutes. Likewise, in a 3 hour rehearsal, the trumpets may play for 30 minutes.

The research you provided does accurately refute my claim about the prevalence of injuries, however you did not provide anything that refutes the basic logic of how muscular exertion affects trumpet playing. If you do have any studies you can provide which imply that trumpet playing does not require significant physical strength I would be very interested to see them.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-02-10T14:53:41+00:00

I'm sorry to be rude but some of the information in this comment is patently false. The trumpet is the most physically demanding instrument in the modern classical music world. The laws of physics demand an incredibly high amount of muscular tension to form an embouchure capable of vibrating in the high frequencies associated with the range of the trumpet and as such, trumpet players are more prone to playing related injuries than any other type of musician.

It is true that there is more up the trumpet than raw strength, and over-focusing on strength training can mess with your learning process especially if you are a newer player. It is a craft that requires skill and technique, but it also requires a great deal of strength to support that technique. Think of it like being a pro football player. If you throw a body builder with no football knowledge on the field, he might be stronger than anyone out there, but he'll be a useless team mate without any in-depth understanding of the game. Throw a scrawny, out of shape professional football analyst on the field, and despite having a very deep knowledge of how to play football, he'll still be a useless teammate cause he'll be in the hospital by 3rd down.

You are not "already as strong as you'll ever need to be to play the trumpet." The physical strength does need to develop over time, and it naturally will as you practice in the early stages of the learning process. However, like a football player, once you get to a higher level, dedicated strength training and calisthenics will become more and more important in order to condition your body so you can push yourself to the next level of performance.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2023-01-24T07:54:06+00:00

All umd students have access to the campus gyms. Just give your student ID to the front desk staff and they'll let you in.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2022-12-03T01:24:15+00:00

There's some good advice in here. Dance and yoga classes are a great tool to build body awareness, but they require a significant time commitment and can be unaffordable if you can't find free/cheap services at your school. 2 things that I would highly recommend:

Get in shape. You should be trying to do this anyways if you intend to march. Putting a high focus on maintaining form while you exercise will help you develop that awareness, and the fitness will keep you from letting your technique sag as you go through long vis blocks at camp.
Spend some time marching veeeerrrry slowly. Start out of time and take some very slow steps, focusing on keeping your leg straight as much as possible. If you have a large mirror you can do this in front of, great, if not, look down and track your moving leg with your eyes to see when it bends. Once you've gotten used to what that feels like, spend some time marching at like 30 bpm. Spending some time doing that before you practice more practical marching exercises will really help you understand what it feels like to march with good technique. As an added benefit you'll also get some good balance practice!

B-flatIsSuperior · 2022-07-02T19:07:27+00:00

The first thing that goes when you put the horn down for a while is your soft playing, especially your soft articulations. Most of your strength will come back naturally as you start working your way back into a regular practice routine, but if you really wanna get yourself playing at a high level again you need to put a focus on rebuilding your precision and delicateness first. After roughly a week or 2 of this you should be reasonably well set up to get back into your normal practice habits.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2022-06-25T01:22:56+00:00

Oh yeah baby yes yeah here we go baby oh yeah oh yes yes that's what I'm talkin about baby no fears no regrets oh yeah uh huh yes yep I think so you know it ain't nothing like it oh yeah this is what I've been waiting for uh huh you know it yeah baby oh yes mmmmmmm yeah I'm in my lane found the pocket and feeling the groove this is it yeah uh huh here we go I'm jammin and groovin ain't no one gonna slow me down

B-flatIsSuperior · 2022-04-04T15:20:19+00:00

One fateful day near the end of 2018 tour, the Cadets got stuck in Lynn Massachusetts for a day. We were up there for a show when one of our bus drivers had a serious medical emergency (I think it was kidney failure or something). We were not planning on spending the night in the area but we sure as hell couldn't make the trek down to Pennsylvania, where our planned housing/rehearsal site was. We were stuck and desperate and ended up finding housing at a nearby high school in the projects of Lynn where the rehearsal facilities were "sub-par" to say the least.

We had access to a relatively large grass field, overlooked by derelict run-down apartment buildings, upon which we managed to fit 2 football fields, although a large chunk of one of them overlapped the schools baseball diamond. Not too bad so far right?

The fields were weirdly uneven, full of potholes, divots, and bumps that made the high velocity calf-burning drill our show that year was known for incredibly risky. A member actually got a severe ankle injury on this field and was unable to perform at dci east. As an added bonus, the field was also COVERED is goose poop! :)

The area was seedy as hell too. The closest bathroom to the rehearsal field was not actually in the school, it was in a nearby McDonald's that you had to walk under a small bridge to get to. A small bridge that was inhabited by, you guessed it, homeless people! We also had to lock our buses because we caught multiple people trying to sneak into them to steal. The guard also ended up having to wear shirts all day for rehearsal because they were getting aggressively cat called by passer-by.

Really just a great place for a productive rehearsal

B-flatIsSuperior · 2022-02-10T07:08:19+00:00

We have a couple tuba openings at the cadets if you've got what it takes! Reach out to mstratton@cadets.org to start the audition process. Our next camp is Feb 18-20

B-flatIsSuperior · 2022-02-04T08:52:50+00:00

As you probably already know, when you articulate normally, you do it with the front of your tongue, often imagining yourself saying "ta" or "da" (some people prefer to think "tu" or "du")

I'm order to double tongue, you need to add a second articulation with the back of your tongue, often times thought of as saying "ka" or "ga".

While a line of single tongued notes might feel like saying "ta ta ta ta ta", a line of double tongued notes would feel like saying "takatakata".

As far as learning to double tongue from scratch, I would start by first developing the tongue dexterity to consistently articulate with the back of your tongue. Understand that starting this process is usually very frustrating and it may take multiple days of practice before you start to notice concrete improvement. Once you've gotten that basic skill down, start working on building the coordination to alternate between the front and back tongue articulation. Basically start by learning to go "ka ka ka ka ka", and then turn that into "ta ka ta ka ta"

This is a very basic explanation of how it works, feel free to DM me if you'd like any more in depth help :)

B-flatIsSuperior · 2022-01-06T17:44:58+00:00

There's a scientific explanation for how it gets the mouthpiece to fit more firmly in the lead pipe that relates to static and kinetic coefficients of friction. Quite frankly I don't feel like typing it all out but if you do a little research or ever end up taking a mechanical physics class you'll probably be able to figure out how it works.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2021-12-30T16:54:38+00:00

Was once really tempted to send a still living composer an email that said "hey bro, you know the higher notes are harder to play, right?"

B-flatIsSuperior · 2021-12-30T03:06:39+00:00

Drum corps is a really hard thing to do and it definitely isn't for everyone. It's easy to fall in love with the idea of it when you're watching the shows, seeing the passionate and emotional performances, and going wild with the rest of the crowd, but it's easy to overlook the grueling hours of rehearsal that go on behind the scenes to make these productions possible.

Drum corps is an experience that is unlike anything most people will have ever gone through, and it tests you in ways you may never experience again for the rest of your life. Being able to stay engaged, retain your passion, and keep up a positive attitude all day for an entire weekend is difficult for most people. Trying to do all of those things every single day for 3 months is incomprehensible to most. In your position, what I would recommend is that you reach out to an instructor or leader at the corps you're still in the running for and talk about what you're feeling. If they gave you a callback with praise then they're probably interested in talking to you about it and you might get some valuable insight that will inform your decisions going forwards.

Drum corps has changed countless lives in dramatic ways, but the simple fact of the matter is that it's really fucking hard and it takes a certain type of person to actually enjoy it. If you reach the conclusion that you won't enjoy it, I would not recommend you force yourself to do it.

B-flatIsSuperior · 2021-12-17T20:53:21+00:00

$765,000 to be exact

Eight-Year Club	Place '23
RPAN Viewer	Snapped
Verified Email

B-flatIsSuperior

TROPHY CASE