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About the Adjudication of Band Contests
Courtessy of George Yenetchi, Band Booster and retired Assistant
Tuba Tutor, R.S. Sterling HS Band
It
happens every year in October and November. Marching contest
judge bashing gets into full swing. Online band newsgroups and
forums
are deluged with posts questioning the decisions of the judges
of BOA, ISSMA, EMBA, USSBA, UIL, TOB, COB, DCI and every other
marching contest sponsor. Many of the authors of these posts are
in high dudgeon. A few even resort to language of the most
impolite sort. They are not content merely to disagree. They
impugn the judges' character and competency. If we were to
believe these posts, then there isn't a decent panel of band
contest judges to be found anywhere in America.
Imagine if these
allegations were true. The implications boggle the brain. Oh,
immitigable woe! How would we have come to a state where the
finest music colleges all across America were turning out a
steady stream of band directors who, when because of their
success, they are considered by their peers to be fit to be
judges, become biased, venial, stupid, or worse? By what
misbegotten plan would the moral fabric of America have been so
rent that even band was riddled by incompetence and corruption?
But sink not into
despair. These complaints are mere teenage trumpery. They are
99.99 % nothing but adolescent asininity. A quick review of
writings on adolescence by eminent thinkers from Socrates to the
present reveals that adolescents have always been prone to rash
judgments. Their opinions are more the result of
hormone-distorted emotions than of sound reasoning. That is why
they do not let 14-year-olds serve on juries. It is perhaps best
not to pay too much attention to such utterances. Given time,
the kids will grow up.
And…yet…,
There lurks a
nagging suspicion. These judge-bashing band members may not be
expressing their own original ideas but rather those they have
picked-up from adults. Not just any adults but perhaps even from
their parents. And their parents are band parents. That
is a disquieting thought. The mind yearns to reject it out of
hand.
And………yet……,
Honesty compels
the reluctant admission that, perhaps, a few band parents are
judge bashers. OK, it is not just a few, it is more than a few,
maybe even quite a few. However many it is, it is too many. A
"Kill the Umpire" mindset may be tolerated in athletics, but not
in band, never in band. Band is the last great hope of humanity.
(That may be a bit of an exaggeration but band is at least sort
of important.)
Why You May Not
Agree with Marching Contest Judges (and why it is not the
judges' fault)
As stated above,
some marching show spectators (especially band members and their
parents) find that they sometimes disagree with marching contest
judges' decisions. That is OK. They sometimes attribute this to
incompetence or venality on the part of the judges. That is not
OK. It is not true for a one thing. You may run across a less
than ideally astute judge, but only very rarely. Contest
organizers seek out the best judges available. Use of multiple
judges (3 to 8) helps insure that one bad judge does not skew
contest results. Venality in judges is even rarer. Judges are
honorable. If they weren't honorable they could certainly find a
better way to exploit being dishonorable than judging marching
contests. Politics comes to mind. There is a good reason why the
great criminal masterminds have never paid any attention to
band. There is not much money in it. By the time bands get to
contest, band parents' bank accounts are too depleted to fund
attractively large bribes.
Think about what
is involved in judging a marching contest. Making judgments in
artistic matters involves every known shade of gray plus a few
shades whose existence science has only inferred. Many great
musicians scoff at the very idea of musical contests. In
athletics, things are obvious. Either the high jumpers clear the
bar or they don't. A four-year-old could competently judge a
high jumping contest. In the arts, what is good is always a
matter of opinion. That's why there are 50 different recordings
of Beethoven's 9th Symphony on the market. As a great
philosopher once wrote, "1+1=2 is fact, almost everything else
is opinion."
There are many
reasons you might be in honest disagreement with good judges.
Judges look
for performance excellence not entertainment value.
Judges look at
how well a show is performed. They pay little attention to how
entertaining it is. A skilled performance of a dull show will
score better than a mediocre performance of an interesting
show. (Of course, the ideal is a great performance of a great
show.) Audience members are impressed by entertainment value,
as well they should be. They should not compare their opinion
of a show, which was based on how well they were entertained,
with the opinion of judges who were evaluating how well
specific skills were demonstrated.
Contest
guidelines require that bands demonstrate certain specific
skills in performance.
For example,
guidelines often require that bands demonstrate both loud and
soft playing (BOA guidelines specify "all dynamic levels"). A
band that only plays loudly, no matter how well they do it,
will lose points. A loud thrilling show that brings the
audience to its feet cheering and clapping may therefore score
poorly. Another area that often lowers the scores of bands
that look and sound very good is woodwinds. Increasingly,
judging guidelines want the woodwinds to get equal time with
the brass and the percussion. The days when clarinets could be
seen and not heard are past.
Judges pay
very little attention to size, uniforms, etc.
Just like an
elephant, a 400 piece band is impressive just by being there.
However, judges give no points just for being there. At most
contests, judges ignore who has the nicest uniforms, the
prettiest flags or the best props. It is hard when you have
just spent $80,000 on uniforms and the band parents have
worked for 4 weeks making props to realize that the judges are
more worried about how your band's feet look.
Judges can
only judge the one performance they see.
Judges do not
know how hard the kids have worked. They don't know that the
soloist got sick. They don't know that the band performed the
show better last week. They don't know what special adversity
your band overcame. If they knew, they might be even more
impressed than you are. But they don't know.
Judges detect
small mistakes.
Judges have the
training and experience to detect tiny problems with
intonation, tone quality, balance, ensemble, etc. These
subtleties aren't even noticed by normal people. These small
differences separate the very very good from the merely very
good. Just because these differences are tiny does not mean
that they are not real.
Contests that
give rankings usually use forced rankings.
There are no
ties. If 10 bands compete and earn almost identical scores,
the judges will still rank them from 1 to 10. Usually the
judges aren't directly involved in the ranking. They just give
each band a set of scores. A computer figures out the ranking,
breaking any ties by using criteria that the judges may not
even know. One band must be 1st and one band must be 10th. It
has to be this way. First place trophies are expensive and
they only had money to buy one of them. This does not always
mean that the 10th place band was a lot worse than the 1st
place band. Rankings in "Consumer Reports" are always
qualified by a statement like, "Differences in rankings of 5
places are not significant.". Marching contest results could
truthfully carry similar advisories.
All artistic
judgments are subject to subjectivity.
Even the best
judges do not always agree. One judge may be more concerned
with intonation while another will care more about ensemble.
These are not evil biases. These are legitimate artistic
differences. At some contests, you get judges who tend to pay
less attention to the particular weak points of your band and
at other contests you don't.
As we enter the
3rd Millennium the average level of school band performance is
as high as it has ever been. It is still improving. As the real
quality differences among bands decrease, the judge's job
becomes harder and the rankings mean less. To illustrate these
points let us take part in the Red Rubber Ball Contest.
Judging the
Regional Red Rubber Ball Contest.
Welcome fans of
the Red Bouncing Sphere! In today's contest we will select the
best local red rubber ball to represent our region in next
week's State Red Rubber Ball Championship.
Start with 6
identical red rubber balls. Number them so you can tell them
apart. Then designate some people (students or band parents will
do) to be judges in the Regional Red Rubber Ball Contest. Choose
your judges by any criteria you think appropriate.
Let the contest
begin! Have each judge separately rank the red rubber balls from
the best to the worst with no ties (a forced ranking). The
judges are not to look at the numbers. Compare their rankings.
Do the judges' results agree? No. Apply a typical contest
formula (such as throwing out each ball's high and low ranking
and averaging the rest). Make a final ranking.
Now post the
official results of the Regional Red Rubber Ball Contest. Is
there any difference between the 1st ranked ball and the 6th
ranked ball? No, they are identical. But it doesn't matter, send
the 1st ranked ball on to the State Red Rubber Ball
Championship.
There is a second
part to our contest. Have the same judges rank the balls in
order of the identifying number (from 1 to 6) on the ball from
lowest to highest. Do the judges' results agree? Yes, they agree
exactly.
Were the judges
less honest or more biased in the first part of the contest than
in the second? No, you used the same judges in both cases. The
differences among the things being judged were obvious in second
case and non-existent in the first. All real judging situations
fall between these two extremes. As your band goes higher in
competition, all the red rubber balls or bands look more alike.
It is then much harder to rank them according to any rational
criteria.
There is no
perfect way to combine judges' scores and rankings. Every method
is a compromise. This brings us to-
Fun with Band
Math!
Here is an
example. Assume three judges were asked to score bands from 0 to
100. The judges' sheets show this result-
Band A: Raw Scores
82, 85, 80, Averaged Score 82.3, Judge's Rank, 1, 1, 2,
Combined Rank 1st
Band B: Raw Scores 80, 83, 85, Averaged Score 82.7,
Judge's Rank, 2, 2, 1, Combined Rank 2nd
If you give 1st
place to the band with the higher score then you give 2nd place
to the band that 2 out of 3 judges thought should get 1st place.
If you give 1st place to the band that 2 out of the 3 judges
thought was the winner then you give 2nd place to the band with
the higher score. If you are going to rank them, you must do one
or the other.
Either option
seems totally reasonable when you state it alone. "The band with
the highest score is the winner." "The band ranked 1st by a
majority of the judges is the winner." Who would argue with
either one?
The judges handed
in their score sheets and then left for dinner. The authors of
the contest rules didn't foresee this situation. They assumed
that the top ranked band would naturally also have the highest
score. (They were musicians, not mathematicians.) The final
decision is up to you, yes, YOU who didn't even see either band
perform.
You can't declare
a tie since you only have one first prize to give, one very nice
but indivisible prize. The crowd is getting restless. Quick,
tell us, who should get 1st place, Band A or Band B? (Be
prepared to explain your decision, in person, to the parents of
the band that gets second place and no nice prize.)
More Fun with
Band Math!
A problem with
direct scoring is that a judge who scores over a wider range
than the other judges can dominate the average. Here is an
example.
Band A: Judge 1's
score- 65, Judge 2's score- 68, Average- 66.5
Band B: Judge 1's
score- 70, Judge 2's score- 69, Average- 69.5
Band C: Judge 1's
score- 95, Judge 2's score- 60, Average- 77.5
Band D: Judge 1's
score- 50, Judge 2's score- 65, Average- 57.5
Band E: Judge 1's
score- 55, Judge 2's score- 63, Average- 59.0
Band F: Judge 1's
score- 85, Judge 2's score- 62, Average- 73.5
Rankings-
Judge 1- C F B A E
D
Judge 2- B A D E F C
Average of Both- C F B A E D
Wow! Judge 1 and
Judge 2 disagreed completely on the ranking of the bands but the
final ranking of the averaged scores is identical to Judge 1's
ranking. Judge 2 might as well have stayed home. This crazy
outcome happens simply because Judge 1 spread his/her scores
over a wider range than Judge 2. Without a great deal more
information, it is impossible to say that either Judge 1 or
Judge 2 is right or wrong. We can only note the result. Judge
2's scores ended up not mattering. That is bad news for Band B.
(It is especially
bad news for Band B since I happen to know that Judge 2 was THE
WORLD'S GREATEST EXPERT ON MARCHING BANDS (you know whom I mean)
and that Judge 1 was my great aunt Agnes. Aunt Agnes was a last
minute substitute for an absent judge. She is a dear lady.
Sadly, she has become rather nearsighted and hard of hearing.
Still, she is very hale for a woman of 98 and has lost none of
her feistiness (she was a suffragette and earned a BA in
biochemistry). This was the first time she had seen a marching
band since she saw John Philip Sousa's Band back in 1919. She
was very excited about getting to be a judge.)
If the rankings of
the two judges are combined in Texas UIL fashion then the
results are-
Band A: Judge 1's
rank - 4, Judge 2's rank - 2, Total- 6
Band B: Judge 1's
rank - 3, Judge 2's rank - 1, Total- 4
Band C: Judge 1's
rank - 1, Judge 2's rank - 6, Total- 7
Band D: Judge 1's
rank - 6, Judge 2's rank - 3, Total- 9
Band E: Judge 1's
rank - 5, Judge 2's rank - 4, Total- 9
Band F: Judge 1's
rank - 2, Judge 2's rank - 5, Total- 7
Combined rankings
of Both Judges- B A (C,F tie) (D,E tie)
Both judges had an
effect on this composite ranking. The ties possibly are a
problem.
Well, have you
given up any hope of finding a contest scoring method that makes
sense? No? OK, you asked for it-
Even More Fun
with Band Math!
Think things will
be all right if you combine the judges' rankings? Here is an
example (using 3 judges but that same thing can happen with
more).
Band A 1, 1, 5,
Total- 7, Composite rank- 2
Band B 2, 2, 2,
Total- 6, Composite rank- 1
Band C 3, 4, 1,
Total- 8, Composite rank- 3
Band D 5, 3, 3,
Total- 11, Composite rank- 4
Band E 4, 5, 4,
Total- 13, Composite rank- 5
So, 1st place is
going to go to a band that ALL the judges agreed belonged in 2nd
place. The band that 2 out of 3 judges thought was the best will
only get 2nd place. But wait, it gets better. In this contest in
addition to a ranking, each band also gets a Division score. The
first two judges gave Band A a "Division 1" and Judge 3 gave
them a "Division 3". By the contest rules, a band gets whatever
division score at least 2 judges agree on. Band A gets an
overall "Division 1". All the judges gave Band B a "Division 2"
so Band B gets a "Division 2". Imagine that sublime moment when
the announcer tells the spectators that Band A got 2nd place
with a "Division 1" performance and that Band B got 1st place
with a "Division 2" performance.
Band Contest
Urban Myths
Judges prefer
classical music. This is a popular complaint with people
whose bands don't play classical music. It probably results from
the fact that most classical (i.e. serious) music is more
technically difficult than most popular music. A band which does
a good job performing "The Rite of Spring" has done a more
difficult thing than a band that does a good job performing "The
Sound of Music". It is still OK to prefer "The Sound of Music"
but recognize that it can't showcase as wide a range of musical
skills as some other music.
Judges are
influenced by a good band's reputation. A popular complaint
with people whose bands are new to a particular contest. Perhaps
some judges are so influenced but this is as likely to cut one
way as another. The judges may (perhaps even unconsciously)
expect more from good bands and judge them harder. It is just
not practical to prevent judges from knowing the identity of the
bands they are judging in a marching contest.
The (insert
name of any band that outranked your band at contest) Band
violated practice time rules. This charge, when not
completely unfounded, is usually the result of misinformation.
The practice schedule for both a non-varsity and varsity band
may have been mistaken as being that of the varsity band only.
What appears to be an early start to practice may only be a
legal basic-skills training period scheduled very late in the
summer. The seemingly improper practice may be for a parade or
other appearance for which additional practice time is
permitted. Significant practice time violations are unlikely
because so many people are involved with a marching band. It is
very hard to keep secrets. Someone is going to blab.
Judge "Smith"
was offended by us a few years ago and has it in for us.
When not totally unfounded, it invariably turns outs that the
judge just happens to have the same name as the mistreated
person. There are many "Smiths" out there. The vast majority of
contests take pains to minimize possible conflicts of interest.
The way they
calculate the ranking is unfair. It may be meaningless from
a rigorously mathematical point of view. It is not unfair, as
long as it applies the same way to all the bands.
Possibly True
Band Contest Complaints
Have to include a
few of these just to show that there are some.
The judges'
guidelines penalize our type of show. Entirely possible. If
so you have many options. Do a show that is in-line with the
guidelines. Try to get the guidelines changed. Go to a different
contest where the guidelines favor the kind of show you do. And,
the ever popular, sit around and complain about it while doing
nothing. For maximum effect, BP'00's recommends doing the latter
option with friends in a nice restaurant.
The contest is
too far away./The contest ran too late./The weather on contest
day was terrible./ We feel your pain and hope you could at
least afford comfortable buses.
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