As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts.

This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. Now we come to the most modern marching shows available. Props continue to be more thoroughly integrated into the show, and the color guard continues to be used to add color and visual contrast, as well as actual actors in a story. Electronics are now integrated into the DCI shows as well, and we see the drum majors of Phantom Regiment’s 2008 production being used as characters throughout the entire performance. Many corps are now…

As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts.

This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. As we moved into the new millennium, the color guard moved further from the hornline and drumline as far as uniforms, but began to interact much more with the individual members. Where the early 90s has included an occasional soloist interacting with the guard, now large groups of the hornline were doing full out ballet moves and poses throughout the shows.

Though it had been before, the marching show is now even more dance- and…

Ivy writes:

I am in my first year as a Special Education teacher. My class is out of control. Kids are yelling at each other. Nobody is focused on their work. I am yelling and screaming and they are talking back and yelling back at me. Everybody is trying to help me out. Some say I need to be more positive, some say I need to be stronger and more strict. I do not know what to do. As a group, they are against me. The situation is very confrontational. I can not stop them going crazy. The kids know it. They are going crazy but they do not care. Some kids even have a lot of fun of it….

As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts.

This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. As music selections moved away from the more traditional Broadway and Latin Jazz themes that had dominated the early years of drumcorps, corps began focusing more on classical-type (mostly Romantic era and early 20th century) and concert band music. This development continued through the bulk of the 1990s, with the addition of more elaborate props and other visual elements.

1994 – Blue Devils
Video unavailable. In 1994, Star of Indiana left DCI and began touring…

As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts.

This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. Last time we saw how the Garfield Cadets transformed the marching by speeding things up and adding pass-thrus and of course the famous “Z Pull.” If 1983-1987 was about revolutionizing marching style, 1988-1993 was about bucking the traditional musical elements. One of the key innovators in this area was The Star of Indiana, who left DCI following the 1993 season.

1988 – Madison Scouts

1989 – Santa Clara Vanguard

1990 –…

As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts.

This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. So far, we’ve seen the first 11 years of DCI. In 1983, the Garfield Cadets began their three-year of DCI dominance with some of the most innovative marching drill ever seen. The Blue Devils won in 1986, and the Cadets were back on top in 1987.

1983 – Garfield Cadets

1984 – Garfield Cadets

1985 – Garfield Cadets

1986 – Blue Devils
Embedding disabled, click here for the video. However,…

As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts.

This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. Yesterday, we saw some classic footage from the first five years of DCI. Today, we’ll look at the next six years.

1977 – Blue Devils
I can’t find a video! I did find one of the Kilties from 1977 (11th Place) though.

1978 – Santa Clara Vanguard
Embedding disabled. Click here to watch the excerpt.

Here’s the 1978 Phantom Regiment (2nd place) finale.

1979 – Blue Devils
Video unavailable. Here is the 1979…

As we close out the school year and begin looking toward the summer, band directors turn their minds toward marching arts.

This year, I’m going through some history and exploring The Evolution of Marching via YouTube. I’m taking you along for the journey as well. Today, we’ll look at the first five DCI finals. Since video footage is rare from these days, I am really surprised to be able to find recordings from each of these years.

1972 – Anaheim Kingsmen
YouTube Embedding disabled, watch the excerpt here

1973 – Santa Clara Vanguard

1974 – Santa Clara Vanguard

1975 – Madison Scouts

Another video is available here but the embedding is disabled. I link to this one…

As the school year winds down, band directors invariably begin turning their minds towards the upcoming marching season. This year, I have a 7th grade percussionist who knows a ton of trivia about Drum Corps International. His father used to march and has taught across the country, so he comes to middle school with a much better background of the history of drumming than most students.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been having some conversations with him and I began to realize that he doesn’t know a lot about the old history of marching, and I don’t know a lot about recent marching history. So I thought I’d go look through the YouTube archives and watch parts of as…

Back in March of 2009, I received my first guest post submission from Karen Schweitzer entitled 50 Online Reference Sites for Teachers. At the time, she was barely building her online portfolio by sending out guest posts to edublog across the web. As best as I can tell, So You Want To Teach? was one of the first blogs she submitted articles for.

As soon as the article went live, it quickly became one of the most popular pages on the entire blog. In fact, that article alone received some 275 views the first three weeks it was up.  At the time, that was huge. For comparison, 14 months later, I posted a guest article 8 Teachers Who Changed History…