JUDGING THE JUDGES

http://www.tntreview.com/?p=427 JUDGING THE JUDGES Trinidad and Tobago Review Posted on 10 April 2009 One of the practices that really irked me was the awarding of .5 of a point by some judges. As you will see, there are a few judges who, for no apparent reason awarded a band .5 of a point in a couple of areas. When I say that there was no reason for the .5 of a point I mean that there was no explanation or justification for the .5 of a point. In a number of cases the .5 occurred under the criterion of “Tone.” I had score sheets from seven bands in the large band category, and after separating the score sheets by a judge’s name, there was one judge who gave every band listened to 4.5 for “Blending of pans/Consistency” and 4.5 for “Rich quality of sound”. Tone has always been part of the criteria for the judges to use when adjudicating Panorama, but for 1993, the description was modified. When judging that criterion, the intent was to have the judge listen to the overall tuning of a band, and unless the ear perceived some real bad tuning/blending, the band should get ten (10) points. So when these judges give a band 4.5 for “blending of pans/consistency”, and 4.5 for “rich quality of sound” I am baffled as to how they are able to discern that the tuning and/or blending of over a hundred instruments is off by .5 of a point. They cannot be human. Each large band has between 25 - 30 lead or tenor pans, and given the fact that each band had to have a maximum of 100 players for this year’s semis and finals, this leaves 70 - 75 players playing more than a single pan. So the real number of instruments in an orchestra is probably more like 250 - 300, and it is just impossible to ascertain that the tuning or blending of all these percussion instruments is off by .5 of a point. Here are the actual score sheets of two judges who awarded 4.5 each under the overall heading of Tone and their comments from the semis. The score is on the left and their comments on the right. Some of the writing was not legible, and I solicited my friend to assist me with deciphering some of the handwriting. Whenever we were unsuccessful, the writing we could not understand is indicated by question marks (????)

Another area of concern to me was Arranging. As one who has been trained as an arranger, I was taught to employ various techniques such as melodic development, motivic development and re-harmonization. In 1992, when I heard Panorama, arrangers were using these techniques in their arrangements without having any musical training; however, these techniques were not part of the criteria. I felt that since the arrangers were already utilizing them, they ought to be included in the criteria and assessed. After a series of meetings with arrangers and judges, this was accepted. Arrangement was allotted 40 points; Performance was allotted 40 points; and Tone and Rhythm were allotted 10 points each. There was no specific numeric breakdown for any of the criterion. Initially when the criteria was changed, judges would have had to exercise a substantial amount of listening skills, recognize these nuances-melodic development, motivic development and re-harmonization in the arrangement-and appropriately award points based on what they heard. All these nuances were to have been weighted at the discretion of the judge. In 2006, a “high music person” in Trinidad convinced Pan Trinbago to change the text accompanying the criteria and allocate a specific number of points to each sub-category of Arrangement, Performance, Tone and Rhythm. Based on my experience, the text that now accompanies the sub-categories is detrimental to the manner in which a judge has to mark a band. This inevitably sets up a situation where the judge is forced to mark a band one way and the band is going to be subjected to inaccurate points from a judge. The awkward and regressive outcome was that re-harmonization is now weighted the heaviest-twelve (12) points, even though it is the least utilized of all the arranging techniques. So, based on my analysis of the comments from the judges at the semis in February, my opinion is that the judges do not have a full understanding of what re-harmonization means. I am basing this on the paucity of specific comments on the re-harmonization process. Since the judges are now required to award the most points in the Arranging category to re-harmonization, this approach inevitably yields organized chaos.

In the score sheets in Table 2 , the judge on the left made the comment under Performance, “Colour appropriate with the conversation between the pans.” This is an example of a comment which, in my opinion, is totally useless to an arranger; and it exemplifies how the text has forced this judge to write a comment that is incomprehensible. What is an arranger supposed to do with that comment? There really is not anything that the judge on the left said that focuses on the music being played. However, the judge on the right made an attempt to address how the leads were functioning. It was without specificity though, and unless the leads were unclear for the entire arrangement, it would have been a challenge for the arranger to embrace the comment, know where in the arrangement the judge is referring to, and then go back to the yard and work on clarity of leads.

Let’s move to the judges’ score sheets in Table 3 (above). Now, the judge on the left begins with the comment “Uniquely suggestive opening” and I believe that this was meant to address the Introduction. Wait!! Wait!! I am asking myself the same question you are asking-what dat mean? With regard to the comments from the judge on the right, there is specificity regarding re-harmonization, but the comment is under Performance as opposed to Arranging. I did not want to compromise on what was written on the score sheet, so what you see is what was written. Nonetheless, the comments from both these judges demonstrate again that there is a need to have a common understanding of what the criteria mean. As you can see, the dreaded .5 appears again-without any comment. In Table 4, while the judge on the left really says nothing particularly constructive, I am, however appalled by the number of times that the judge on the right uses the phrase, “fairly good”. It leads one to wonder whether this judge is a rookie who is yet to develop a vocabulary necessary for judging, or, a judge who was totally bored with the performance and just wanted to get to the other band. At the root of this myth is the belief that a panman-because he could play or arrange-understands the myriad techniques in a Panorama arrangement. I would argue that such is not the case. It appears to me that this individual just took an adjective, placed it either before or after the text describing the criterion. The norm in Trini is to call every panman a musician, and anybody who utters anything about steelband a musicologist; but we have to be very careful how we use these words. There is a big difference between a musician and an instrumentalist. Michelle Huggins-Watts-the arranger for Valley Harps is a musician and she can also be called an instrumentalist. Nalo Sampson, the front line lead player for Trinidad All Stars is an excellent instrumentalist. While Michelle has served as a judge for the Junior Panorama, I suspect that Nalo would need some training before she is able to serve in that capacity. I use these two female members of the pan sorority in the most positive way and mean no disrespect to Nalo; but the point I am making here is that as far as this judge is concerned-an established pannist/arranger-I am very sorry to say that the method used to judge this band supports my theory about the use of pannists/arrangers as judges. SOME OBSERVATIONS I received score sheets from nine bands altogether-seven of which were in the large band category. Printing all the score sheets would make the article much too long. To see all the score sheets I received, please visit www.tntreview.com. In my opinion, the objective of a judge’s comments is to provide some guidance or feedback for the arranger to improve his/her arrangement. There ought to be specificity with a judge’s comments, because if the comments are too broad or vague, the arranger has nothing to go on in terms of improving his/her arrangement for the next round. I happened to be in Trinidad when the show Dancing With The Stars was aired recently, and have been told that the show is quite popular in Trinidad. The judges on that show epitomize the responsibility and accountability that judges should have when they critique a performance, and Panorama judges should strive to achieve that level of detail with their comments. Furthermore, it might not be a bad idea to institute aural comments when judges visit the yards in the preliminaries; I have a strong feeling that attendance at pan-yard judging would increase two-fold. Quantitatively, about 1 percent of the comments on the score sheets I received specifically addressed the music played by the bands. I read all the comments and there were six comments-and I am placing myself in an arranger’s shoes-that I could have taken back to the yard to work on my arrangement. Here’s an idea of what I might write on a score sheet if I were in the role of a judge: I liked the way you coupled the first few bars of the verse with the hook of the chorus to come up with your intro, and the transition from the intro to the first verse was very effective. Or, when the background pans played the melody of the verse at about 3:16 into the arrangement, there was too much activity with the front line pans, and this hampered the clarity of that section. I suggest you temper the tenors a bit, or strengthen the bass part with the guitars or cellos. Several arrangers I spoke to said that they don’t even look at the comments; this is sad because somewhere among the variety of comments, there should be something of consequence that the arranger could use to make the arrangement better. However, because the majority of comments are not focused on the music, I can well understand why arrangers’ attitude to the judges’ comments. The process of adjudicating is a very responsible undertaking, and with that undertaking comes a certain amount of accountability. For too long, the executive of Pan Trinbago has not called on the judges to be accountable for what they write on the score sheets, and judges have not voluntarily demonstrated such accountability. So when a judge uses “fairly good” seven times to describe a band’s performance, and the same phrase from the same judge is seen several times on the score sheets of other bands, one can understand the demand by arrangers for foreign judges. Another concern of many arrangers was Pan Trinbago’s decision to discontinue throwing out the highest and lowest scores. This year’s Panorama saw an aggregate of all the scores, and while I do not have any specific philosophy on scoring, I believe that giving the steelbandsmen some empowerment could bring about some healthy dialogue on the best methodology with regard to scoring. One arranger reported a conversation with an executive member of Pan Trinbago who encouraged him to furnish a list of names whom he thought would be good for the judging process. He did so and took the list to the executive only to have another member of the executive shoot down all the names. Arrangers are supposed to have a say in the selection of judges, but my interviews with several arrangers suggest that they have very little- if any- input in selecting judges. Several executives of Pan Trinbago are affiliated with one band or another, and when you have these same executives choosing judges to adjudicate a band with which they have some affiliation, you have a major conflict of interest-major! This situation obviously needs to change. In conversation with an arranger who was totally fed up with the adjudication process, I suggested the idea of having a band’s score projected on a screen immediately after a band’s performance-just like Dancing With The Stars- as one way of ensuring accountability on the part of adjudicators. He replied that he had already made the suggestion only to be told that “dey go pelt the judges if dey eh like what dey see!” There are competitions world-wide where the judges have to expose their scores immediately after each performance, and while this sort of change will be difficult for the steelband movement to embrace, it could raise the level of accountability on the part of the judges. Here it is in 2009- before the scores are released, Pan Trinbago ushers the judges out from the judging area. What is the problem? RECOMMENDATIONS There are a number of recommendations that I would make to Pan Trinbago in the interest of reducing the level of rancor that follows each Panorama competition: (1) Training The judges must attend a training session before the Panorama season starts-every Panorama season. The arrangers should be included in these sessions and the session must be facilitated by a qualified musician and/or an individual who has studied music that is not limited to classical music, is an arranger, understands what arrangers are doing, and has a substantial amount of credibility. (2) Criteria descriptions must be removed. The Introduction sub-category of the Arrangement category says: “the count should be clear, demanding attention and the right tempo, execution flawless, good balance.” In assessing an intro in a Panorama arrangement, this language is just ludicrous. Nobody counts a band at Panorama; the person responsible for starting the band knocks the side of the pan, and that person is not going to start to knock the pan unless s/he is sure that everybody is ready to start. So to talk about the right tempo, execution flawless, and good balance for an intro is just asinine. (3) As previously stated, the points allocated to all the sub-categories must be removed. In the category of General Performance, the descriptions of the sub-categories are just awful. Dynamics has two sub-categories and with texture, there is the description “Use of melodic/harmonic strategies to complement expressiveness and style.” One does not use strategies in an arrangement; one uses techniques. So again, the “high music person” who convinced Pan Trinbago to incorporate that text into the criteria is misguided. Creativity is a tool that arrangers use when they are doing an arrangement so it ought to be in the Arrangement category, not General Performance. If you listen to Trini to de Bone on the Reid, Wright and Be Happy CD, when I take my piano solo you will hear that from an improvisational point of view, I super-imposed a number of Kitch’s melodies-Dr. Kitch, Trouble in Arima, My Pussin and [All Day All Night Miss Marianne]-over the stop time; that is creativity. So to tell a judge that creativity is limited to “the artistry and skill with which the arranger modifies the melody” is very narrow from an arranging perspective. Creativity covers much more than that one sentence. If you have a formula that is supposed to produce a specific outcome, and you change the formula, you cannot expect the same outcome. The text accompanying the criteria is bad, real bad, and when you combine that text with judges who have varying interpretations of the criteria and what the text means, you are bound to have chaos. When you look at all the score sheets you will see a comment from a judge under Performance that says, “expressive textural strategies.” This is an example of a judge who was driven to respond to the text under Performance, and this begs the question, what dat mean boy? CONCLUSION On Carnival Saturday on a news segment on i95.5fm, the President of Pan Trinbago said that in order to add more elements to the finals, Pan Trinbago planned to have some entertainment while the judges deliberate. And also, because the same six or seven bands keep emerging in the finals year after year, they are working on bringing the zonal finalists to the finals. With all due respect to Mr. Arnold, the judges are not deliberating. As far as I know, the scores are being entered into a spreadsheet that is calculating all the scores as soon as a band completes its performance, so within five seconds after the last score goes in to the spreadsheet, the results are available. It is better to say that entertainment will be added while some administrative tasks are coordinated and completed. He said that after Carnival, Pan Trinbago intends to sit down and do some planning. I trust that this planning will include a review of the adjudication process. In announcing his candidacy for the presidency of the United States of America, Barack Obama’s mantra was change I believe that the time for change has to come to the most prestigious steelband competition in the world. It has to start with the judging. When the President Obama comes for the Summit of the Americas, ah go try a ting to see if ah could have him buss a lime with one or two executives and some steelbands men so that he could institute some change. For complete story go to http://www.tntreview.com/?p=427

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  • So I decided to prepare a mark sheet and take a run at judging (For Pan in the 21st century, 2009) - without having any kind of training or being aware of exactly what the competition criteria are...so it was absolutely AD HOC!!...but I did discover a few things as follows

    -Firstly, I miss the first 5 bands...so rule no. 1 for judges....DO NOT BE LATE!!!
    -Judging is STRESSFUL especially when you are forced to listen to something you are not FAMILIAR with. (THUS, ensure you know every song, that you can sing every melody that is being performed that night, words are negligible, melody is important)
    -Dynamics really matter...an arrangement can get boring very quickly! Especially when a judge is not familiar. See #2
    -Key changes really matter...an arrangement can get boring very quickly when I hear the same thing again, in the same key, in the same style, with the same dynamics...getting my drift here?
    -So you are a starboy arranger, your band dynamics good, your key changes, rhythm changes, reharmonizations and all them things tight - but all these things coming at me the judge one time, I only hearing it once and it gone NEVER 2 be heard again, how much of it I grasp based on my talent could either help or hurt you...whilst I kept up with mostly everything that each band did during that competition, it would not have hurt if as a judge I had an assistant (of my own choice) listening also - so I could keep up wid de "Starboy" arrangers dem.
    -When you're the first band of the night, you better come correct sticking to competition and arrangement requirements. First is always a tough spot...so is last, cause as a judge I was already groaning by band 10..."Wen dis ting gon done"
    -Judging is my OPINION...I make an observation and I give my reasons! If you don't like my commentary dont invite me next year (lol)...

    With that being said, Skiffle was the first band I heard (West Indians always arriving late), and first is a tough spot...of course i did not have dem winning, I dont know the song "Georgia on my mind" but I still winged it...this was what my notes/thoughts look like for Skiffle...
    ---------------------------------------
    Soprano pans sounding thin
    C major….
    Change to A-minor ¾ (Waltz)
    Agitated?? yes..yy?
    Oh….it is a jazz segment…with a walking bass line…middle pans comping… --
    Bebop – medium swing? (a-minor)
    Swing back to initial tempo --
    Arpeggios in middle sections sounding like they are having to catchup….
    Tempo and rhythmic changes feel too abrupt for this type of song.
    Song done?? ok...
    -----------------------------------------

    These are my notes/thoughts from the Band I thought was going to win (Remember I only heard from Skiffle onwards...and skiffle was in that tough first band spot in my book) "Katz Jammers" Of course I did not know this song either!!!
    -----------------------------------------
    D MAJOR → A-C-Bb
    Nice arpeggios underneath melody and held chords
    Bass notably missing…
    Bass enters with drums nicely done
    The arpeggios underneath are moving me…
    Melody strengthened…excellent balance in tone
    Is this the arrangement? Reharmonization…execution is neat…progressions are great…due to song? Or arranger?
    Key change….from D to Bb… --
    Interesting how harmony moves from major to minor…
    New Key…modulated to Eb from D…melody --ramojay…exciting…
    Bass and congas create new vibe in rhythm…
    Melody pans come back in…still jamming…in a cool flow…shaping long notes well
    Can not stand these extended rests!!!! Where did that come from?
    Ending is decent --
    -----------------------------------------------

    As you can see, my thoughts flowed a lot better for the KAtz Jammers band than it did for Skiffle. I was able to relate to that arrangement a lot better. I was scarcely familiar with either song by these bands, which makes me think, as a judge I need to have my thoughts flowing from BAND no. 1!!!! and I need to be familiar with the music...that said...JUDGING is NUFF WUK...and then people gonna cuss u out....I glad I not a judge...Nuff respect to the folks who undertake these tough jobs! LATA
  • I am a musicologist, arranger, composer, and teacher who would like the editor to give me the oopportunity to reply to Orville's point of view in a more detailed manner. Please give me some information as to the feasability of such an undertaking. Thanks, Aldwin Albino. email aldwin333@yahoo.com
  • WOW! This was a really entertaining article to read! As a young aspiring arranger I have to agree with the views expressed here! I also think its about time judges start giving time markers when referring to a certain part as Mr. Wright gave an example with the 3:16 thing. I mean in this way, the arranger will know WHICH part of the song you are referring to!

    The judging process really does need a makeover.
    • I think it would be extremely difficult for a judge to give a marker that precisely in real-time (unless they are punching a running stop watch or something)...but they can certainly point arrangers in the general direction..nobody knows an arrangement better than the person who arranges it....so if a judge points in the general direction, the arranger will find the spot...
      • I have to agree, adding a time marker for an arrangement is nonsense...to implement something like that, someone will have to produce a CD or a DVD with time code on it and have it ready for each arranger before the finals. The proper way to do it, is of course with a score, which ain't happening...no way.
  • Very good article, Mr. Wright!

    Still, even if all the changes were implemented, folks will still complain and they may be correct to do so...judging is a subjective matter, it boils down to what a particular judge likes and dislikes, which will impact how they score. This is an inevitable result of judging music as part of a competition...which is why, there will always be some bacchanal when the results come out.
  • even with all the controversy - would u like to sit through 6hrs of pan - after a while they may all start to sound the same - except for the normal big guns - every year we know how this thing works - the worst on my memory is PHASE 11 birhtday party losing by 1/2 a point - come on then it should be re written - a point or not - this is not maths class - pan for the people - beautiful as always
  • Well done ...this could not have been stated any better.. I really hope that Pan Trinbago, adjudicators wherever they are and Steelpan Arrangers wherever they are would take the time and read this article, ponder on it and then act accordingly. Keep on writing Mr. Wright ..Steelpan competition world wide needs this information...nuff respect
    Salah Wilson
    • Who wrote this?
      • Mr. Orville Wright
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