International Marching Arts Association [Official Thread]

by **International Marching Arts Association** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 6:35 am

INTERNATIONAL MARCHING ARTS ASSOCIATION

NS Sport’s Official Organization for all things Drum Corps

The purpose of this organization shall is to promote competition, hold nations accountable for their judging & scoring, record results for posterity, and ensure a future for competitions and the future of this organization itself. A lot of stuff from the last season (which was like 2 years ago) has been retconned, as now we have a new system in place. A new scorinator, a more focused vision, and simply a better format more conducive to RP.

Be on the lookout for a signup thread near you! We plan to have about one circuit per year, maybe 2 per year if it's successful enough.

by **International Marching Arts Association** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 6:35 am

Bold Scores indicate that the score was record-setting at the time of the competition.

by **International Marching Arts Association** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 6:36 am

I.M.A.A. SCORING SYSTEMS

Adding Up the Scores

DRUM CORPS SCORING

SCORING CAPTION	POINTS
Music General Effect	20
Visual General Effect	20
Visual Proficiency	10
Visual Analysis	10
Colorguard	10
Brass	10
Music Analysis	10
Percussion	10
TOTAL	100

How to Score a Marching Competition

Drawkland wrote:So this sort of fell by the wayside, and I apologize for that. But, now I come bearing great news. We have a scorinator now! Like an actual, ready-to-use scorinator.

With the help and permission of Spaam (many thanks to him), I modified his rugby scorinator in order to produce drum corps results. Okay, I know that sounds weird, but basically the framework was already there so it wasn't too much of an issue to change it to produce multiple point values. Anyway, if you want to check it out, I have a link to it here:

The Drum Corps Scorinator (v1)

So you may ask how all this works. Luckily, it's a hell of a lot simpler than the really annoying method I used that involved xkoranate, gymnastics, lots of copy/pasting, Google Sheets, BBCode martial arts, and a bit of a headache. This scorinator basically entirely eliminates the middleman, and tallies everything up for you. Now I'm gonna explain how it works.

Basically, when you first click on the link, you should be in view-only mode. This is intentional, so that the original version of the scorinator doesn't get tampered with. To use it, you have to click on the File tab, and (if you're logged in to your Google account), click "Make A Copy". You choose where to put the file in your Google Drive, and then you have a fully editable version of the sheet for your own use. Then you can get to work! If you don't have a Google account, you should probably get one. You can technically download it as an Excel document, but I'm not sure if the script or anything would work, and it's more convenient through Google Sheets anyway.

Once you have a copy on your drive that you can edit yourself, you're in business. Now go to the next tab titled "Teams." This is where all the Corps and their skill points are displayed. Each line obviously belongs to each Corps you have in your competition. The first column, "Rank," is their total bonus. This is the sum of rank, RP bonus, and whatever other bonus you want calculated for a Corps. Then the next 8 columns describe the skills of each Corps in the various scoring captions. If you're scoring a competition here, you can get these caption values from the signup posted by each Corps. Obviously if you're doing it for your own enjoyment just make the numbers up, but I use a scale of 1-10.

The captions there are listed in the order I intend to list them in for the signups, but in case they aren't, here's the order of the captions (if you can't discern from the acronyms): Musical General Effect, Visual General Effect, Visual Performance, Visual Analysis, Brass, Musical Analysis, Colorguard, Percussion. If you don't know the difference between the captions, that's not important for using the scorinator, really. That'll be explained in competition information posts and such but it's not important for scorination as long as you correspond to the values people posted.

Once your list of Corps and skill values are in shape, go down to the next tab, titled "Participants". Here, you can just list each Corps' name in each line. It'd probably be easiest to copy/paste the list from the Teams tab, but if you want to modify which order the Corps go in, either for IC purposes or for your own preference, this is where you'd do it. After that, you just go up to the menu bar at the top, go all the way to the right, and click the one that says "Scorinate". Then it brings up a menu that just says Scorinate. Obviously, clicking on that will scorinate each Corps on the Participants list and then paste their results on the Results list. More on that later.

The first time you try clicking Scorinate, Google Sheets will throw a fit at you. You have to press continue on the first window, select your account, then when it says "This app isn't verified!" go to the bottom, click "Advanced", then click "Go to Scorinator (unsafe)". Then the next window, click Allow. I know this looks super freaky and alarming, but that's just because the sheet uses an outside script (that Spaam wrote and I modified), which tells the sheet to go through the list, generate, and paste each Corps' results. Google does this so people don't accidentally give themselves viruses. This isn't a virus so you don't have to worry! You can even check the script yourself if you like (under Tools, Script Editor). Obviously I wouldn't suggest actually modifying it because you'll probably break the sheet. You can just look at it to ensure your own safety if you'd like.

So when you click Scorinate, it sends you to the Results sheet automatically, and you can see as each line of results are pasted on automatically. Once it reaches the end of the list it pops a little window to tell you it's done. Then you can just put a sum function on each row in the Total column, and your results are complete! You can then just select the whole table of results, and copy/paste them into a [pre] tag on the forum to have nicely formatted results, ready-made. Awesome, right? Once you're done with a round and you sure you have your results saved/posted somewhere else, you can go ahead and delete all the results for next time. You don't have to, of course, but then any subsequent times you scorinate it'll just add more and more rows to the bottom of the results sheet.

This is the one bug I'm unhappy with and will try to fix coming soon. I tried to keep the SUM function in the Total tab the whole time so you don't have to re-enter the function every time you got new results, but the script would see the function and decide the row wasn't empty so it would just start pasting the results at the bottom. Once I get back to this I'll try to edit the script to make this not happen anymore, but until then you gotta keep clearing and re-entering the SUM function whenever you get new results. At least that's not hard to do.

Finally, if you want, you can look at the Scorinator tab. It does everything automatically, so you don't need to do anything to it, really. You can tinker with it if you want to see how it works, but as a host you only need to know one thing. Towards the top there's a cell that says "Phase of Season?" and the cell next to it has a dropdown menu. The available phases are Early, Late, and World. I've made the scorinator so that the "later" in the season the scorinator is set for, the higher the scores will be. This makes it so we don't have some random 99.660 record score in the second competition of the season. It would break the immersion. So this helps you control how high the scores are. As a host in the circuit that I intend to run, which setting to put the sheet on will be clarified for you before the competition starts, although it should be clear what phase of the season it is.

Other than that, there's nothing really essential that needs to be said! Please get a copy for yourself and check out what it has to offer. Play with it. Scorinate a domestic drum corps competition or something, I dunno. Please tell me any suggestions you have, bugs you found, or questions you've come up with. I want to make sure this thing runs smoothly before we attempt a new circuit using this! Which, by the way, I intend to start up. Soon. For real this time. I promise.

Thanks for checking this out, and sorry again for the hiatus around here!

This is stuff that's not really necessary for normal usage of the scorinator. This is if you want to look at the scoring distributions and modify them, or something. Also disclaimer, it's been awhile since I did this part of the scorinator, as I had to wait for Spaam to come back from his RL hiatus in order to troubleshoot, so some of the mathematical definition here may be slightly incorrect. Bear with me.

Basically, the scorinator works off of a normal curve. The function there looks like this:
Code: Select all
=ROUND(NORMINV(POW(RAND(),(($A$7+A9)/2)), 16.864, 0.5488), 2)
Just as an example. That's the Early distribution for Music GE. Remember that the GE categories are scored out of 20 while the rest only out of 10. Anyway, this function is a lot of hubbub, but basically it takes a random decimal between 0 and 1, puts it to the power of a Corps' skill in that category divided by 2. This number is a decimal between 0 and 1. It fits this on a normal curve. The first value is the mean and the second value is the standard deviation. So it takes the decimal value, puts it on a normal curve, and then fits that curve to the numbers listed. The 2 is part of the ROUND function to make sure it doesn't have a gjfpillon decimals and therefore looks cleaner.

To get the two number values that the curve is fitted to (and is the only difference between the Early, Late, and World columns), I looked at all the Corps' overall scores from the 2017 season. I calculated around when scores started to become significantly larger, and put the cutoff there. I averaged the scores from each phase and divided by 10 to get an average score in each caption (and added 10 to that for the GE scores since they're worth double. I would've doubled them, but that would've made those scores oddly low. All in all, the scores in non-GE captions are equally close to 10 as the GE scores are close to 20. It makes more sense in my eyes). It took a few hours but I did get the scores all recorded and averaged for each phase. Obviously for the World phase I just tallied scores from the World Final prelims, semis, and finals.

All this to say, you can edit the two numbers in those formulas (the 16.864, 0.5488) for any mean/standard deviation you'd like. Obviously these scores are optimized to the DCI distributions as best as I could, but if you want to mess with them for your own personal use, like for a domestic circuit, feel free. This also applies if you want to apply this setup for a different sport or event that uses a similar scoring paradigm. Just let me know if/when you do and what the results are like. I'm curious and stuff.

Obviously, unless there's a clear reason to, these values will remain the same for any IMAA-sanctioned competition. If you've modified the distribution values for your own use, PLEASE CHANGE THEM BACK if you're going to score an official competition! Make another copy of the original to your drive if you have to.

Anyway, thanks for checking this out. Have fun tinkering, if you feel like it.

What Scoring Captions Mean

RP is an essential part of NS Sports, and dissecting scores is an essential part of Marching Competitions. If you can’t do either, you won’t be able to excel in the I.M.A.A. circuit. How can you tell what your band/corp/group is good at if you don’t know what the captions mean? Here’s a relatively comprehensive guide for what captions mean in all Classes. This is to combat the posts that sound like "Our Corps set a record in musical analysis. We sure had a nice analysis of our music!"

TL;DR for below information

General Effect: Music or Visual having an emotional/connected/impactful theme or design.
Visual Proficiency: Skill pertaining to movements or form (consistent marching style, clean drill forms).
Visual Analysis: Actual design of the visual aspect of the show (drill forms, choreography) is engaging, makes sense, and/or goes well with the music.
Colorguard: Colorguard members are skillful and execute their choreography well.
Brass: Brass section members are skillful and play the music cleanly and clearly.
Music Analysis: Musical choice is well-written, makes sense, and is arranged well for the medium (sounds good on the field and being played by the available instruments).
Percussion: The playing of the percussion members is clean, readable, and done with some amounts of flair. The music for the percussionists is challenging, well-written, and doesn’t overshadow the rest of the Corps.

Scoring Captions

If you have a high score in either General Effect:

Your Corps members deliver and sustain musical effects, roles, and details.
Your Corps engages the audience through excellence and emotional connection.
Your Corps’ repertoire engages the audience through compelling impact, pace, dynamics, and development.
Your Corps has relevant creativity, artistry, and originality.
Your Corps does the above pertaining to the relevant General Effect (music or visual).

If you have a high score in Visual Proficiency:

Your Corps has depth and demonstrates simultaneous form, body, and equipment responsibilities.
Your Corps successfully executes changes in meter, pulse, and tempo.
Your Corps’ members demonstrate clarity, timing, articulation, timing, and expressive qualities with respect to body, form, equipment, and challenge.
Your Corps overcomes environmental and design challenges, and executes good recovery.
Your Corps’ members show excellent concentration and stamina.

If you have a high score in Visual Analysis:

Your Corps has a quality orchestration and enhances musical structure using the visual repertoire.
Your Corps has depth and range in design and detail over time.
Your Corps’ members demonstrate clarity and variety in responsibilities pertaining to form, body, and equipment.
Your Corps’ repertoire includes challenging movement via form, body, or equipment.
Your Corps’ members show excellent precision and consistency throughout the ensemble.

If you have a high score in Colorguard:

Your Corps’ guard enhances the musical structure and the overall show design.
Your Corps’ guard shows a range of form, body, and equipment work in both musical, physical, and environmental manners.
Your Corps’ guard succeeds and shows precision despite design and environmental challenges.
Your Corps’ guard demonstrates good training, concentration, stamina, and recovery.
Your Corps’ guard achieves both technical and expressive greatness.

If you have a high score in Brass:

Your Corps’ brass has a range of technical and musical skill and vocabulary.
Your Corps’ brass handles a range of musical, physical, and environmental challenges well.
Your Corps’ brass shows accuracy in rhythmic, articulative, and timing aspects.
Your Corps’ brass exhibits fine balance, blend, tuning, clarity, and quality in playing tone.
Your Corps’ brass shows nice expressiveness and musicianship.

If you have a high score in Music Analysis:

Your Corps shows a range in design vocabulary and challenge.
Your Corps has quality orchestration, arrangement, use of musical devices, and expressive components.
Your Corps shows clarity in style, interpretation, and design.
Your Corps exhibits consistency in sonority, intonation, balance, and blend.
Your Corps has precision in vertical alignment (tuning/arranging) and a range of musical, physical, and environmental challenges.

If you have a high score in Percussion:

Your Corps’ percussion shows a depth and range in technical and musical skill and vocabulary.
Your Corps’ percussion show ability to perform simultaneous responsibilities.
Your Corps’ percussion shows precision in content, rhythmic articulation, and general cleanliness.
Your Corps’ percussion showcases balance, blend, and expressiveness as well as musicianship.
Your Corps’ percussion exhibits an ability to overcome design and environmental challenge.

by **Drawkland** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 7:28 am

Right now I'm administrating the IMAA nation, but we need to establish a constitution or some sort of procedure. Any help would be appreciated.

by **Frenline Delpha** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 7:52 am

Drawkland wrote:Right now I'm administrating the IMAA nation, but we need to establish a constitution or some sort of procedure. Any help would be appreciated.

Well, do u want preidential voting ot be on a membership basis, or anyone who signs up for X competition basis.

by **Drawkland** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:11 am

Frenline Delpha wrote:
Drawkland wrote:Right now I'm administrating the IMAA nation, but we need to establish a constitution or some sort of procedure. Any help would be appreciated.

Well, do u want preidential voting ot be on a membership basis, or anyone who signs up for X competition basis.

I'm thinking I'll be interim "president" for now, and we'll establish a committee after the finals. I think membership will be open to anyone who participates in both Finals and a local competitions like the ones we've had so far.

by **Arcantova** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 3:59 pm

I have actually tried to rally support for drum corps competitions and an international marching music organization in the past, here, but couldn't quite get it together. I am glad to see the idea may be becoming a reality, and the marching arts will be recognized on the NS Sports forum.

However, I do have one question. Do you plan on trying to get into doing world tours and such, where scores grow throughout a season, or just continuing the current single, local competition?

by **Drawkland** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 4:18 pm

Arcantova wrote:I have actually tried to rally support for drum corps competitions and an international marching music organization in the past, here, but couldn't quite get it together. I am glad to see the idea may be becoming a reality, and the marching arts will be recognized on the NS Sports forum.

However, I do have one question. Do you plan on trying to get into doing world tours and such, where scores grow throughout a season, or just continuing the current single, local competition?

Wow that's weird, I never found your thread when I searched NS Sports for previous drum corps competitions or attempts.

Anyhow, to answer your question, I was planning on hosting a regional competition. Afterwards I was going to design a World Championships, something to the effect of DCI Finals.
So, I also need to find another way to improve scores (besides the scorinator: Local Competition typically yields scores under 93 points while World Finals delivers up to 99, I edited the Synchronized Swimming on xkoranate). That's why I'm trying to find a way to make a decent rankings sheet. This way, corps who compete in more competitions naturally gain higher scores via RP bonus starting from rankings (similar to real life).

And "Local Competition" isn't the most accurate term, it's just the first one I came up with that worked well. As far as RP goes, they should be considered similar to competitions of the DCI Tour. They're open nationally technically, but held locally.

I hope this answers your question.

by **Drawkland** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 4:29 pm

Arcantova wrote:Do you plan on trying to get into doing world tours and such [...]

I read up on your thread a bit and I feel like I need to answer a bit better.

I never really intended to have a set "tour" like you did, I expected the singular Local Competitions to sort of add up to be a tour-like system, concluding each circuit with a World Finals.

However, I do like your idea of an extended tour, but I obviously want to stick to my idea as well. Perhaps there could be at least one major "tour" of multiple competitions, with singular competitions preceding and proceeding the actual tour, then finishing with Finals.

This is why I made this thread. I'd love to have some other opinions and a discussion about the future of this organization.

by **Arcantova** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 7:46 pm

Drawkland wrote:I read up on your thread a bit and I feel like I need to answer a bit better.

I never really intended to have a set "tour" like you did, I expected the singular Local Competitions to sort of add up to be a tour-like system, concluding each circuit with a World Finals.

However, I do like your idea of an extended tour, but I obviously want to stick to my idea as well. Perhaps there could be at least one major "tour" of multiple competitions, with singular competitions preceding and proceeding the actual tour, then finishing with Finals.

This is why I made this thread. I'd love to have some other opinions and a discussion about the future of this organization.

Your idea of all of the "local competitions" adding up to be a tour-like system culminating in a world finals makes sense, and the fact that veteran corps may get better scores because of previous competitions is good too. What I had intended on doing was one thread for the entire world tour. This is, of course, just an idea to eliminate threads all over the place. You could, instead of making a new thread for every competition, have a whole thread for the multiple competitions on the circuit so that it's all in one place, and all of the scores kind of being relative across the "tour," ending with the World Championships.

by **Drawkland** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 8:14 pm

Arcantova wrote:
Drawkland wrote:I read up on your thread a bit and I feel like I need to answer a bit better.

I never really intended to have a set "tour" like you did, I expected the singular Local Competitions to sort of add up to be a tour-like system, concluding each circuit with a World Finals.

However, I do like your idea of an extended tour, but I obviously want to stick to my idea as well. Perhaps there could be at least one major "tour" of multiple competitions, with singular competitions preceding and proceeding the actual tour, then finishing with Finals.

This is why I made this thread. I'd love to have some other opinions and a discussion about the future of this organization.

Your idea of all of the "local competitions" adding up to be a tour-like system culminating in a world finals makes sense, and the fact that veteran corps may get better scores because of previous competitions is good too. What I had intended on doing was one thread for the entire world tour. This is, of course, just an idea to eliminate threads all over the place. You could, instead of making a new thread for every competition, have a whole thread for the multiple competitions on the circuit so that it's all in one place, and all of the scores kind of being relative across the "tour," ending with the World Championships.

That's true, a megathread could work. Although I like the notion of separate threads because it gives a bit more individuality to the hosts of each competition, plus it gives new nations or spottily active ones a chance to hit a few competitions if they missed the debut of the circuit.

Perhaps a more tour-friendly design could be used by implementing a sort of "previously in the circuit" type thing.
But the most important thing would be to establish a rankings thing that could be operated via spreadsheet. I've seen a template for win records/etc., but I have no earthly idea on how to change that to fit a single instance, and a decimal score at that.

And on the topic of ranking system, if and when that's implemented, regional exclusive competitions (like the one I'm about to host) should be limited to one per region per circuit. That way one region doesn't have 7 exclusive competitions to give their ratings a massive boost while non-region members are left behind in the rankings.

by **Arcantova** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 8:21 pm

Drawkland wrote:Your idea of all of the "local competitions" adding up to be a tour-like system culminating in a world finals makes sense, and the fact that veteran corps may get better scores because of previous competitions is good too. What I had intended on doing was one thread for the entire world tour. This is, of course, just an idea to eliminate threads all over the place. You could, instead of making a new thread for every competition, have a whole thread for the multiple competitions on the circuit so that it's all in one place, and all of the scores kind of being relative across the "tour," ending with the World Championships.
That's true, a megathread could work. Although I like the notion of separate threads because it gives a bit more individuality to the hosts of each competition, plus it gives new nations or spottily active ones a chance to hit a few competitions if they missed the debut of the circuit.

Perhaps a more tour-friendly design could be used by implementing a sort of "previously in the circuit" type thing.
But the most important thing would be to establish a rankings thing that could be operated via spreadsheet. I've seen a template for win records/etc., but I have no earthly idea on how to change that to fit a single instance, and a decimal score at that.

And on the topic of ranking system, if and when that's implemented, regional exclusive competitions (like the one I'm about to host) should be limited to one per region per circuit. That way one region doesn't have 7 exclusive competitions to give their ratings a massive boost while non-region members are left behind in the rankings.

I completely neglected the individuality of each competition created by the hosts. That does make sense then. It also does work well for those who missed the debut of the circuit, as with myself. I missed the first two competitions. It reminds me of the the ATP is doing with the tennis circuit here.

by **Drawkland** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:00 pm

Arcantova wrote:I completely neglected the individuality of each competition created by the hosts. That does make sense then. It also does work well for those who missed the debut of the circuit, as with myself. I missed the first two competitions. It reminds me of the the ATP is doing with the tennis circuit here.

I didn't realize it at first, but once I had looked at the ATP (I guess now they're the NSTT) paradigm they had going I realized it's pretty similar.

I sort of want to have one more little competition between my regional and the World Finals, mainly to drum up as much interest before finals starts, to find any other people who may've missed the first few (like you), and hopefully to have someone other than me or Xhayparia host a competition.

So once I'm done with my regional I'll talk to people and see if I can get a non-Sonnelian host to try their hand at a drum corps competition. Just to spread things out. And also to see if there could be a non-Finals competition that will switch hosts every edition (sort of like the IBS is?).

by **International Marching Arts Association** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 9:01 pm

To jumpstart the Committee, Constitution, Officer Positions, and other items needed to steadily establish this organization, here's the plan at this point:

1) The "Beta" I.M.A.A. Committee will be established immediately after the first I.M.A.A. World Championships conclude.
2) The Beta Committee's first and primary job will be to agree upon a set of rules for the organization to run on for the rest of its existence.
3) Eligibility for the Beta Committee is as follows:
To be eligible, a nation must have:
-Signed up for at least one regular "Local" Competition during the First Circuit.
-Signed up for the I.M.A.A. World Championships
-Have posted at least once on the IC thread of any competitions competed in.
-Show an interest in being part of the Committee.
4) To clarify the above, a nation will not have to have used the same corps in every competition, as long as the nation itself signed up.
5) After World Finals, I'll compile the list of eligible nations, post the list, and TG each nation to see if they're interested.
6) Once I have every confirmation or rejection registered, the committee will meet to discuss the I.M.A.A. Constitution, and who the officers designated for the Second Circuit will be. The officers part is only if extra time is had. The most important area is creating the framework via the constitution.
7) After the Constitution is ratified, the Committee will elect Officers (either at the Constitutional writing or at a later date), likely the President and Vice President, and the Beta Committee will be dissolved.

The I.M.A.A. Second Circuit will begin with the President's discretion, and the new, official I.M.A.A. Committee will be formed via whatever rules are in place in the Constitution.

To accommodate for late interest such as Arcantova, one final Local Competition (name and time TBD) will be held to prepare for World Finals. I'd liken it to a Baptism of Fire/Iron I suppose. This will be to give nations a final chance to receive Beta Committee membership by signing up/posting in a Local Competition before Finals.

This is the plan I'm sticking with but if there's any problems feel free to point them out.

by **Drawkland** » Tue Jan 05, 2016 9:14 pm

International Marching Arts Association wrote:To accommodate for late interest such as Arcantova, one final Local Competition (name and time TBD) will be held to prepare for World Finals. I'd liken it to a Baptism of Fire/Iron I suppose. This will be to give nations a final chance to receive Beta Committee membership by signing up/posting in a Local Competition before Finals.

To stick with the Baptism theme, I'm thinking of calling it the "Baptism of Sound," or the "Baptism of Drums" or something in that line of thinking. My favorite one is "Baptism of Rhythm," and unless a better suggestion is found I'm going with that.

by **Alphatheta** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 4:41 am

Drawkland wrote:To stick with the Baptism theme, I'm thinking of calling it the "Baptism of Sound," or the "Baptism of Drums" or something in that line of thinking. My favorite one is "Baptism of Rhythm," and unless a better suggestion is found I'm going with that.

"Baptism of Rhythm" seems pretty unbeatable.

I know the time is TBD & probably linked to when Sonnel finishes up, but do you have a rough guestimate of when it will be?

by **Drawkland** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 6:19 am

Alphatheta wrote:
Drawkland wrote:To stick with the Baptism theme, I'm thinking of calling it the "Baptism of Sound," or the "Baptism of Drums" or something in that line of thinking. My favorite one is "Baptism of Rhythm," and unless a better suggestion is found I'm going with that.

"Baptism of Rhythm" seems pretty unbeatable.

I know the time is TBD & probably linked to when Sonnel finishes up, but do you have a rough guestimate of when it will be?

That's what I was thinking.

Judging on when the last two people get their act together and sign up, it'll likely start before this weekend, and therefore end early next week.

So I would personally slate signups for the Baptism of Rhythm to open on the 13th or 14th. Next Saturday at the latest.

by **Arcantova** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 5:43 pm

Drawkland wrote:
International Marching Arts Association wrote:To accommodate for late interest such as Arcantova, one final Local Competition (name and time TBD) will be held to prepare for World Finals. I'd liken it to a Baptism of Fire/Iron I suppose. This will be to give nations a final chance to receive Beta Committee membership by signing up/posting in a Local Competition before Finals.

To stick with the Baptism theme, I'm thinking of calling it the "Baptism of Sound," or the "Baptism of Drums" or something in that line of thinking. My favorite one is "Baptism of Rhythm," and unless a better suggestion is found I'm going with that.

"Baptism of Rhythm" has a nice rhyming pattern to it. I'll try to jump in on this competition since I missed the first couple.

by **Drawkland** » Wed Jan 06, 2016 6:11 pm

Arcantova wrote:
Drawkland wrote:To stick with the Baptism theme, I'm thinking of calling it the "Baptism of Sound," or the "Baptism of Drums" or something in that line of thinking. My favorite one is "Baptism of Rhythm," and unless a better suggestion is found I'm going with that.

"Baptism of Rhythm" has a nice rhyming pattern to it. I'll try to jump in on this competition since I missed the first couple.

I'll link it here when I make the signup.

by **International Marching Arts Association** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 8:46 pm

I've found a template and I've created a Ranking Spreadsheet for the I.M.A.A. This is sort of an experiment, if someone finds a better way, please let me know. But honestly, I think this is the best we'll get for awhile.

I've made a procedure for the President, whoever it is, will update rankings when new results occur. Then anyone can use the rankings for bonuses when scoring competitions. I'll be using the rankings in the Sonnel competition to see if it ruins anything.

Tell me what you think! It looks bare now but that's because we've only had 2 competitions.

by **Drawkland** » Sat Jan 09, 2016 8:57 pm

That'll have to be a clause of the President's duties in the constitution obviously, to keep the rankings updated after every competition or at the VERY least once after every circuit.

by **Drawkland** » Tue Jan 12, 2016 8:12 pm

And that's a wrap on the Regional competition. I doubt I'll do that again, unless some really active corps nations join Sonnel.

Anyway, I'll start working on the Signup thread for the Baptism of Rhythm tonight and hopefully can post tomorrow morning before 10AM EST. If not then, expect it that afternoon. I'll post a link once it's ready.

Last.fm · by **Cosumar** » Tue Jan 12, 2016 9:35 pm

Great work on all of this. I look forward to participating more in the future and hopefully helping this grow.

"Baptism of Rhythm" is a goddamn perfect name.

by **Drawkland** » Wed Jan 13, 2016 7:51 am

Cosumar wrote:Great work on all of this. I look forward to participating more in the future and hopefully helping this grow.

"Baptism of Rhythm" is a goddamn perfect name.

And I look forward to seeing you here.

Speaking of which, HERE is the signups for the BoR. As I mention in the OP, this is mainly for a ranking boost to anyone's Corps (similar to other Baptisms). However, this one isn't limited to newcomers. But if you plan to send 2 corps to IMAA Finals, this would be the place to give your newer corps a ranks boost.

by **Drawkland** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:09 pm

It's a bit late for this to apply to the First Circuit, as the Baptism of Rhythm leads right into World Championships, but I mulled over Arcantova's earlier paradigm and compared this to other sports, and I decided a sort of tour would be a good idea.

So, the problem with Drum Corps competitions, in their current form, is that they present 2 opportunities, at most, to roleplay. 3 if you're an overachiever who RP's after the final results (which hasn't yet occurred anyway). And so, limited times to RP is rather bland. Which is why there needs to be more opportunities.

That's why I'm proposing that there be a sort of tour. Now, this won't be intended to replace the standalone competitions we've had thus far, I rather like those, but there needs to be at least one sort of tour that has multiple rounds. Like Arcantova had planned, it would be multiple competitions blanketed under one event, but under a single host.

There could be multiple of these, just like the standalone. They would improve the rankings as such, obviously, and would be a big boost, as it's several competitions (I'd guess 4-8) in a single shot.

Thoughts on this? Again, this would have to be saved until next circuit.

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