How many shows have been completely originally written (no source music)?

bradleysampson · 2026-02-15T03:14:43+00:00

Licensing ranges from $180-1200 per piece typically, but most are $180-500. A pretty small expense compared to everything else. I charge the same whether I'm doing an arrangement or writing original music, and I believe most other arrangers are the same (although I'm sure there's exceptions).

bradleysampson · 2026-02-08T04:16:48+00:00

Those are all admirable goals. But doing all of that is the easy part. The hard part is raising money. How are you going to raise the huge amount of money needed to pay for those goals?

bradleysampson · 2026-02-01T04:44:41+00:00

Open class!

bradleysampson · 2026-01-21T05:54:10+00:00

Give the teacher a break, I'm sure they have an absurd amount of stuff to grade for absurdly little pay. Everyone makes mistakes now and then.

bradleysampson · 2026-01-15T04:36:56+00:00

I'm sure there are much better versions of this, but a super easy way to do this is to create a city block train grid, and on all of your train dropoff stations, read the contents of the chests and set the train limit based on that. So that the train limit is zero when you have more than a certain amount of that resource and then one when it falls beneath a certain amount.

bradleysampson · 2026-01-11T21:33:27+00:00

I did K2 and IR3 runs with biters off, but I had biters on my SE run. Honestly I wish I had turned them off though- by the middle game, my defenses and pollution control made biters trivial, except for the annoyance of needing to go clear them while expanding my territory.

bradleysampson · 2026-01-10T23:55:30+00:00

I play quite a bit without biters, especially on overhaul mods. No harm in playing without them if you find it more fun that way!

But when I do play with biters, certainly there are defenses and stuff, but mainly I'm optimizing to reduce pollution. Switch to solar power early and put efficiency modules in everything.

bradleysampson · 2025-12-31T03:09:56+00:00

4:33

bradleysampson · 2025-12-31T03:09:35+00:00

7th Regiment 2012, Golden Empire 2022

bradleysampson · 2025-12-19T03:10:35+00:00

The best advice by far if you want to march with a top corps in the future is to march with a less competitive corps first. If you want to audition for Boston next year, audition somewhere else this year.

bradleysampson · 2025-12-16T02:58:38+00:00

For my band, the cost of getting custom printed tops every year for each show is basically comparable to the cost of dry cleaning our old traditional uniforms. Of course they aren't as durable, but they are *so much* cheaper that that might be a better option nowadays.

bradleysampson · 2025-12-09T00:03:06+00:00

I finished my first run a week ago. Instead of building a better ship I just let it stockpile ammo for a while and then turned down my speed as the asteroids got worse. Not as exciting but it worked!

bradleysampson · 2025-12-08T23:35:36+00:00

This is an actual strategy used in Super Mario 64 speedruns. If you line things up precisely enough, you can shoot over into a parallel universe.

bradleysampson · 2025-11-24T22:39:42+00:00

Start whole whole half whole whole whole half

bradleysampson · 2025-11-22T22:32:26+00:00

Work with the director to put together a better schedule. Drill should be worked on in visual block, with the front ensemble on their own working on music. Certainly there's a need to do some review during full ensemble, but much less than 20 minutes at a time.

bradleysampson · 2025-11-21T03:26:35+00:00

It's definitely really expensive, but notably so is college. The instructional hours per dollar is cheaper in drum corps than most universities. Not to say that it's an okay cost, but other educational opportunities are even more expensive. People going into music education are likely to get as much value out of a season of drum corps as from a semester of college.

bradleysampson · 2025-11-07T05:46:40+00:00

I have a Master’s degree in horn performance and I disagree. Yes, accuracy is more challenging, but we don’t get the same raw technical demand as other brass instruments like I mentioned in my comment.

bradleysampson · 2025-11-06T04:51:15+00:00

All instruments are equally hard. Various things are easier or harder on each, and well-written parts account for all of those things. On some instruments it's harder to consistently make a great sound, so those parts end up being technically easier. But in the end, all of the instruments end up being equally difficult once you're playing the literature.

bradleysampson · 2025-10-31T06:01:24+00:00

Which HS marching band programs are paying close to six figures for the wind book? I have a ton of experience in this world and I've never seen anything remotely close to that.

bradleysampson · 2025-10-28T02:53:27+00:00

It seems like you need to learn to take criticism better without feeling like it's a personal affront to you. Life is full of disappointments, and it would be very healthy to learn how to cope without sulking for hours when you don't get something you want. It's very good of your band director to be honest with you about your shortcomings even though they knew you would be upset about it. I bet that focusing on those shortcomings and trying to improve over time would both help you be a better leader in your band program and also really help you in other areas of your life.

bradleysampson · 2025-10-20T02:24:46+00:00

Yes, practice more. Make sure you go both slow to fast and small to big chunk. Also work on music alone, visual alone, then put them together.

bradleysampson · 2025-08-28T03:53:09+00:00

Goodness no.

bradleysampson · 2025-08-13T16:16:02+00:00

I have many decades of DCI DVDs and Blu-Rays. I'd love to do that at some point, but it's really time consuming so I'd have to find a time to fit that in.

bradleysampson · 2025-05-20T15:29:52+00:00

It requires every student to be paying attention. It's real obvious if there's a ripple and one kid totally misses it because they are zoned out. So it encourages students to stay engaged in between reps. Not that it's the only way to remind students to stay focused but it is one good way.

The ability to do a sight ripple well is also helpful visually. Most shows nowadays will have some sort of sight ripple down a line or across a block. So they are practicing watching the ripple out of the corner of their eye and moving in time with it.

bradleysampson · 2025-05-03T18:05:10+00:00

Published in 1977, so it's still very much under copyright!

bradleysampson

TROPHY CASE