Welcome to the Common Time Podcast, a show designed to give music educators practical, inspiring ideas for you and your program. Each week we sit down with world class educators, composers, and conductors to talk about teaching, leadership and building programs that thrive without burning yourself out. So whether you're a band, orchestra, or choir director, our goal is simple to help you grow and stay inspired and remember why you fell in love with teaching music in the first place. This is season 4, and we're diving even deeper. More real conversations, more actionable takeaways, and more voices shaping the future of music education. Let's get into the episode. Our guest today is Michael Gaines. Welcome, Michael.
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good to see you both.
Absolutely. We are so, so excited to have you on today. Michael. We've known Michael for gosh, 25 years or so. He's a world renowned designer in the pageantry art world, also an international adjudicator, teacher, clinician, etcetera. And it's just incredible to have you on. So, John, why don't you get us started?
Thanks, David. Hi, Michael. Hi, that we are talking everyone to the King of like of design and drill writing. In my opinion, there is no one better at this on earth than Michael Gaines. So Michael, just to kind of just to kind of kick things off, has you think back to the earliest stages of your career are there any experiences or influences that shaped who you are as a designer today?
There's quite a few actually, as especially if you put in that in the caption of as a designer. I think a lot of it goes back to a couple things. One I was a musician for really I was all, it was everything music until I was in college, and even then some before I switched to the dark side of visual. So I was all about the musician from an early age, you know, played a lot of instruments, starting with guitar and piano and was part of my church groups and stuff like that. And then took every music theory, jazz bands, finding band course I could in high school and continued on with piano and stuff in college. So I think a lot of that helped inform me. But I got into the marching band part of it just because, you know, at that point you couldn't play guitar or piano. So I switched to some wind instruments to be in marching band. But so the music side of it really helped me. And just in terms of creating and designing, you know, understanding that side of it. The other part of it was at an early age, specifically with the Cavaliers, where I met both of you, I started doing color guard. So I came from that background before I started designing. And so I think that kind of helped inform, did help inform a lot of the ways I created because I was already used to that aspect, whereas back then, not so much today. Back then, a lot of designers would come from, you know, a brass background, maybe percussion background and the guard was kind of a foreign entity. You know, at that time it was it was more kind of relegated second class citizen status, you know, just provide the color in the background for the main event. And so I think I think it's those two things specifically probably informed at least a general sense knowledge base before I started designing. And then of course, you know, you go on to mentors and stuff, which I can talk about as well.
I honestly didn't know that you were that you started in the musical side. I just, I, I knew about the colour guard aspect. You were in the most competitive, maybe some of the most competitive guards at that time, and we're highly successful. So I didn't know the music part. What was the wind instrument that you played?
Wind instrument. Yeah, I suppose when I was doing, I was big into like the, the church scene and stuff like that. I grew up Catholic and so, and then I was in charge of the, you know, the, the, the cool mask, the downstairs guitar group. Everyone knows that one, right? So I, I was kind of the music director for that for a while. I taught myself flute a little bit. But when I when I joined the band in grade school, I guess I was probably 7th grade, I picked up tenor sax. That was my instrument. Which lasted about two years until the band director said, no, you're gonna play tuba in the marching band. So I played tuba in the marching band. Style tuba for the world famous Carroll High School marching.
I fully support that, Michael. You know, so great. I have to say, I think it's really interesting that the first thing that you said about your influence as a designer on the visual side of things is being a musician. Everybody listening to that think about that for a second. And that's why I truly think that your, your show design, specifically a drill design, it is I, I've always talked about it being kind of visually musical.
Yeah, it is absolutely. Which makes sense.
Yeah, I've got some deeper questions to ask you, but I want to. So do you have a specific like something you've written over your lifetime that this particular move or this sequence is like the favorite, the thing you've you feel most proud about in terms of just the composition of it from a visual standpoint?
The short answer is no, the longer answer is, you know, I have favorite memories from programs, you know, at different times throughout, I guess my own learning curve and different activities and stuff like that. To pick one out is really difficult. I could talk probably forever about anyone show or idea, but I think the one that probably was not my favorite but probably was the most popular in the time was what the guys in the core called the diamond cutter. You know, there was a drill move and I tend to like those kinds of things less than, I guess more composition over time, more so than what people would call a move. Or, you know, when I was when I first started writing in Cavaliers, you know, at least like the late 90s, early 2000s into mid 2000s, you know, there were some shows that people would like what they would call a drill move or, and it got to be where's the move? Where's the, you know what I mean? It's it's like this flashy thing. Well, I work really hard to, you know, create over time and, and like creating different kinds of compositions is my favorite thing to do. It's what keeps me interested in, in doing all of this. And so the, my favorite things would probably not be the favorite things of maybe an audience member watching or, or a parent or those, those, those kinds of things. I'm sure you both understand that just, you know, there's layers to everything and it has to work on multiple layers.
Absolutely. Well, it's interesting because John was talking about the idea of your drill being musical and I don't know, I don't haven't seen all of your work. Obviously, I don't know the full body of your work. But during the time we were at the Cavaliers, my favorite thing that you constructed was the fugue in frameworks. And as that thing like went across the field and it took, I don't know, 40 seconds maybe to fully develop until I got to the next high point. And just watching that develop using that D dot D dot D dot, just as I think, but kind of move to me, that was so musical. Just watching. I remember the first time we did it, I'm like, well, holy crap, that is no one's writing that it takes that long to develop. And then it the culmination is like mind blowing. And you just watch something that was Metso Forte the whole time, just kind of just, you know, just developing slowly.
Yeah, that was that was the total collaboration, you know, musically and visually. The idea started as a concept. You know, obviously it was the show was called Framework. So I was trying to figure out something to do with the frame and I it was one of those, you know, old school. Well, when you pull film through a frame and you watch picture to picture, you know, really old school. So that's kind of where the idea came from. But, yeah, the, the making it a reality was a collaboration between, you know, me figuring out how to get all the instruments in the right place or working backwards to get them in the right place or moving forwards, or asking Richard Saucedo to rearrange things so that it weren't, or having the visual team, you know, manipulate it so it was interesting and no one's running into each other. And it's, it was a total team collaboration.
Yeah. Absolutely. And this may connect to my next question, which I'm curious, do you have a core philosophy sort of behind your visual design? Are there principles that guide the decisions that you're making year after year as a kind of your core?
I do, you know, first and foremost, especially for, well, really anyone, but especially for high school age or even more inexperienced groups, it has to, they have to be able to achieve it, like absolutely achieve it. You know, when I first started, I would see some people who had success in drum corps writing for high school and just look at it and the kids had no chance, like zero chance, you know, and it, and it was sad to me. And so that's always been one of my, they have to be able to achieve it. And so I'm, I'm, I try to be very cognizant of that. Still. You can still challenge kids, but, but it's a, it's a constant conversation. And I usually will tell anyone I work with the band director or whomever, let me know, you know, as we're going through like, OK, well, that's enough. That's, you know, slow it down or, or I really think the kids can, you know, kick it up a little bit. But I, I generally err on the side of, like I said, especially for younger groups of they need to have that feeling of accomplishment at the end. They need to be able to look and, and hear that it all sounds and works well together. Which, you know, the second principle is you got to make sure the instruments are in the right place to succeed. You know, that's, that's obviously paramount in addition with the achievement factor, because if that doesn't happen, then you know, what's the point, you know, at that moment. And I think, and I've, I've actually, I was, I was talking to a young drill designer and was, you know, I think his band won like best music or best something like that. And that person was feeling down that, you know, they didn't win the visual thing. And I'm like, they don't win music if you don't do your job well. They really they don't. So I, you know, I was trying to get, get that person to take some pride in the fact that the instrumentation was presented in a way that allowed them to sound that way. Certainly I'm not taking nothing away from the music and the things, but you have to be able to present them and allow them to succeed. Again, it goes back to just achievement factor for the different levels.
Right. As you think about putting the pieces together, and I mean ultimately from the highest macroscopic level possible, to be able to effectively teach, there has to be a common vocabulary between teachers and students. I would argue also between show designers and teachers and students. So my question for you is, as that you're designing your a show for an ensemble, how do you build a shared language with the musical staff so that the visual and musical ideas are truly enforcing each other?
That's a great question. And I, I think a lot of the, the, if you back up to the premise of that question, a lot of that comes from how collaborative you are with which team you're working together with. You know, some teams where you may not be as familiar, you have to develop that right? You and together you, you have to develop a vocabulary before you can speak that language. Whereas the people that I've worked with for forever, you know, for decades, I rarely forget, for example, a Co worker of mine, Andy Toth or my worker forever, you know, for 30 years or something like that. I don't even have to put notes on the charts anymore, you know, because he knows, he knows the shared language is basically, you know, in our minds, we've done this or, or I could use an example of remember like 20 years ago when we did blah, blah, blah, got it. Or you know, those kind of things. Whereas if I'm working with someone new, we don't have that vocabulary yet, right? And so there might be a lot more conversations happening. I might have to make a lot more production type notes when they're actually putting it out on the field. But to your question, I think I really think it comes with time. You know, you, as I said a minute ago, it's like you have to develop that vocabulary together and understand what they mean when they say something to make sure you mean the same thing. Because I've also found that where people use the same words in a, in a slightly different way. I'm not going to be able to think of an example right now, but it, it's fascinating to me how many different meanings just normal words have when it comes to what it is we do between the, the, the visual and the music. Let's see. I'm trying to think even something's just like that should be backfield. You know, it's like, OK, it took me a while to realize, oh, you mean they're facing backfield. Not that they're not that they're backfield, you know what I mean? Like there's, there's a bunch of different interpretations of that. That's a that's a simple one, but there's a lot of different fun discoveries to be made with new collaborations.
Absolutely. So excuse me, I think this is probably going to be a long question, but I'm going to ask it anyway because we're because we're talking about collaborations, we're talking about some of your design, you know, core concepts. But could you walk us through your design process? I know this could take weeks, but from the first spark of an idea to the moment the performers are bringing it to life on the field, Is there a process that you're thinking through that you could organize and kind of help our listeners? Like, hey, there is a process. It is important to not just wing it.
There is a process. I'm I'm laughing for a number of reasons. One I always go back to and I'm not going to be able to say it, but look it up. There's an Aaron Sorkin quote that I, I think about every time I talk about something like this. And that's something about the, the, the white page staring at you and telling you, you may be able to fool some of the people some of the time, but you know, you're, you're, you're giftless and etcetera. And basically it's a battle between a designer and a white page. That's part of it starting there. And then honestly, it's a, it's a lot of, it's a lot of, and I know this isn't exactly what, what you were referring to, but it's a lot of sitting down, staring, going and doing the dishes, sitting down, staring, taking a shower, sitting down, staring, you know, and it feels like procrastination. But in reality, it's, it's, it's kind of marination. And it took me a long time to realize that, right? Because I used to get so frustrated with myself because when I would do all that stuff, I'm like, would you focus? And then I started realizing that's part of letting it, it kind of marinate, you know. But when it comes down to actually, you know, starting the process, putting that first dab of paint on it, a lot of it is just throwing something down. You know, you've got at some point you've got it because what's the, what's the expression about? Everything after that first dab of paint is just recovery, isn't that you know? And there's some truth to that. You know, it, it's, it's really just the getting started is the absolute most difficult part for me anyway. And I think for a lot of, for a lot of designers or composers would probably say the same thing. So once I once I get going, you know, my process is to absolutely have like the say an entire production be able to kind of look at the whole thing very simplified, maybe on a one pager kind of a thing just to see where going, what I'm doing. For me, people I work with, I always ask them to don't write incomplete sentences. Like if you're going to put, I want to see everything all together. So don't start with, you know, way back when we were considering this, I'm like, OK, no. No, no time for that. I don't need a brick of, of words, just very, very, you know, especially, again, especially if we've developed that, that interaction over time and it's a good collaboration. But I like to see that and then really it's just about if I if I'm feeling starting from that first step of paint or if I'm feeling starting from, you know, halfway into a production and then, you know, working both ends of it is part of it as well. Instrumentation's important, you know, knowing where you're going to go and where, what, what you can do. A lot of that is developed skills over time. You know, that's kind of a muscle that you, you, you develop over time where you understand the, the different explorations you can do. It's kind of, I don't want to sound too pretentious, so stop me if I do, but it's, it's like playing a game of chess where you have to think X amount of moves ahead of time, right? And if it's a lot of, if then if I do this, then this will happen, this will happen and I'm not going to be able to do that because this, let's back up and try this. What about this permutation? And, and so a lot of it, a lot of it is just that mental doing the dishes, a lot of it is right, taking a shower or, you know, taking the dog for a walk, that kind of a thing.
Right, you know the when the idea of drill design I it's been a long time since I've written drill, but during my time with the Cavaliers, I wrote a ton of drill and I might have stolen a couple of moves here and there that are I when you talked about can they actually do it? Well, can they actually do it? Is it actually achievable? Like, you know, well, Cavaliers probably could, but I probably shouldn't have stolen that move. But I'm, I, you know, I was thinking about my own process because we, you know, I went through like an actual drill writing class. I don't know if that, if you did that, but like we had that in college and that's, you know, you take the music, you break it down into phrases and then you write out a segment sheet. And then on the segment sheet that goes to a sketch sheet. And then from the sketches that goes into like, and that was before we had Pyware or anything like that. And then you would like do it on a light boards like I, I put a light under a glass table to do my first drill project. And then about a year or two later, Pyro was invented and everything moved forward in a whole different manner because you could experiment, you could just play with it in real time and move stuff around. I'm so I want to just follow up kind of for a second. So in that process, do you have like something like you're it's marinating, you're walking around, you're washing the dishes and something drops into your head. What's the next step for you? Do you go to the computer or do you sketch? Do you, how does it, how does it sort of evolve into a real thing? If and if we're I'm specifically right now talking about like outdoor large scale.
Right. Yeah, sure. Groups OK 'cause the process for smaller stage or indoor. Is much, you know, winter garden? But for what? What you were just talking about.
Yeah, mine's always to always to the to the computer because I, I did start like you, I did everything by hand. I think the first, well, the first drill I wrote was Cavaliers drum solo in 1992. That was the first outdoor drill I wrote, but by hand with pencil. And then the next couple years I actually asked Dustin from Pyware at last year's TMEA. I was like, what was for sure I started using Pyware. He says it was 94. So I only, I only did, you know, a couple years by hand, but. Yeah, I cuz any, I, I'm a firm believer that anything you can do by hand you can do on the computer. Some people are not as comfortable being able to sketch things with, with the computer. I totally get that. But in terms of an artistic approach or an artistic flair or identity, yeah, anything, anything you can do by hand, you can do with the computer. It took, it took a lot of people a lot of time to realize that I had a lot of designer friends that refused. Like, you know, you can tell everyone who uses spyware. I'm like, well, that's not the computer. That's people not using the computer to design the way they can. But, but to your point, yeah, I'll, I'll go to the computer and then I'll just start. A lot of it depends upon I'm thinking through now, like if I'm starting a project right now and I was looking at everything, I will definitely get, you know, all the, all the scores. I, I'm, I'm doing this because I, I'm paperless. So I've got a monitor over here and monitor over here. And then I've got this one and I do, you know, the pie where the, the, the animation and then all the scores and production sheets. And I look through everything. I get rid of information I, I don't need that's just going to confuse me or will make me miss something. So I, I simplify before I start to compose the, the information and then just looking really at all the different things that are happening in the score for the, you know, foreseeable future, which will then inform me where I need to have the instruments, which will then tell me what colors are on the palette that I can use from there. And then, yeah, then I'll start writing either right at the beginning or a little bit, a little into it, or rarely will I start halfway in or, you know, at the end of a production. But I think it's possible. But yeah, I'll start towards the beginning and just start going and see, see where we go.
Yeah, well, it's fascinating because you're so good at it. I mean, I, I watch your stuff. I'm like, man. You know what never did the light board thing like I know that's most people before the, the advent of the of the eye Ware or the computer used light boards and I never did. I do remember a couple times holding the big Jensen paper up on the like our big glass back door, you know, to see what? It looks like but. For the most part, it was just, you know, doing this back and forth between pages and then having to like train your brain to think what, what the animation would look like. Yeah. And did you reach a point at some point where the animation, you could see it ahead of time in your mind? Because I struggled with that when I was first sketching drill, like not really knowing if I could pull that off and then put in the computer. I'm like, yeah, those step sizes don't work kind of thing.
Some people may say that I, my step sizes didn't work, but yeah, yeah, I, I think, I think that might have been one of my strengths since I was able to see it. And I honestly, this goes back to like think your first question about influences. I think part of it was that I, I staged for indoor 1st. And so I spent, you know, thousands of hours pushing people around the gym to seeing what would affect other people. So I had those images in my head of, you know, what, what, you know, a line can do to motivate this line or can do that. So maybe that helped. I, you know, I'm just, I'm just guessing at this point, but I feel like I was pretty good about, about knowing that and watching thousands of hours of videotapes of, you know, everyone I looked up to.
But yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to use your mind before the animation. That's true. That wasn't even a thing on power at the beginning.
It wasn't. It was. And you know. It wasn't. No, no, it was. It was. I'm trying to remember. Well, the 3D animation wasn't part of it. And then was it just the? Did it animate at all or was it just plotting? I'm trying to remember the thing I. Think you could. I think you could animate between like on the screen. There was no like little box that you could tilt or any of that kind of stuff. I'm trying to remember when it first came out.
Well, that's the thing. You know, what's interesting is it's so time consuming these days because of all of the advent of not only that, but then now, now you can do and it's great. It's just now everyone wants, you know, the movement they want the individual choreography, the facings, the.
Horns, yeah. The flag work, the rifle work, the So I, I do, I generally just do very simple approaches to all that. I don't, I don't go overboard because yeah, I find that if I do too much, then sometimes, especially if it with younger instructors, if I send them, I'll be like, you could do a lunge here, you could do choreography here. But if I put a lunge in, then it's going to be a lunge. And I want them to be able. To rather than them having some creative spirit in there.
Yeah, it all makes sense. Interesting. You know, I have to admit I have never written a single page of drill my whole life.
Get out. I don't believe that.
I swear I have never written a single page of drill my whole life. I've also never written an arrangement of anything in my entire life.
Not a said. He's and yet he's the director of one of the most impressive and prestigious marching bands in the world. I think you're one of those people that doesn't give yourself enough credit.
I mean, that's all true. I mean, that's all truthful. I mean, yeah, but I have never written a single page of drill when I'm not ever. But you know so for.
Effects to make work. Well, you know. You've written page. Of drill that's right. I'm going to write one. It's going to be the best drill ever. But you know, I mean, people listening are going, wow, he makes this so easy, right? But I mean, you've been through some challenges to ultimately get to the top of the game, right? So maybe just to help our listeners feel better about themselves just a bit, perhaps like, so do you have like a memory of a time where all of a sudden you're like, I can't get out of this? This is, it's either the, the, the, the like a, a problem or a complex move or something that you just couldn't figure out. And how did you face that, first of all? But how did you navigate it? You know from the perspective of giving advice to people that are currently struggling.
Sure, I think one of the best pieces of advice I ever got was and. It sounds so simple, but there's always another way. And when you find yourself, well, 2, two different people, two different pieces of ice, another piece of ice was I asked someone, I said, you know, I spent so long, you know, banging my head against the desk making this happen and no applause. And then this took 5 seconds and, you know, standing ovation, whatever. And that person told me, you know, it's like, well, first of all, you should never have been banging your head against the desk to create anything. You know, if, if it takes that much, you're forcing something. And that probably doesn't work. Exceptions to every rule, all disclaimers supply, but I do think that the there's always another way to help me out immensely over the years from when that person told me that as a young designer, because as soon as you start getting stuck and you're just like, I can't make this work back up a couple pages. Or, you know, to your, to your point, David, about the, the Pyware allowing you to sketch and do different things, just save as a new copy and, and start playing with what if I go back 2 pages and just rearranged all this? What is that? Oh my God, so many more options just opened up for me. I think that was the biggest and it's so simple. There's always another way, which sounds like, you know, common sense and I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence, but when you get into those, those, I can't figure this out, just do something else. Or you know, the other thing that really helped me out too. I don't know if someone told me this or it was just learned, but stop looking at the whole screen. Just blank out everything when you can hide everything. It's like, OK, I know the trumpets have to be in this area for this section. I'm just going to, I'm just going to create something with the trumpets. Start there. Then unhide more and start working around and creating and molding. You know, it's like taking that little piece of clay just one and then molding around it instead of looking at all these different sections all at once trying to figure out what am I going to do with all this. That can be overwhelming, you know, especially once you get into the, the, the bigger, the bigger bands down where y'all are from, David. Well, no, you're not tiny either. But yeah, so it's, it's very helpful to isolate your creative process to or minimize your creative process to a smaller segment and then build around that if you're having trouble.
Yeah, no, that's great advice. And it's great advice for a lot of things that there's always another way. There's there's a way forward. It was when I was writing in, I haven't written in a while and but there was times where, I mean, I felt bad doing it because I'd, I'd have 6 or 7 pages that I would just go page 8 never came. And if I'd stayed on page 8, I would have wasted 2 1/2 more hours and the first seven like worked or whatever. And it kind of made sense, but I just couldn't get past as OK. Like I'm going to spend 2 1/2 hours trying to figure out this one page or I just go with this other idea I've been playing with. And all of a sudden. But trying to let go of that one thing was hard for me because I'd I'd spend time on it.
Yeah. And then the level of frustration is directly proportional to or no, inversely proportional to how much time you have to deliver the product, right? That's very true. You know, because I do remember one of the cavalier shows. In fact, I remember it took me a good two weeks of, of doing all the craziness I have to do before I was finally happy with the first few pages of a show. And that was so discouraging and frustrating and Oh my God, am I, am I done? Do I not have any more ideas? And but I had that time at that point, you know, because it wasn't the summer yet, etcetera. But then, you know, you get into designers these days with the bottleneck of band season, and you know, you got the music a couple days ago and they're at camp and you got it. You got it. You got to get it done.
New pages, yeah. New pages. So it's a whole other whole other Oprah. Yeah, I'm with you. I remember we're adding, I don't know. I don't know what your total per summer is, but I think my time with the Cavaliers during I would just stay up on the bus. I had two batteries from my computer. I'd stay up until both batteries died and then I go to sleep and I wrote every day of the summer is probably 30 different schools. And it was it got to a point where like I didn't have time to waste. Like if it was this is kind of a side like if it's if it's taking me more than like 5-10 minutes to get to the next thing, like I got to go different direction. Yeah. And it took me a while of kind of releasing myself from like I'm kind of free to explore here. But I knew I actually had I had a time crunch on my batteries. Like this wasn't where we could plug in back then. We didn't like, this is how this works. I got 2 batteries have.
Outlets back then. We didn't have outlets, we didn't have anything. There is no like, it was crazy.
You are. Old.
I know, man, we are old. I don't even know how we how we did stuff back there, but OK, so I'm going to switch and we go completely different direction here. I'm curious in your in the process of like collaborating with, you know, others that are on the design side as well as the instructional side. Where do the students fit into your experience when you're designing? Is that are there aspects of the visual design that matter most for, you know, performer confidence, expression and success? So a lot of that is early discussions leading into the season where the, the I'll say band director, but also meaning all the staff has to understand what kind of performers they have. And by what kind, I mean, how of course, you know, experience level and, and how confident they are and what they can do. All of that comes into play. For example, some directors may say, you know, let's, I'd rather just stick to marching from point A to point B. You know, it's our, our kids, just they're not into the movement thing yet. And, and you know, that's going to make them, their confidence go down. They're not going to achieve it. Or some might say, we really think that, you know, we can elevate the, the, the levels of the performance this year. We can add more. A lot of it. I encourage directors to showcase their strengths accordingly, right? Figure out where your strengths are. Figure out where I don't want to say weaknesses, but where, where, where the kids haven't learned yet. You know, it's a learning curve. But I, I keep thinking in terms of high school, right? I don't consider weakness. It's just their earlier on their learning curve.
Yeah, more developmental.
Yeah, yeah. And so I think a lot of that is important before either starting the program or at least letting the composer Ranger or, or design visual designer know what those strengths are and what to just be careful of. And I think that you can make everyone's lives a lot easier to be like, OK, we graduated all of our flutes. We have a total of 8 freshmen in our flute section. You know, got it, got it. Something to consider, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Or you know, or even the bands where we have two flutes or you know, those kind of things can happen. But to your point, I think it's interesting these days because you will get a sense that they might have drill overload. And so we want more what people refer to as production. Most productions a big umbrella, but for these purposes, they mean not marching from picture to picture and develop or yeah, developing a section of the shows more choreographic or theatrical. The issue becomes do they have the people on staff or the director who are able to produce those kinds of things to make them work in the show or is it just going to be to a halt? And it's, you know, so I think when you identify the students strengths and or the people that are earlier on their learning curve appropriately, then you can showcase accordingly.
Yeah, no, that don't makes no sense. So then, as we consider how pageantry arts currently exists, it has changed dramatically over the last decade, right? That's what it has. So what shifts in either technology or design, or even audience expectation have or have influenced the way that you work today?
I think a lot of it. I think the biggest change improvements, whatever word evolution in the last 10 years, it's probably just the performer, the musician involvement in movement. I, I think it's astounding, absolutely mind blowing what the musicians, especially now I'm thinking in the drum core realm, the DCI right now with high school too, but on a relative level, right? And it's, it's astounding to me what the musicians are capable of doing or being asked to do when it as it relates to having to play their instruments and control their breathing and also all of that. I think that it's. Remarkable. It's remarkable. I don't know, I don't know how these kids, these young adults do it. And I think that's been the biggest evolution, to be honest, in the last and, and again, going back to showcasing accordingly. Now that, you know, right now I work with Vanguard and we've been lucky to have performers that really move well, you know, where they move. Like that's that thing when in fact they're horn players or they're, you know, they're percussionists. And so I adjusted accordingly to be able to showcase a lot of that. I think that also, you know, a lot of people, you know, I met both of you at the Cavaliers and, and I took a sabbatical from drum corps for five years. And in that time just kind of did some soul searching on, you know, I guess what my creative voice would be if I ended up in, in the drum corps realm or anywhere really. And, and, and so I think that I tried to evolve, you know, with, with the evolution of what was happening and, and, and hopefully try to push some evolutions along. Just, you know, if there's anything I don't like, it's making the same movie over and over again. And, and I think a lot of people are that way, right? You find yourself like, yeah, but you know, we've done this, we've seen this, we've, you know, those kinds of things. And so I think it's important. And I think that's part of what keeps the activity moving is people having those kinds of feelings of what we've seen that what can we do that's different? What can we do that's better? What can we do to push things? Certainly with the advent of electronics and amplification, especially wireless miking in ears, all of that opens up some doors for the visual side of things as well as the musical side of things because you're not required always to OK, haul in those two baritones, the front sideline, you know, hard wired mic stand, although you know, you still do that afraid of the wireless, but so that opens up a lot, a lot of different doors as well.
Yeah. You know, I, I have to say I, I've been making a lot of GE tapes over the last year or two and I would say in 90% of them don't like quote me on that number, but it's a high percentage every time the visual is being forced or you're forcing this idea and it's impacting what the students are doing when they play their instrument. They feel like they have to lunge or turn or dip dive, dodge, dodge, duck, you know, the five, the 5DS of dodgeball, right? It's, it's, it's, it's unfortunate, right? Just, I mean, do you have any thoughts on this? Because it drives me crazy.
Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, I, I think that goes back to choreographers or designers that understand the achievement part of it and also, you know, the different levels. It's like if they are not going to be able to do something and achieve it at a high level, you shouldn't be doing that, right? I mean that. There's another way. It's there's another way. It sounds obvious. I'm also a fan of not what's the word I want to use? I don't want to be insulting, but junking it up with choreography for choreography's sake, you know, simplicity is beautiful. You know, I understand why we are where there's almost too much of it going on because people assume that if a judge is looking at core A and core B or Band A and B and one is doing a lot more choreography, oh, we got to add a lot more choreography. It's a competitive thing. But if you can get yourself out of that mindset and think about variety, and it's really OK for this moment to stand there and look beautiful, you know, I think that's going to serve anyone really well.
Yeah. You know, I, so I took a bit of a sabbatical from drumcore just in general. Like I didn't watch it. I didn't listen to it. I did nothing with it for almost 10 years. And I went to a show, I went to the Southwestern Regional DCI this past fall in San Antonio and I was blown away. Like what those students were doing on the field while playing was. It wasn't it was impressive. I really, I was thinking back as an instructor, like, I'm not sure how I got him to do that like and sound good because that, I mean, my point was always OK, we have to sound great here. And then the designer would come in and like, well, now we're doing it on our head. Well, we sounded great and now we don't sound great anymore. And it's not my fault. What do I do now? That was always so frustrating. But I love what you just said. And I hope that designers and directors will embrace this a little bit. I left that show being impressed, but equally wanting for some visual silence, like for there just to be a moment of repose. Like sometimes things were so connected. You're like, it was really all over the map. And, and you know, I think I don't know what I think about that. I just walked away thinking like, man, that's incredible. Also like, man, there's just so many things happening. It's like a three ring circus and it's difficult sometimes.
Like, yeah, if you're a high level designer and you've watched that show 12 or 15 times, however long you might be picking up all those things may go in and really create like wow, this is all amazing. But for a first or second time viewer, and I've watched quite a bit of marching band, it was like, there's so much stuff going on here that this would be almost impossible to truly absorb without some kind of program note that I'm just reading as it's going along, like, you know. Right.
It's almost like, I would argue, David, as a conductor, whenever you want something to look or have impact, you take something away. You create silence before and after, correct?
Yeah, yeah. And if you want to create an impactful gesture, you create silence before it. And that's a good point. My niece Addie, she's in the Marcus High School band in Louisville ISD. They're phenomenal. I mean, really good.
Marcus. Oh, I'm familiar. Everybody does. Joel, I love you.
Clearly get up on purpose because yes, you do write their drill. But for anybody watching, go find a video of this and you'll see about the kind of visual clarity coming from moments of calm, you know, both in terms of visual technique and execution, but also musical too. I thought their show was incredible, you know?
Yeah, that's what I was going to say is I think this probably goes back to the beginning of our conversation where you started as a musician and you have a grasp of musical phrasing just as much as visual phrasing. Those things, to me, those things are so intertwined and the greatest designers are able to layer those in a way where they're so connected that you, they're happening without you even thinking about it from a spectator standpoint. So yeah, Marcus is fantastic. I do have like one final question for you, but there's a couple of questions that come up from our producers. I'm going to throw those at you. Have you tried any other software besides Pyware before? I know there's like some open source versions now that are out there, stuff like that.
Yeah, I, you know, I've heard short answer is no, I haven't tried and that's that's why I never comment on the other platforms because I've just never tried them. I was an early adopter with Pyware and we've had such a great relationship over the years that I just, there was never a reason for me to even look anywhere else. But I know that there's some out there. I know there's, there's, like you said, I think an open platform one. So yeah, I'd be curious or interested in hearing other people's experiences. I'm just curious as the people that are interested in getting into design, if those would be things that you would even suggest. I don't know. I don't know too much about them. I just kind of heard they're out there for people to go in and play around with.
So I've heard that too. I, I'm sorry that I don't know that much about them, but, you know, especially there's gonna be a period of time where AI is gonna allow so much more playing around before it takes my job. So I think that, yeah, you know, I think young people right now are gonna, that's gonna be an advantage that they'll have, whether it's the open source or the AI code.
Absolutely. I mean, I've never even, yeah, I hadn't even thought AI hadn't even crossed my mind. Like that's probably going to change the industry pretty soon, yeah.
If you've heard any descriptions that already has, that's true.
So I got GPT these days but yeah. So one other question from the producers. Do you write typically linearly, you know, 1 2 3 or do you kind of skip around creating, here's a moment I want to do and then I'm going to go backwards and do something, go forwards. How do you typically think?
From a micro level, if there's something I'm leading into, I may have to do a lot of backward and forward. From a macro level, looking at the whole show, I used to do a lot more of, I know this is going to be this, this is going to be this, this is going to be this. Now how do I get to those places? I don't do as much of that anymore. And I think part of that is where I am on my learning curve, where I try to do it more organically where I write and look where I am and then think, OK, now where can I go from here because I know there's always a multitude of ways, right? So I write from there because I found that it allows me to create more interesting things with a greater frequency doing it that way than trying to get to there because then everything becomes about getting to that moment. And so, you know, you lose a lot of great stuff along the way. Whereas if you write from where you are, you know, obviously flowing with the music and knowing what has to happen with, you know, disclaimers about certain things. But I think the gist of the answer is I don't do as much of I have to get somewhere and I do a lot more of where am I going to go from here?
Right. Yeah, I think that'll be, I think that's really helpful information, yeah.
Yeah. With that being said, a caveat would be a younger designer might not have the, I don't know if you would say intuition or muscle memory to know of all the options available from a given spot to move forward. I think that's something that's developed over time. And so it might be better for a younger designer to have those anchors throughout as a guiding light or North Star to head towards. So I just want to have that caveat because it can be difficult to not know where you're going.
Right now and I felt that many times, but I think that's still, it's the information of how you're approaching it now I think goes to the fact that you now have a vocabulary that you can work from that's almost innate. You know what you can do in this situation and you might create something new. But even if you don't, you probably have 40 different things that you can utilize as you're putting things together. So, but that's useful information I think for people out there that are getting started. So last question here before we jump to kind of one last section is if you can imagine now the next 10 years and we just talked about AI, so maybe we'll see where this goes. But next 10 years of visual design and the pageantry arts kind of overall, what excites you the most about where the activity is heading or where you hope it will go?
The activity is heading and the general activity meaning more large scale performance, right? Yeah. I would love to see us get to a point where, well, two things. One is the societal part of it. I would love to see us get to a point where it's a lot more accessible for people, for all people, right? You know, not because it's so expensive these days, but along with that becoming more cost effective to create productions where you truly don't look like you're walking around the football field. You know, whether that's, you know, projection lighting or things to change it up so that it's not so football field-y. Right. And I know that's more cosmetic or aesthetic in terms of the performers. You know, if you would have asked me this question 20 years ago, like, I don't know how much more they can do. And look where we are now. I mean, that's why I always say I'm glad that I was in drum corps before you had to be good at anything. I don't know that I would make one these days. But you know, for marching band, you know, kids are kids, you know, I firmly believe that. And when kids come into a program, a lot of it depends on the people in front of them in terms of how far they can go. But, you know, my wish would be that everyone could start a little further forward on their learning curve to see how far they could push in the end. You know, I think we've made great strides with the performers. We made great strides with visual design aesthetics, certainly the groups sound fantastic. You know, electronics was a new realm, I suppose not new, but has similarly to the performers been pushed forward. So we'll see where all that goes. But I think the production part of it is going to be interesting to see where it goes from here.
Yeah, I think it would be very interesting. And speaking of the electronics, so when I was teaching high school, if we needed to mic someone, they just put the band director's Lone Ranger mic around their neck and they turned the speaker around toward the field and just turned it up like that was our amplification of the flute or whatever. So we've definitely come a long way.
So yeah, we've just talked about our age way too much for all three of us, too much for this. So back to you, John, sorry.
Yeah, it's all good. So, so Michael, now's the time where we start to ask our guests a couple of questions that are consistent person to person. So I'm going to take the first one. Do you have a soapbox topic? And it can be about anything, music and life, whatever.
Man, soapbox. I feel like I've been on the soapbox for the last hour. Those are all the things I talk about. That's right, soapbox. You know, I think probably when it comes to the pageantry world and specifically with people who are younger coming into it, my soapbox is probably about being professional, being kind, you know, professional both in terms of being in front of young people and teaching and making them want to learn. But also, if you're going to make a career out of this, you know, be sure that you're professional in all ways. And the business aspect, the integrity aspect, I think that's something that I try to talk to younger people about. So I guess that would be a soapbox topic for sure.
I think that is a very fair soapbox topic to share. I've got a next question, but first I want to ask you how's Kayak?
He is awesome. He is? Yeah. Yeah. In the next two months, he'll be 10 years old. I can't believe it.
Yeah, I remember seeing that on social media when you got him. Yeah, yeah. It's, I think most of us live sort of vicariously through Kayak's eyes. Like we just, you show pictures of him. And then I felt so, I was so sad when you had the surgeries, I was like, not just he had to have two. I was like, man, that's, you know, and for a dog, you can't tell them like, hey, this is going to be a little while, but it's going to be better. Like you just have to deal with it.
Yeah, and I guess dogs, I mean, they don't really have egos. They just kind of like live in the moment. And he, yeah, he dealt with it way better than I did. But yeah, he's better than he was before the surgeries for sure at this point. So yeah, thanks for asking.
That's awesome. So my question is, is there a particular book or books that have inspired your journey? It doesn't have to be musical or visual, anything, just books about life, whatever you like.
Book or books? I think most of the books that I'm trying to remember, I definitely used to give answers when I was younger. Like remember back in the day of like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and all those. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, in terms of the craft, for me it was always the, you know, principles of design type stuff that related what we do to design principles through reading about, you know, artwork, whether it's painting or sculpture, whatever. You're figuring out those parallels. So I think those kind of books were the most. But the one thing that I would say is I'm really bad about when someone asks me my favorite anything. As we've discovered on this podcast, because I couldn't name a favorite movie, I'm not naming a favorite book.
Favorite movie. Yeah, because I'm a Libra and I can't. But that's what's good. Well, if I guess it, just say it.
Well, I don't really read. Moving on.
That's right. Yeah. Well, someone get one guest book, what is it? Die with Zero is where, what? OK, OK well there you go, we can add it to the list. One of our guests just said they don't actually read. They watch movies and film much more than they do read. So like, even, you know, short story, short film kinds of things.
You know, I was always just an, I was a bookworm forever. And then somewhere along the way in my adult life, I got, I think it was with the advent of all the streaming services and iPads and whatever, I got way too into watching movies and videos and whatever. And so I've, I'm clawing my way back to the books at this point. But I mean, I haven't stopped reading, but I certainly don't read with the frequency I used to. So I'm clawing my way back though.
Nope, I'm with you there.
All good. All right.
So then, Michael, for our final question and arguably the most important here. We go. What is your favorite time signature?
044.
Well done there. You go comments. Fun. Common time, I was wondering if a juror rider would do something different, but common time. That's the way it goes. Funny, it's also the right answer. So like no one gets the right answer. Funnily, we get a designer on and we get the right answer. That's what we're looking for.
Michael, it's been such a pleasure having you on today. I'm, I'm excited to, you know, get this out for our listeners some to just share this information with them. But it's been inspiring for me to just sort of reconnect and see you again. It's been so long and following you and I, you know, certainly wish you many, many more years of success as a designer.
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me and best of luck moving forward with the podcast. It's awesome. You guys do great work.
Thank you. And that's a wrap on today's episode. Thanks for spending part of your day with us on the Common Time Podcast. If today's conversation gave you something to think about or something to try with your students, we'd love for you to share this episode with a colleague. And you can also follow us on social media for episode clips, behind the scenes content, and updates to our upcoming guests. And if you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep making music and keep making a difference.