[Magdalen] TECnical question

[Jay Weigel]

I just caught onto a TV show called "Bama State Style" which features the
band and dance teams of Alabama State University, an HBCU in Madison,
Alabama. It's a pretty interesting show, with less "drama" than most TV
reality shows, and I really do enjoy the music and watching what goes into
putting on a halftime show. It's pretty intense! Unfortunately it's on at
11 pm Eastern on Saturdays :-(

On Tue, May 5, 2015 at 11:31 AM, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com>
wrote:

> For a few years I participated in the MSU Alumni Band, and once each autumn
> we'd gather on campus and prepare a real pregame and halftime show, and the
> highlight for many was the elaborate ritual starting with a call to
> attention at the rehearsal field and the march to the stadium, along with
> many traditional things done just so. The drum line figures heavily in
> this, with an impressive five-minute sequence of drum cadences called The
> Series. It involves some choreography on the part of the various percussion
> groups, especially the cymbals ("plates").
>
> Developments over the years in the Series traditions are one aspect that I
> think many of the alumni join me in being not only OK with but amazed by.
> The MSU drum line has become a highly proficient and professional unit, and
> the Series has become a tight, complex rhythmic web worthy of any
> competitive drum corps. On one Alumni Band Day the alumni drum line and the
> current Spartan drum line took turns performing their versions of The
> Series, and I have to say the alumni version sounded like a bunch of
> rubbish bins being thrown into an alley, although the traditional stuff was
> still meaningful. Then the current drum line did their version, and it blew
> everyone away. Young folk today would describe it as "sick." It is sick
> indeed. And worthy of the pride of Spartans old and new.
>