Drum Corps International (DCI) is a youth organization for people under or at the age of 21 who love to play music. It's not easy, but that's what so many people say is fun about it. They love the challenge of leaving home for three months to go around the country playing the same thing over again until you get it perfect enough to win over the judges.
To the uneducated eye, a drum corps might seem a lot like a marching band. This view is wrong. A drum corps is not a marching band for a lot of reasons. One very main difference is that, if you notice, there is not one woodwind player in any drum corps. This has been quite contraversial over the years, as a small amount of people believe that woodwinds should be accepted in drum corps. Most of the corps directors, as well as almost every DCI fan, do not want this, because they do not want to be the same as a marching band. Another difference between drum corps and marching bands is the amount of time put into the two. In school marching bands, you practice for maybe one or two periods during the day, and a couple hours after school. In drum corps, you are out on some football field in Small Town U.S.A., practicing for at least 8 hours a day, battling the heat, wind, rain, and anything else Mother Nature throws at you. On top of that, you do it again that night, as a show, in full uniform, before an audience of thousands. So no, a drum corps is nothing like a marching band.
The drum corps season lasts from November until August. Although the nation-wide tour doesn't start until June, the corps are already holding auditions and composing and teaching that year's music in November. On weekends from November to May, the kids are going to camps held wherever the corps are based, learning the music, and doing basically everything they do on tour, except in the corps' hometown, and not all across the country. But the real excitement doesn't come until you're on a crowded bus with new friends that are so close to you they're family.
Drum corps is a wonderful activity, and I hope more and more people take interest in it as time rolls on.
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