I usually try to rehearse all areas evenly, but I'm just wondering if it's better to rehearse some areas early and others later.

I rehearse the GE stuff towards the beginning of the season and then balance out the rest later on in the season.

I've seen the GE early strategy mentioned before but is there any reason as to why that's a good strategy?

If you don't heavily rehearse GE at the beginning of the season and put the hammer on captions that are easier to cap out on, like winds, percussion, and guard for example, you'll eventually start getting smaller score gains and end up getting passed by groups that focus on GE and ensemble captions early. It's happened to my drum corps a couple of times, especially last season. I rode in first place for 3-4 shows and ended up in 3rd in the finals all because of GE placing 4th and 5th place.

Corps/Band - Music and Visual General Effect: 20 points each, everything else: 10 points each

Guard - General Effect: 40 points, everything else: 20 points each

Drumline - Visual Performance and Visual Ensemble: 10 points each, everything else: 20 points each

The GE categories are just weighted more than the others. But, some don't believe in working on one category over the other. It is really just a personal preference on how you like to play and rehearse.

Scooter, you had me nervous last season. If I missed one cycle of rehearsal you would have passed me haha.


For my rehearsal technique, I put a lot of points into GE and Ensemble, and then once those are in a good place I do the 29 and 39 energy options to increase the individual caption scores but also keep the GE and Ensemble scores increasing.

It also helps that I got a new job that requires me to be on a computer for 12 hours a day so it makes it much easier to rehearse on time than my last job.

It's definitely a challenge competing against all these seasoned vets like yourself!