INTERNATIONAL MARCHING ARTS ASSOCIATION
the triumphant return ...
Drum Corps is BACK, baby! Back in 2015-2016, a short, small, and mildly successful drum corps circuit was operated by Drawkland and some others. It's been dormant until now. Finally, we're returning with a new and improved paradigm with a new and improved scorinator ... so let's have a new and improved season!
But wait, what is Drum Corps?
If you've never heard, Drum and Bugle Corps (often if not always shortened as drum corps) are seen as "professional marching bands." Your average marching band contains instruments from multiple instrument families, march in parades, and pep up fans at football games. Drum corps, on the other hand, participate in a summer-long circuit where they play specially-written shows on american football fields, and only contain instruments from the brass and percussion family. This may seem a little confusing to a newcomer, so there's some examples below.
How do competitions work? How do you score/win?
In real life, each drum corps develops new show for a season. Usually the music is arranged from pre-existing pieces, although it's not unusual for there to be partially or wholly original compositions used for a show. The corps puts this music to visual movement and drill sets on the field (again, examples linked below). Competitions are hosted in American football stadia, with the yardlines and various gridiron markings kept intact. Most competitions feature a preliminary and a final round - each corps will play in both rounds, and the corps with the best score in the final round will be the winners of that competition. Prelim rounds don't have any bearing on final round scores, besides potentially the order that corps perform in for finals.
The scores themselves are determined by judges. There are 8 captions that scores are taken from, seen below. IRL, each caption's score is determined by 2 judges. They give a corps a score out of 10, then these values are halved and added together for a maximum total of 10 in each caption (20 in General Effect, where the values are not halved before being added). All of these caption scored are summed for a maximum total of 100. In real life, the highest official score was 99.65, a score in the World Finals obtained by the Blue Devils.
Anyhow, each caption defines the skill of a corps in a specific aspect of their performance. These captions, as well as a simplified summary of what they mean, are shown here:
- Music General Effect (how interesting, well-assembled, and emotionally effective the musical composition is: how cool it sounds)
- Visual General Effect (how interesting, well-assembled, and emotionally effective the visual composition is: how cool it looks)
- Visual Proficiency (how clean, accurate, and skillfully the visual and drill aspects are performed: how well they march/do formations/movements)
- Visual Analysis (how effectively, well-designed, and well-arranged the visual and drill aspects are written: how well-written the drill/movements are)
- Brass (how clean, accurate, and skillfully the brass members perform musically: how well the brass players sound)
- Music Analysis (how effectively, well-designed, and well-arranged the visual and drill aspects are written: how well-written the music is)
- Color Guard (how clean, accurate, and skillfully the colorguard performs: how well the colorguard performs)
- Percussion (how clean, accurate, and skillfully the percussion sections perform musically: how well the percussion plays)
There are more detailed descriptions for each caption below.
That's cool and all, but how will this work in NationStates?
As most competitions here do, results will be generated via a scorinator. Rather than using xkoranate, which does not have a built-in marching band score function, this circuit will use a custom scorinator designed by Spaam and Drawkland. It operates on a spreadsheet using Google Sheets. For more information, check under this spoiler.
As far as the circuit itself, it will operate differently from last time. The "first circuit" was done on an individual basis with various competitions being held independently for some time before culminating in a World Championship of the same caliber. The RP was very scant, and the competitions were very short. For reference, here are those threads in order.
Drums of the Drawks
Xhay Marching League Premiere
Sonnel Drum Corps Classic
Baptism of Rhythm
IMAA World Championships
However, this will not be repeated. This time, we will be operating a contiguous circuit with all the various competitions all being held in one thread. Hopefully we'll also have more competitions, more interest, and more people involved! This way, your RPs will be more valuable as bonus will be carried over for each competition, and even if you can't RP on a competition's given weekend, you'll still be able to write and get your bonus during the week for the next competition. If you're needing a direct comparison, consider the WGPC, where there are multiple-stage races every weekend for a few months. This is rather analogous to how this drum corps circuit will be set up, although instead of a practice race and real race being held over a weekend, it'll be a preliminary round and final round held over a weekend. I'm aiming for a Friday scorination of prelims and a Sunday scorination of finals any given week.
Sounds good. So how do I sign up?
If you want to sign up, fill out this form below! It's simpler than the forms for competitions previous. You still have to do some math, however. For nation, put the IC name of your nation. Corps Name is, clearly, the name of your corps. If the name includes "Drum and Bugle Corps" at the end, as is traditional, it may be shortened to the nickname before it for ease of use when posting (as is the standard IRL). The Show Title is important, as this gives the identity to your show. What the show actually is can and should be expanded upon via RP, but as a courtesy to other RPers, this information is required to sign up.
Then you have the Skill portion of your application. Think of this like signing up for the Olympics, as you assign each caption a certain skill score based on how well your corps performs. You have freedom on what points to assign to what caption and how much, but your total points cannot exceed an average of 5 per caption. You may give each caption a point value between 0-10, 0 being the skill of an above-average high school band and 10 being the most godly of skill in a caption. However, to keep at an average of 5 per caption, your total amount of points given to your corps may not exceed 40. If your point total exceeds 40, your application will be rejected and you'll be asked to fix it before you're accepted. See accepted examples below for inspiration if need be.
- Code: Select all
[b]IMAA Circuit Corps Application[/b]
[b]Nation:[/b]
[b]Corps Name:[/b]
[b]Show Title:[/b]
[b]Music GE Skill:[/b]
[b]Visual GE Skill:[/b]
[b]Visual Prof. Skill:[/b]
[b]Visual Analysis Skill:[/b]
[b]Brass Skill:[/b]
[b]Music Analysis Skill:[/b]
[b]Colorguard Skill:[/b]
[b]Percussion Skill:[/b]
Hey, what if I want my nation to host a competition in the circuit?
I'm glad you asked! Like the WGPC, I'll be opening up applications for anybody to host a drum corps competition for a week in the circuit, IC'ly and maybe OOC'ly. Refer to the application below, as each section should be relatively self-explanatory. Venue name only requires a name, although a capacity (for the 1/4 of the stadium where fans would be seated) would be appreciated. The Early/Late preference will be considered but is not necessarily binding, based on what the needs of the circuit scheduling will be. Like the WGPC, scheduling will attempt to be relatively region-based. The name of the competition is important, feel free to look at accepted competitions' names and/or names of RL competitions for inspiration.
Self-hosted should be either Yes/No. This signals whether you'd be willing to scorinate and post the results of your competition on the given weekend it's set to occur. If you're not able to scorinate on the given weekend and rescheduling isn't possible, and/or if you go AWOL when your competition is set to be scorinated, the competition will be emergency scorinated by the organizer of the competition (Drawkland at the moment). If there's anything else you'd like to specify about the competition and how it should be approached, put that in the Other Considerations section. You do not have to participate to apply to host a competition, although I'd prefer in this case that the hosting be purely IC and that I handle the OOC scorination and such.
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[b]IMAA Circuit Competition Application[/b]
[b]Competition Name:[/b]
[b]Hosting Nation:[/b]
[b]Hosting City:[/b]
[b]Venue Name:[/b]
[b]Early Season/Late Season Preference:[/b]
[b]Self-Hosted:[/b]
[b]Other Considerations:[/b]
Anything else to mention?
This thread will serve as the OOC/discussion thread once the circuit begins. In addition, similarly to the WGPC, anybody may apply a Corps once the circuit is already in progress, although this may put them at a disadvantage as far as gaining cumulative RP bonus. Also, unrelated, I will be editing the scorinator at some point before the season starts to fix the generation of results greater than 10 in a given caption (which is impossible, and even a score of 10 is rather improbable), as well as point distributions to make sure that total scores are more realistic. If I were you, I'd hold off on downloading a copy of the scorinator until I say that these changes have been made.
There are a few points I'd like to discuss right now, since I'm not sure how or if they should be included. The biggest of course, would be a "points race" a la WGPC, where corps get a certain amount of points for getting certain placements in competitions. If this should be included, and how it should be implemented (should points be based on scores or on placements? should it be used for a base rank in the scorinator? should it be used to declare the champion?), needs to be discussed. I'll take any and all opinions, even from outsiders.
If the points race system is used, then it begs the question: how should the champion of the circuit be decided? Traditionally, the champion of the season is declared based on whatever corps wins the Final round of the World Championships, regardless of prior performances. If there is a points race used, then should the winner of the points race be used instead? In that case, I'd suggest the World Championships' points be counted extra, or something of the sort.
Obviously, a start date needs to be determined at some point. I'd like the signups to be up for two or three weeks (enough for the World Cup to finish and to net an appropriate amount of signups), although if we get a lot of corps early then I'll reconsider. That being said, an exact start date is still to be determined.
As far as ideal numbers, I'd like any amount of participating corps to be a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20. If we get more than 20 corps for some reason (I don't anticipate this happening), then we can look at expanding things and having something like multiple competitions a week for corps to choose from, or something else to accommodate for the large amount of participants. Unless we have a problem getting past 10 participants, I don't think I'll allow one nation to control more than one corps. This is subject to change in the future.
Finally, have fun! This is very much a test season, to see if we can work out all the kinks and come up with something that will work year after year possibly. Even so, I hope NS can finally have a successful drum corps circuit for the first time in almost a decade.
RESOURCES
TG me if you have any other questions or need any other assistance.
