We had our second comp. this weekend and the band did very well. We took every caption except percussion. I will be the fist to admit that my line is not the cleanest. But there are drumlines out here that are playing easy books and their drums are tuned really low so they sound clean. I have my bass drums tuned very tight and dry. The tenors are higher than most and the snares are high and wet. The problem with this is that you can hear every little tick. We have 4 shows with in the next 2 weeks then we are done.

Now the question is do I keep pushing to clean a tight sounding line that has a hard book or do it down tune everything and make parts easier. I think that pushing for the clean line is educational. I know that if I down tune and make parts easier we will get the points.
I am pulling my hair out with this one. When they are clean, I cannot stop smiling. It is great.

What do you folks think?

It's pretty hard to define a line in how tough the book should be written, especially with the inconsistency between judging in various high school circuts. Personally, I believe you should overwrite the line a bit -- give them something more difficult than they can handle at the beginning of the season, but not ridiculous gridded type stuff. It seems like lately, more emphasis has been placed on playing with a good sound quality, and proper technique over everything -- as well as the musicality factor, but that's pretty ridiculously subjective from person to person.

I wouldn't change anything for the rest of this year, but take into consideration what they did do well when writing next year's book.

I agree with hyperionmsu here. I'm guessing the high school season is probably half way over. I would not change anything for this season, but do take it into consideration when you are writing the book for next year.

Now, this is just my personal opinion, I believe that musicality is the most important aspect in a percussion score. The functional point of the percussion section is to blend with and add texture to the points provided by the winds. Write the score the same way an orchestral composer would. Express all that music has to offer: Crescendos, accelerandos, hemiolas, all dinamic levels, ect... That is the great difficulty of arranging music, finding the right balance of musicality, and difficulty of the notes is not an easy task. An extremely musical arrangement does not necessarily have to contain very difficult notes. And surly a difficult note arrangement does not make the piece musical.

If a judge knows what hes talking about, he will recognize the fact that your arrangement is musical, blends well, and adds texture to the rest of the band. An intelligent judge would much rather hear that than "balls-to-the-wall" the whole time. Unfortunately, not all judges are intelligent and some lines will get under-rated for what they really are. However, why should this matter? If you are going to do something, do it the right way. You may only have one judge the whole season who knows what hes talking about, and thats the guy you want to impress.