Three Big Elements of ‘the Mellophone Problem’

While I have watched the DCI finals on TV a number of times, last night I attended my first DCI (Drum Corps International) event in many years, the DCI Desert Classic at ASU Sun Devil stadium. I enjoyed the event overall, had a great seat and heard 12 Division I corps, but overall I focused on the music and the middle range.

Hearing the groups on TV is good but hearing it live really puts things in focus. From the years of teaching and playing horn I have a pretty fine tuned sense of tone color in the range of the horn. Three problems for the mellophones are clear.

Equipment. There are two parts to this issue.

1. Small, trumpet like mouthpieces. Some corps are still using something similar to a Mello 6 mouthpiece, and as a result the musical lines that I knew had to be the mellophones sounded to me almost always like a third trumpet line. Especially if the mellos were alone on a lead line it sounded like low trumpet, not mellophone or at least what I know mellophone can sound like now that I have worked through many mouthpiece options.

2. “Student model instrument sound.” This is a little harder to explain, but there is a difference between a sound on a professional level instrument and mouthpiece and a student level instrument and mouthpiece. Put a really good, professional level quality mouthpiece on any horn it will sound much closer to professional level.

Point two above was actually more obvious in the trumpet sections. Many of them sounded too much like a whole large group of lead trumpet wannabes on student model instruments and mouthpieces. It gave the trumpet sections an edgy, thin sound that somewhat forced the arrangers to place the mellophones in the third trumpet range as the trumpets were not filling out that range.

Probably the best corps in relation to point two (above) was The Cavaliers. The trumpets had a fuller low sound that sounded like they were playing better equipment than the others and also the mellophones were I understand using the IYM heavy mouthpiece which gave them a bigger than average sound, similar to a Flugelhorn. I have an IYM borrowed now; it is a bit different but this mouthpiece does help produce a full and “professional” sound of a type that was absent in many corps.

Warm-Up. This I talked about a bit in Mellocast 15. The one group I saw warm-up, which I will not name (bottom five finisher), had the mellophones warming up at the unison with the trumpets. Directors, this is a sin, unless your goal is for the mellophones to produce a tight, trumpet like sound, which should not be your goal. Warming up that high is a very bad thing to do to the horn players that are in your mellophone section, as it will make their embouchures very tight and hard. Their horn playing will certainly suffer for a while after the season is over, and they won’t be enjoying the summer as they should.

I had the opportunity to ask how The Academy places the mellophones in their warm-up, as for sure they were one of the best sounding mellophone sections and that was not just because two of my students play in the group. They have them warm up in the range that is in that fourth or fifth between the trumpets and baritones. This is certainly where mellophones need to center out the embouchure around to produce a full, middle range sound.

Scoring. The final major issue is scoring. In this category, The Academy shined. DCI enthusiasts, listen to this new group and the scoring. What I heard was a pleasure.

The Academy, unlike I believe every other corps present, uses Flugelhorns in the brass line. What the arrangers did (ASU colleagues Pat Sheridan and Sam Pilafian) was place the Flugelhorns in the place range wise that most corps places the mellophones and then align the mellophones much more with the lower brass. It made such a difference; I perceived the mellophones much more as a middle register voice, which is where they belong.

I had the opportunity to speak briefly to Pat Sheridan and he confirmed that basically they took the approach of expanding out brass band scoring for drum corps. This is in my opinion the way to go, as the range is better filled out sonically from top to bottom.

Again, too many of the corps had sort of a shrill trumpet section with a big and somewhat high “hole” left for the mellophones to fill in the scoring. The Academy has the Flugelhorns in that gap along with the mellophones and the result was to my ear one of the best sounding groups all night.

A side point would be that Mellos should not be regularly scored up toward written high C (horn in F) as they are with several groups. This only reinforces the perception that the mellophones are playing some sort of super third trumpet line rather than a real middle register voice. A remnant of G mellophone bugle scoring? It is/was a more trumpet-like instrument.

Of course there are other things I could comment on from the night. The Madison Scouts show opening was very impressive. Some of the shows I saw musically left me a bit cold, too much of a musical mishmash bordering on a musical mess, although the crowd seemed to enjoy them. The Colts should have had some sort of special award for playing through the most wind and rain (it does rain in Phoenix). Elements of final rankings were a mystery to me; I would have guessed that the corps with the most difficult weather conditions would have been scored down more for the numerous obvious field equipment issues. No show was perfect. Walking out I overheard audience members say Carolina Crown should have won (The Cavaliers did), their show is a crowd pleaser.

Overall I am left feeling that, as a horn player, depending on the mouthpiece and scoring and warm-up you could either hate a summer of mellophone or love it. These three elements all impact how you perceive the experience a great deal.