I noticed a lot of the upper division one groups favor ensemble/general effect a lot (i.e. Getting an 8.500 for visual but a 9.800 for visual ensemble.). Obviously its very helpful considering you guys score high ninety's consistently but why/ how do you pull it off? Do you build it up throughout the season and then just do the basics the rest of the seasons since its easy? I may try it out next season.

Both GE captions have double the points of that of the sectional captions (GE captions=perfect score of 20 and sectional captionsperfect score 10). Currently the only way to get those captions up fast also gets your ensemble captions up fast as well.

It also kinda mimics IRL marching arts. First you teach the show and impacts and dynamics and get that stuff clean. Then you fine tune everything like technique and articulation etc etc later in the season.

Furthermore, if you can quickly get these bigger captions up, when late season comes around, you can still get those bigger score jumps because your sectional captions are still low. So its kinda of a way around the slower late season score gains by starting with the GE,
waiting for it to start slowing down, then swapping to favoring the other captions (The algorithm of the game gives you smaller and smaller score gain per energy as you creep up closer to a perfect score).

Hope this is a good exemplification of why this is the preferred method of rehearsing!

Thank you very much! I'll be trying this next season!

There’s really no benefit to it. I think I’m actually the one who started this trend. My intent when I started is the same as it is now and it is this: it’s easy to max rehearse full ensemble for the first several weeks of a season. I don’t even put any thought into it. As long as I don’t lose much rehearsal energy through the course of the season it’ll all even out. After I peak my ge/ensemble scores i’ll Shift to performance captions and forget about ge. It doesn’t even matter to me when our score gains stall because I know they’ll jump later.

This season I decided to try training GE/Ensemble during the pre-season, and then going back to normal rehearsal schedule when the season started, and it's going pretty well for me!

Personally, I have taken a more balanced approach to rehearsal by keeping them at similar levels across the board. I'm not sure if it affects my full potential score for my groups but it looks good on paper haha

I spend the training week on GE and Ensemble, but I actually balance my section placements as opposed to how many points are in each caption. For example, to be third in percussion and winds, my percussion usually needs to be 3000 points more.

I find it more important to not leave any rehearsal points left over. It will all balance out in the end.....but use all points possible.

I leave rehearsal points if I want to save them for the next hour so I can do my next task. For example, if I have 20 energy left, I am pretty limited in what I can do, but if I let the hour pass I now have 120 energy which allows me to do a 30 energy action four times.

Let me correct. Don't leave unused points that are eventually lost.

What about fundraising? I didn't fundraise during the regular season (I went up twenty points in three of my groups, probably because of it) and still made enough money during my competitions that I could still use the second largest venue for my competitions and upgrade my staff like crazy. Is it still helpful/necessary to fundraise?

I would make every effort to raise money for staff by making income on shows you host. Fundraising will allow you to upgrade staff quicker and will in turn give you a better "base" starting point for every season in the future. But, it will drastically hurt your groups ability to show score gains while you're fundraising. Fundraising is good for the future but maybe not enough to be worth the loss you take in the "now". That's where you get to decide what is more important to you.

This doesn't really go along to the original topic but I think this is a good place to ask~how to some groups make crazy score jumps each season? I.E. starting out with a 60 one season and starting with a seventy the next. Is it just because of upgrading staff a lot?

The crazy season-to-season jumps are usually from
1) a mass staff upgrade during the season
2) the group was fundraising during the first season and did not operate at full energy
3) considerable influence increase during the first season
Oftentimes, its a mixture of the 3. Some young groups save up a ton of money from hosting events and drop it on staff upgrades. Its a guaranteed, tangible score increase.