General Effect: Myth and Fact
What is General Effect? Why is General Effect? I'm glad you asked...
One of the most confusing parts of the broader marching arts world that connects all aspects is a little something called “General Effect.” There are many misconceptions about this caption and it’s rare to find someone at a drum corps contest who really knows what it’s about. However, I don’t find this to be the fault of (most of) the fans, as there isn’t really a solid resource out there from DCI themselves going in-depth to what each judge is looking for. Given this issue of a lack of clear communication, there is a lot of misinformation that gets spread around during the DCI season and even during the Fall marching season and indoor. Today I hope to clarify some of these misconceptions and help you, the reader, understand what those two to four judges in the box are really looking for.
Myth: General Effect judges only care about design
The biggest and most common piece of misinformation spread around about GE is the idea that the caption only pays attention to the design, not the performance of the design. It’s easy to see why this misunderstanding may come up, as the name for the caption is very vague and broad. “Effect” as a word doesn’t make you think of the performance, and “general” doesn’t really do anything to help clarify (it in fact “generalizes” instead of specifying). As mentioned in our recent article about the entirety of the judging system (linked below), GE used to be split up between music and visual, but now they use the same sheets and are simply labeled General Effect 1 and General Effect 2. However, judges for GE 1 almost always have a background in visual and GE 2 judges have a background in music. If you’re as much of a numbers nerd as I am, you can look back into old recaps and you’ll start seeing a significant correlation between high visual scores and higher GE 1, and by extension high music scores and higher GE 2. But wait, if GE judges only care about design, then why would high achievement in one area lead to correlation in its respective effect caption?
Fact: Design is important, but you have to sell it to get credit
When you look at the recaps, you will see sub-captions where one credits “the design” while the other credits the performance in every single caption. For GE, these sub-captions are called Repertoire Effect (REP) and Performers (PERF). The former judges the “design” of the show while the latter judges how the members sell it. As the performers become more proficient in portraying the design, judges will be able to read the design better, thus why both sub-captions consistently increase in score with each other as the season progresses. On July 26th, Bluecoats CEO Mike Scott posted a Twitter thread (linked below) detailing what is on the judging sheets for the Performers sub-caption. As you can see, there is a clear and strong focus on the execution of the show as opposed to a focus on the content (that’s what REP is for).
WARNING: Opinion ahead
(this is just my opinion, feel free to disagree)
Over the years, you can see examples of shows getting a lot of credit for GE because of a high level of performance. In my opinion, the best example of this is Carolina Crown’s 2018 show “Beast”. The show lacked cohesion and a clear story arc for the audience to follow along with. There were also aspects that didn’t necessarily fit within the framework of the show and felt more like additions to simply add the “wow” factor as opposed to elevating the story. That being said, the corps membership was nothing short of incredible in their performance of the show. The performance factor alone was strong enough to bring the corps’ GE scores consistently above Boston’s, which had a much more coherent and engaging show design.
(Obligatory disclaimer saying that you can like shows that I think were lacking in design, there are shows I like that I don’t think had particularly good design, so no judgment coming from me)
All in all, the General Effect discussion can be divisive and I wish it wasn’t. Despite what some might have you believe, GE is an integral part of the marching arts and without it, the activity would be very dull. Factoring design into the judging system not only pushes the activity forward, but GE also calls for the individual members to commit to the show’s performance. There’s a reason the stereotype of Texas marching bands is playing boring music extremely proficiently, and that’s because the state circuit didn’t have design integrated into any aspect of the judging sheets until 2020. Hope I could clear up some of the confusion. Now go out and discuss, but try not to rip off the heads of people who disagree with you.
The score is more than fifty percent design-dependent. Design directly impacts General Effect (rep), Music Analysis (rep), Visual Analysis (comp) and Color Guard (cont). The scoresheet assesses if the design is cohesive (logical), universal (profound), unique (completely original), authentic (convincing) and engineered for emotion (scripted for audience buy-in.)
Resurrecting this topic with a proposed solution - member participation in design choices.
1) One fix to the "bad design sends lambs to slaughter" problem (as experienced in Cavaliers' 2022 program "Signs of the Times", for example, or Crown's smiley and naive Right Here Right Now) is that marching members should now have an early-season hand in design decisions. This alleviates the unfair punishing of members for poor design, which members currently have no responsibility for.
2) Designers must include members in early meetings, which will likely force designers to be more responsible and timely in their design decisions, including music selections and overall visual action.
3) Marching members should be added to the design advisory board by select invitation, limiting the number participating. (We've all been in production development meetings with too many cooks.)
4) The basic rubric for teaching production design and development should be the simple structure as promoted in the Jesu Spectre video series Drum Corps Concept Design 101 on Youtube which is based on Aristotle's principles of performing arts productions: Cohesion, Authenticity, Universality, Uniqueness and Engineered Emotion. These tenets will be more than enough to weigh down new students of show design, and will prevent them from indulging in the typical freshman year folly of abstract experimentation, a tedious and painful trend found in every film school, for example.
5) Marching member involvement in design relieves some of the pressure on design teams who bear the brunt of their unilateral, unedited, late-stage, and often shortsighted design choices.
6) Marching member involvement in design encourages executive-level thinking in production development by young producers.
7) Most importantly, marching member involvement in design raises the awareness that music has intentional, articulable meaning in professional productions, either from its own inherent subject and theme, or contextually as part of a larger work. Music substance is the only aspect of drum corps that separates it from other simple-minded young adult activities like cheerleading and the breathtakingly shallow competition dance.