It’s Really Just Teaching: Nick Riley on Judging, Design & Education

I could talk about bias all day long, but it's not about, we'll save it for later.

Yeah.

It's not about us.

So So Nick, you had talked about earlier, you used the word big picture.

So this question kind of relates to a little bit of it's the big picture.

So I'm curious to hear your take on it, especially with your involvement with the fall projects and then some of the things we're going to talk about here later on winter.

But the marching arts really has become a year-round activity.

There's no dismissing that thought.

Fall marching band, DCI in the summer, WGI in the winter, they all have their own identities.

But how much do you think they influence each other?

oh uh tremendously uh and we will see as judges like the trend from the previous summer whatever that trend is we'll see it make an appearance this fall uh down to the same body uh that that's probably the easiest thing that one could do right after a summer is is maybe like uh some sort of uh you know trick uh or effect moment that was in a drum corps show will appear in marching band um And that's, you know, an homage, I would say, would be why people are doing it.

It's really cool and people want to emulate it or they'll do like a riff on it or you'll hear the like similar musical selections that will permeate a couple a couple seasons.

You'll hear a lot of this and then like the next piece comes around, you'll hear a lot of that.

And then it kind of goes in cycles.

um some of the show themes can can be kind of similar like if there's like a i don't know a darker year for dci like uh broodier themes or something like that then that might permeate its way across the activity for a little while um i i don't think one is generating more motion forward than another though Um, I think they're all kind of doing their own thing and their own little corner of the activity.

Um, I will plug, uh, WGI though.

Um, I do think that there is a lot happening on the guard, the winds and the percussion side of WGI that is probably making the most impact.

Uh, in terms of there's something for each one of those students to do year round.

Like if you're in color guard, you could do drum corps, winter guard, marching band, depending on your age and location and all of that.

There's many variables, but in theory, that's possible.

Now you can do that with percussion.

That was the next thing.

And then now it's winds.

So there's a potential for year round marching arts involvement for a lot of people.

And what that's doing is driving the quality.