Let me take a moment to introduce myself to many and re-introduce myself to some.
The name is Prunejuice and I create the Prunalysis.
What the heck is that you might ask?
Very simple. The Prunalysis is a detailed report of everything that I experienced at a marching band performance.
It is not yet another person saying "so & so got beasted on".
I simply do my best to tell it like it is so that feel like you were at the event.
I do not sugar-coat, but I do not insult either.
Enjoy or Not.
The Prunejuice...As I said...Telling it like it is.
Prunejuice
Co-Founder, CEO
"Block Band Music & Publishing" & "Yeah Baby! Sports"
P.S. Please excuse any spelling errors. I do my best to get these up as quickly as possible.
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The reason: The weather. The I didn't leave for the event until well after it started. If you didn't know it, North Carolina was hit with some of the worst series of storms (aside from Hurricanes) that have eve hit us.
It was toss up for several hours as to whether I would go or not.
I am several glad to see that all of the groups arrived to the event safely, and that there were no incidents. There were many unfortunate incidents in other parts of NC.
I don't even think that people at the competition knew how bad it really was for the first few hours. At one time the news asked people in the area to take cover, I don't if the word was ever conveyed to them.
Like I said, I'm just glad that the event (minus a small power outage) went us with no major problems.
Due to the short time that I was there, the Prunalysis will cover only:
A little bit of Westover High School's Band
An even smaller bit of Morrow High School
South Carolina State University's Drumline - "Bongo Bros"
Virginia State University's Drumline
& a little bit of
Warren Couny High School's Drumline - "Steel Stix"
The Prunester...more to come.
62.
The Prunester...Feeling really blessed right now.
Wow. The sound of this line.
I must say that VSU has probably the best sounding bass drum line that I have ever heard.
The bass drums were all very well tuned. The bass drums passages were clean and clear. The tone of each drum from the itty-bitty no. 1 drum to the huge bottom drum was articulate and full of life.
They continued to do great bass drum passages while dancing.
I will comment more on the VSU's drumline later, since I saw them in performance.
The Prunester...More to come...
Even though I am a trombone player by trade I love the sound of a trumpet in the stratosphere.
When I finally got to the inside of the gym, I learned that this incredible sound was being produced by the trumpet section of Westover High School.
Much props to their band director for keeping those screamers coming. They were like this when I heard them at the Westover High School Jamboree late year.
The Prunester...More to come.
Warren County's Band Director Taylor Whitehead always does a good job of making the events exciting by inviting good bands to play at the drumline competition.
This night was no exception.
Next up...Morrow High School "Mustangs"
"Talking Out The Side of Your Neck" by Cameo
The first thing that I noticed was the tubas. Although strong in their upper registers, the tuba sound was not being heard on the low notes. So much of what they were playing was lost.
The drum majors were in the front dancing. The drum majors were uniform but seemed to be lacking energy when dancing to such a high energy song. It wasn't until the very end of the song that the drum majors kicked up the energy a notch.
I wasn't sure which section was responsible for this, but the tempo of the song started to drag just a bit. Not very much, but just enough for the energy of the song to go down just a little.
Trombones...Morrow HS has only three but they were very, very powerful. They played with the intensity of three college players.
Towards the end of the song, Morrow HS brought out the trombones & baritones to the front to play their part again.
It was definitely very powerful. I would have thought that when coming out to the front they would have played something different than their regular part.
2 trumpet players joined the rest of the low brass section. I couldn't quite figure this out since the rest of the trumpets and mellophones stayed in the back.
I didn't know if the whole brass line was supposed to come up front and just didn't or if the 2 trumpet players were baritone players without instruments (the part that they were playing was exactly the same as the baritone just an octave up).
Overall, a very powerful performance by Morrow's small but very strong band.
The Prunester...Telling it like it is.
Prunejuice
Co-Founder, CEO
"Block Band Music & Publishing" & "Yeah Baby! Sports"
I forgot to mention, since I can't find any copies of the Prunalysis Disclaimer...
I really appreciate your posts and replies on the topics, not just your "views."
Right or wrong, agree or disagree I really like hearing what you have to say.
The Prunester...More to come...
Next up
South Carolina State University - "Bongo Bros"
South Carolina State’s Drumline has come a long way from where they were back in the 90's. But I guess many drumlines have.
The show started with a short cadence with 5 yr. Sadarien playing alongside the drumline. I couldn't tell if he was keeping up with their playing or not, but his sticks were always going the right place at the right time.
After this short cadence, The Bongo Bros for the most part left the stage.
The second part of their show started with a single bass drum playing standing in the middle of the gym floor.
Sarcastically, I wondered what a single drum player could do to entertain an audience. I expected him to play some rolls on the drum. Instead, he went right for playing a beat on the drum that started to get the crowd going.
After the audience started grooving a bit, another bass drum player joined him on the court gesturing that the first guy’s drum was too small and that he would show him how to do it.
The second bass drum started playing the same beat on a much bigger drum (30 or 32 in), and really got the crowd going. I appreciated this since I feel that often the beauty and importance of the bottom bass drums is neglected for their smaller counterparts.
The rest of the drumline joined the first two from the four corners of the gym.
Overall, the playing of the SCSU's snare was very clean. I hate to compare, but I'm going to anyway. They were a bit cleaner than VSU's. To VSU's defense, VSU was attempting much harder things, but simple or complicated, clean is clean.
I liked many of the things that the snares did for sticking.
SCSU's bass drum patterns were good but not nearly as clean or as clear as VSU. The top bass drums were a bit muddled.
The Prunester...More to come...
Towards the end, the snares and multi-toms played a solo together while the tenor drums kept gesturing for them to play it faster. And that the snares & multi-toms did.
The tenors joined them towards the end with a short little groovy part.
This was all a great distraction from the bass drums that were busy in the back putting their drums on stands! After the other drums moved out of the way, bass drums played a very nice solo. You know that kind, were the bass drums keep switching places while playing. We've seen it before, but it was still good.
Overall, the Bongo Bros. did a great show.
More than anything else, I appreciated all the movement as the drumline constantly shifted position to feature different elements of the ensemble.
I really liked how the bass drums turned back and forth to the side while marching and playing some of their tonal patterns.
The only low real low point of the show, the ending. The show just kind of ended and the drumline just walked off the floor. There was no climax, and no opportunity for the drumline to stand their and receive the benefits of applause from their audience.
I would encourage the drumline to remember that having a great ending is important because the audience only really remembers the beginning and the end.
The Prunester...Telling it like it is.
Prunejuice
Co-Founder, CEO
"Block Band Music & Publishing" & "Yeah Baby! Sports"
or Battle of the Band, since it seems that Morrow High School just up and left leaving Westover all by their lonesome.
Someone from Westover High School will have to let me know the actual name of this song.
"Dragnet/I've Got 5 On It"
The spirit mix that Westover played started with the main thing to the TV dragnet.
The sound of Westover's snare drums is interesting. The drums have a lot of ring to them and don't seem to carry that well versus the rest of the drumline.
The next part of the mix went to the 90's song "I've Got Five On it"
The tubas sounded great here, producing a very full and strong song. It seemed as though the tenor drums were purposely trying to drown the tubas out. Balance!
This took away from the overall sound.
The screaming trumpet player missed the pitch a little.
The screamer is very, very strong. I didn't realize initially that there only seemed to be 5 trumpets. That being the case, the highest register is very full, but it seems the sound needs more volume in the trumpet players that are playing it down an octave. Sometimes the sound seemed insecure in the lower trumpets.
The Prunester...Telling it Like it is.
Prunejuice
Co-Founder, CEO
"Block Band Music & Publishing" & "Yeah Baby! Sports"
Virginia State University's "Orange Thunder" Drumline.
After seeing VSU drumline run through their show outside I just knew that they would be a shew-in to be the best drumline in attendance.
A couple of things happened though.
VSU uses a drumline block like NSU with the multi-toms on the far left, the snare in the middle with the bass behind them, and the cymbals on the right.
The difference though is VSU formation is much flatter, almost a straight line. This put the cymbals right up front right next to the snares. This became a major balance issue! The cymbals began to drown out everything that the snares and basses were doing.
There were some nice licks going on in the snares.
Good work on the basses particular during a feature when the bottom bass drummer put down his drum and started video taping the other bass drums run tonals.
There was a nice snare drum/multi-tom trade-off in the later part of the show.
One of the cymal players made a major mistake by starting to march across the floor when it was not time to do so. The other cymbal players started to follow him, but then they all stopped. His facial expression made it clear that this was a mistake.
The Prunester...More to come...
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