Final games of 2017 - @Bradley and @Fort Wayne

westernhall777
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ST_Lawson wrote: Fri Dec 29, 2017 4:06 pm
wiu712 wrote:There was a 30-point swing in this game. Western went from 18 points up to 12 points down.

I noticed that Bradley had a Pep Band at the game. Wonder how they are able to have a Pep Band for these semester-break games while Western does not ??????
More students in the immediate vicinity.


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Yes, they have many current students that live in the area and they allow anyone that knows someone at Bradley to participate in the band over school breaks. I was at the game and they were recognized as "The Bradley Braves Friends and Family Pep Band." Pretty much, if you show up to their music hall a couple hours before the game they will bus you to the game to play with them and will put you on an email list. We don't have the population of an area like Peoria to do that.
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sealhall74
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I was a math major, not a music major but I have been to a lot of bars in my life and watched cover bands consisting of 4 or 5 people do an admirable job. How many live bodies does it take to make up a pep band? With today's technology, can't you easily pipe in some "electronic help" to make up for missing people and/ior instruments?
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ST_Lawson
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sealhall74 wrote: Sun Dec 31, 2017 6:26 am I was a math major, not a music major but I have been to a lot of bars in my life and watched cover bands consisting of 4 or 5 people do an admirable job. How many live bodies does it take to make up a pep band? With today's technology, can't you easily pipe in some "electronic help" to make up for missing people and/ior instruments?
Not easily, no. The arrangements that the pep band plays of most of the music have about 15 different parts that need to be covered...so, at least one person on each part. Ideally, you'd have a couple on each, giving you about 30 people. Usually our pep band has around 20 at most games. To fill in with fewer people on those same arrangements, you'd have to have all the parts recorded well and find a way to play them back that will be able to sync up with the live band members...not an easy thing to do.

You could find alternate arrangements of the some of the songs, but that would require the people that are there to learn other versions of the songs, or not play at all, because if you have a small rock band version of it, you're looking at a guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard...and that's about it.

Essentially, it's not an easy thing to do and if you do it, it would require significant time and/or money (depending on how you approach it) and isn't really something that's worth it for the few home games that happen over break generally.
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