Some DCI for your pleasure:
Madison Scouts, 1996 Finals, 6th Place: Malagueña.
Phantom Regiment, 2008 Finals, 1st Place: Spartacus (pre-show and opening impact) Just jump to 2:30 in if you want to skip the “drama” part…
2008 Highlights, various corps, from the Finals Listen to some of the lucious horns… (Links there also to the 2007, 2006, and 2004 Highlights)
As always with good quality music on YouTube, listen in high definition, using good speakers. 
I am actually one of the people in that video, and when I saw the thread title, I was afraid it might be inspired by our performance. I’ll admit that we are not perfectly in tune 100% of the time, but in this particular case, there are a few good reasons for that.
It is true, we can’t always hear each other very well, compared to being in a concert setting, where the locations of the different instruments is carefully chosen, and unchanging.
As a physics major, I can tell you the Doppler effect would not make a noticeable difference for a marching band. Moving around, having instruments pointed in all different directions, etc.? That would matter.
JerseyFrank, you’re right that this is a small portion of the band. It was only about 35 or 40 people, whereas the whole band is around 300. It’s particularly hard to book a lot of people for a gig where the calltime is 4:30 am on a weekday in the middle of summer, since most people are either out of town, or have a summer job, or simply don’t want to get up that early. (Those of us that did though, we’re glad we did!) Why was the calltime so early, you ask? Because we were actually booked for a completely different gig: The grand re-opening of the Universal Studios backlot. (I hope you’ll agree we sounded much better on that gig.) As we were leaving, someone from The Tonight Show called us and asked us to stay. So the entire planning process of the second gig, from finding out that we were going to be doing a gig at all, until the actual taping, was a span of about 5 or 6 hours. As far as rehearsal, we could only run through each song about two or three times on the set. After that, we practiced the timing and logistics outside, but we weren’t allowed to play, because of other things being filmed, so there was definitely even less rehearsal than we would usually get for this kind of gig. Plus, we were quite tired, as you can imagine.
Kevbo: Yes, it’s quite temperature dependent. Our “green room” was a well air-conditioned room which was a few minutes’ walk away from Conan’s studio. It was a pretty warm day, so our instruments went from the cold green room to the hot outdoor air, to the studio for rehearsal, back into the hot air, back to the cold room, back to the hot air, and back to the studio for the taping. We didn’t get to warm up or tune right before the gig, which we usually would, and the temperature changes definitely made a big difference. Much more than for a football game, where we warm up for about an hour and a half before we hit the field, and our warmup is outdoors, so we’re not changing temperatures over and over.
Drum God, as I mentioned, we didn’t have a lot of advance planning for this gig, so you’re right that we didn’t have a lot of microphones. Basically, someone from the show tried to listen to us as we did the rehearsal, and picked out people she thought sounded pretty good. Then she attached a wireless microphone to the cape of the person in front of them. They only used about 5 or 6 mics total, I think. Our marching style includes a horn swing, so the instruments weren’t pointed right at the microphone. This makes a very big difference for brass instruments. It’s definitely hard to record a marching band well, and you’re right that they didn’t put a ton of effort into it, since this was just a silly 15-second bit about a budget surplus.
By the way, we actually recorded a “studio” album recently (in Bovard auditorium on campus, not an actual studio). I haven’t heard the recording yet, but it comes out sometime in the next few months I think, and it should be very good quality. I don’t know the exact release date or how you can get it, but I’m sure they’ll post details on www.uscband.com [END shameless plug]
Rigamarole: Yeah, “committed” is a good description. I’m always very amused by the reactions of non-band students who walk by our rehearsals. He definitely views himself as a coach, and often compares the band to the football team. Would you believe this coming year will be his 40th year at USC?
Anyway, if people think we were a little out of tune, I don’t mind. Partly because I know it wasn’t entirely our fault, for the reasons I already mentioned, partly because I’m a woodwind, and the brass were definitely more out of tune than we were ;-), and partly because in the past year or so, we’ve appeared on American Idol, the Grammys, and the Oscars, among other things. What other band can say that?
Bravo. This is once again proof that this is an amazing message board. We have all kinds of experts in every possible field here.
And in this case, people who toot their horns are helpful.
Notice that TJdude825 has been a member since 2000! That means, unless the poster is a relatively OLD college student, that he was a member as a very young teen! Congratulations! 
The University of Michigan Marching Band performs Malagueña at the 1998 Rose Bowl. Just for comparison with a true marching band. Sorry, TJdude825, I didn’t see a version of the song done by your band, so I threw up the competition.
Sorry, one last one. This is for pure enjoyment purposes:
DCI Blast! Malagueña (at Walt Disney World, I believe). This is what happens when you take the best of the best and put them inside to show off. Note the circular breathing note on the horn… :eek:
Oh, and yeah, they are in tune. 
I’m sure we’ve played that at some point in our history. I’ll let you know if a video pops up. Congratulations on that performance. We play in tune too when we’re at the Rose Bowl. The biggest difference being that we have a week to prepare, rather than a few hours, with no chance to do a legitimate warmup.
Also, no… I’m 21 and I’m going to be a senior this year. Joined the band freshman year (2006). Why would you assume I’ve been in the band the same amount of time as I’ve been on this board?
I think DSYoungEsq meant you’ve been a member of this board since you were very young - by your own recounting, you were 12. Does 12 not count as very young?
How negligible is the Doppler effect? If I did the math right, always a crapshoot, at 0.5 meters per second, which seems a reasonable speed for a marching band, 440 Hz doppler shifts to 440.6 Hz. I probably couldn’t hear it, but I’ll bet some could. A Wikipedia article says
And when you consider that some might be moving towards you and some away, it could double the Doppler shift between the instruments relative to each other.
What he said.
Band!?!?!?
Never say the B word around drum corps people, they get offended.
DCI Corps please.
Ex-DCI Corps member (Sacramento Freelancers 87-89), DCI horn lines are also tuned to temperature.
In our case, probably other groups as well, tuning profiles are built for every player and instrument. You have a baseline that all your main and valve slides are set to at a specified temperature. Right before we went in the brass instructors would make last minute adjustments +/- X number of mm of slide travel depending on current temperature to minimize for environmental shift in pitch.
Assuming even semi decent recording quality, by DCI standards, tuning in that video is atrocious.
Remeber also DCI corps restrict age of members (22) and number of members on the feild (150 now IIRC it was 128 in my day)
Comparing a university band to a DCI corps is like comparing a random ranger squad to a seal team. DCI is pretty much the olympics of marching band it looks and sounds good because they are good, committed, and well trained. My first year 18 people tried out for my section and 8 were accepted.
You misunderstand what I said. :sigh: Why do people get so damned defensive?
I was saying that the U of M clip could be used to compare what the USC band should sound like. I was implying that the DCI videos wouldn’t offer a true measure, because I fucking well know the difference!!! <fiery eyes and heavy breathing>
Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to dial it up there. 
Oh, and I am sorry, I did try to be sure not to use the term “band” with the DCI groups, but it slipped. I understand that they are hyper-sensitive about this seemingly ridiculous distinction. 
ETA: btw, the first competitions were last night for this season. (Yeah, I’m moderately interested in it, and will probably attend the finals in Indy this year).
Mmm, hope the intent of humor wasn’t missed there. 
The band director at the high school from which I graduated was, in fact, a former US Marine Corp drill instructor. His marching band was always outstanding (I wasn’t in it - I played in the school’s other three music groups).
Anyways, the OP is based on a false premise, as has already been noted. My high school marching band played perfectly in tune. In fact, it bugged the crap out of us that other bands sounded worse than us, but got higher ratings in musicality. It seemed like tuning didn’t count. After I left, they got a new director, whose band sounds awful, but consistently gets high awards for marching. While they get fairly good scores in concert band, it’s only because they play much easier pieces that don’t require as much dynamic tuning.
I think it would be a good idea to have a different director for concert and marching bands, as it seems what is important is completely different.
Drum corps should be proud of being called a band. It implies that they are at least in tune.
Uh huh…sure. Having heard more than my share of HS bands at various times I question your definition of “in tune”.
Band is pretty much used as an insult/perjorative among corps members.
A HS or university marching band is philosphically a whole different creature than a corps.
As someone who doesn’t follow this type of music ordinarily, I’m assuming that most of the bands whose performances I somehow do hear are pretty much the top tier–the ones who make it to the Rose Parade–with one notable exception, about which more below, those of NCAA Division I universities, the USMC Band, and so on. I’m usually awestruck at the crispness and precision of the chords, particularly with the brasses, because to me as a guitar player the brasses and winds just seem ridiculously difficult. I don’t know how they do it. On the other hand…a TV studio just doesn’t seem the ideal place for that type of band. Could there have been acoustic issues, perhaps with the echo?
As for the exception I mentioned with regard to the Rose Parade, I am referring to the LAUSD Band that I’ve complained about here before. Instead of letting the individual high school bands practice and compete for the privilege of participating in the Rose Parade, the Los Angeles Unified School District sends a band comprising players from all over the district. They usually sound terrible, but this is not surprising considering that they can’t have been playing or practicing together very long.
Dude, don’t go there. It gets ugly. REAL ugly when you say things like this.