Apparently you have never witnessed a Drum & Bugle Corps competition.
Sadly, they seem to be dying out in their last strongholds - New England and NJ/eastern PA.
Go see them while you can.
stay safe.
No wonder, with the problem of finding so many people combining the talents of musicianship, timing, precision drill, and dedication. The rehearsal time alone must be a bear.
Per vaskidmark's suggestion, I sampled a couple of youtubes of drum and bugle corps.
I've always found it interesting that we are so fascinated with precision human interactions like that --The Rockettes, Michael Flatley's Riverdance troupe, military drill teams, and so forth.
For me, looking back to my one and only experience in military drill*, I remember the pleasure of acting in unison with the other squad members in response to the drill instructor's commands. There's something about that.
The other thing that's interesting to me is that despite the leader showing/keeping time for the whole group, they can somehow keep the beat even with the acoustic delays. Spread out as they are over, say, a football field, or two or three blocks(?) when in a parade, the acoustic delay (call the sound velocity 370 yards per second) must be significant in some musical pieces.
All very interesting.
Terry
* I was in the "Nautical Cadets" for a while in the mid-1940s or so. Most fascinating were the dummy "Cadet Springfields" we used for the drills. But I still remember the internal pleasure, hard to describe, in acting in unison with the other cadets.
