🙄 Please. Stop. This is a travesty. I marched for 8 yrs. I soloed. I taught. I moved on to senior corps when there were no women allowed - until then. I am not a professional musician. I am well versed in brass AND percussion. Not bells, marimba, vibraphones, temple bells, triangles. None of that. Drums. Drums march. Anything else is choreography & choreography forces you to dumb down what you play, no.matter how "cool" you think it looks. I do not earn my living making the music I still can & still love. None of the kids I marched with earn a living making that music. None of the kids I taught make a living that way. Most of us who have survived still can, tho. But there's no way in hell we'll ever get paid, let alone respected. Have you noticed that in the last 2 yrs all you've seen & heard from the yahoos who put these posts together are just that? An advertising campaign. That's what it's been reduced to. The mighty founders of whatever it's supposed to be by now have moved on. Retired, maybe? Anyone out there asked "On what?" or "How?"? Once upon a time they coopted a lot of the best & brightest to walk away from the industry that birthed them w/the subtle promise that you'd all be stars some day. That those big, bad meanies who.had organized the system of competitions & judging assocs. & nat'l titles assoc'd w/charities & veterans organizations & the CYO, etc, had to be supplanted bcs THEY WERE MAKING MONEY & WERE EXPLOITING YOU. YOU. You should be getting PAID, they argued. Or something like it, was what they came up with then. Well, it hasn't happened. They won't be paying me. Or the kids I marched with. Or the guys who have to hold down jobs while they still participate in senior corps (that are now being rebranded as "all-age" - pls spare us!). They won't be paying you either. You won't be making a living playing the bells & dancing. I know you wish you could. I know that you & a lot of others you march with wish it could go on forever - just like all those guys who thought they had put together the guaranteed way they could go on living the drum corps life style forever did. But you won't. The math doesn't work. The crowds aren't there. The participants are turning away. The scrap books have been filled & are being stored away where hopefully they won't get wet. The guys who started all.of this, the ones who have for all intents & purposes "retired", have set their interests on developing areas on the other side of the planet - just like American businesses do. It's not that they're done w/you. It's just that their data shows that the mkt has moved on to where there will be money for such things done in this off-Broadway fashion. The days for such histrionics are over here. There's just not enough money & in the future the shrinking amt of those who still want to audition for maybe a spot in what is likely 3 or 4 surviving dinosaurs ( leaving a significant number of you likely never being on the field for a nat'l title performance - which is hardly fair since it hasn't been.a question of your ability that will determine whether you make it or not, & I mean, what's the point of all that work to amt to a spare part??) ain't going to be that attractive. The alternative - the reorganizing drum corps at the old grass roots level where everybody plays & everyone gets in - takes too long, is too hard & ultimately will be perceived as thankless work. Why? Bcs no money - excuse me, no REAL money - is involved. And in a country where an average house worth $400k is no longer affordable, we can't have THAT. So, sorry. This is not "...what I was made for...". Not by the strds of the DCI. This is what THEY were made for. Not you.